Prostitution : considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities and garrison towns : with proposals for the control and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton.

  • Acton, William, 1813-1875.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prostitution : considered in its moral, social, and sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities and garrison towns : with proposals for the control and prevention of its attendant evils / by William Acton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    This machinery, which stands upon a fiction, is cumbrous, and its re- sults are rare and generally ridiculous. It amounts, in fact, to no re- medy for wrong; and the crime which it is supposed to check flourishes under its pleasant shade. There is, however, one tolerably certain method of enforcing law against a man who, having seduced, has deserted a woman and her child. When we have recited that, we may close the list of remedies. She may apply to a bench of magistrates for a summons. The summons is granted ; and the man found, or not found, the usual result is “ an order in bastardy,” in pursuance of which the maximum sum of half-a-crown is due and payable by the father each and every week for the support and maintenance of the said in- fant, but for that of his strong-minded seducer—nothing ! Sighing,—or, it may be, smiling compassionately at the crest-fallen appearance of the strong one who has found hardihood to come before them,—the bench of justices regret their inability to do more for her. They would make an example if they could, they say in some instances ; in others, they make an order for only Is. 6d. or 2s. a week. The magis- trate, who is a family man, and has perchance himself grown a crop of wild oats, gives a sad thought or two to the case as he jogs home ; and has even been known to advocate in public some more extended protection of women. But the plague is for all that—as it may be when I, too, am passed away—yet unstayed. The days of chivalry are gone indeed, and the honour of all women but those of his own house is so much a bye-word with the Englishman—their bodies so often his sport—that the reform of the bastardy law, and the thence resulting check to pros- titution, may chance to be deferred until a sense of common danger shall have made us all fellow-agitators. If I could not get imprisonment of the seducer substituted for the paltry fine of half-a-crown a week, I would at least give to the commonwealth, now liable to pecuniary damage by bastardy, some in- terest in his detection and punishment. The union house is now often enough the home of the deserted mother and the infant bastard : and the guardians of the poor ought, I think, to have the right, in the interest of the community, to act as bastardy police, and to be recouped their charges. I would not allow the maintenance of an illegitimate child to be at the expense of any but the father. I would make it the incubus on him, not on its mother; and I would not leave his detec- tion, exposure, and money loss in the option of the latter. A young man who now has a second or third illegitimate child, by different women, has not lived without adding some low cunning to his nature. It often happens that a fellow of this sort will, for a time, by specious promises or presents to a girl he fully intends ultimately to desert, defer making any payments for or on account of her child. If he can for twelve months, and without entering into any shadow of an agreement (and we may all guess how far the craft of an injured woman will help hei to one that would hold water), stave off’ any application on her part to the authorities, her claim at law is barred ; and slie herself, defied at leisuie, becomes, in due course, chargeable to her parish or union. But not thus should a virtuous State connive at the obligations of paternity being shuffled on to its public shoulders, when, by a very trifling modi 18—2