Summary
The offences which are punished under other Acts of Parliament, or according to the common law of England, are all either carefully defined by these Acts and that law, or else they are such as unmistakably to define themselves. In these Contagious Diseases Acts, on the contrary, there is no definition of the offence treated under them, nor do we find that the offence is such as unmistakably to define itself. On the contrary, we find amongst the advocates of these Acts, no less than in society generally, the widest possible variety of opinion as to the definition of a prostitute. This variety of opinion is only indicative of the immense difficulty of drawing any marked line as to where a woman may be justly designated by this name. There are many easy-going persons of the upper classes who know nothing of the poor, and who talk of this unhappy class as if they were as easily distinguishable as a negro is from a white man; but those who are acquainted with the poorer classes of women know the utter fallacy of this method of judgment, and are well aware that there is amongst this class of sinners as long and varied a series as in any other.
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- The Constitution ViolatedAn Essay, pp. 90 - 105Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1871