The Rise and Fall of the Contagious Diseases Acts: An Examination of the Legislative Influences, Medical Discourse and Repeal Arguments

Author

Elizabeth HendersonFollow

Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Committee Chair/Advisor

Lee Wilson

Committee Member

Ryan Hilliard

Committee Member

Archana Venkatesh

Abstract

The Contagious Diseases Acts (CDA) were the most important legislative intervention concerning sexuality in the nineteenth century. The CDA was a public health measure passed to address the spread of venereal disease amongst the British Army and Navy, and targeted Britain's most vulnerable women – sex workers – because they were blamed for being the presumed cause and primary mode of spreading venereal disease. This resulted in the legalization of what critics of the CDA would call surgical assault, or instrumental rape, of working-class women suspected of being sex workers. Historians who study sexuality and sex work in Britain have pointed to the influence of vagrancy legislation, poor laws, and vaccination acts as the legislative influences over the CDA. However, there has been a lack of exploration into the extent to which these forms of legislation influenced the CDA, as well as a lack of scholarly examination of the CDA in conjunction with other nineteenth century public health legislation.

In this thesis, I argue that by examining the CDA in conjunction with vagrancy legislation and public order, the influence of the medical-moral discourse of epidemic disease as it pertained to both cholera and venereal disease, and the arguments used to achieve repeal, CDA departed from the blueprint of public health legislation to target Britain's most vulnerable women because the perceived threat the lower working class posed to public order and the fears surrounding epidemic disease were seen as being fully embodied by sex workers. In order to do this, I examine early vagrancy legislation from the 14th century to the 19th century as well as the fundamental pillars for keeping public order in the nineteenth century; I examine the Public Health Act of 1848 as well as the medical-moral discourse for cholera and venereal disease to explain the environment the CDA was crafted in; and finally, I examine the legal arguments used by critics to achieve repeal of the CDA in England by 1886, specifically pointing to the Acts’ immorality, hypocrisy, and unconstitutionality. By examining these topics, I show that the CDA targeted Britain's most vulnerable women – sex workers – because they were perceived as being the total embodiment of the fears surrounding the connection between the working class and epidemic disease.

Recommended Citation

Henderson, Elizabeth, "The Rise and Fall of the Contagious Diseases Acts: An Examination of the Legislative Influences, Medical Discourse and Repeal Arguments" (2025). All Theses. 4467.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4467