Control, Compulsion and Controversy: Venereal Diseases In Adelaide and Edinburgh 1910-1947

317 Pages·2015·18.67 MB·English

by  Susan Lemar

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Control, Compulsion and
Controversy:
Venereal Diseases
a
1n
Adelaide and Edinburgh
19L0-L947
By
Susan Lemar
Department of History
University of Adelaide
February 2001.

Control, Compulsion and Controversy: Venereal Diseases in Adelaide and
Edinburgh
1910-1947
Contents Page
Declaration
Abstract
Acknowledgements l1
Abbreviations lll
Introduction L
Part A
ADELAIDE
1. Controversy in Adelaide's Public Health 22
2.Pox, Prostitution and Public Policy in Darkest Adelaide 1873-L910 35
3 Locating Adelaide Eugenics : Venereal Disease and the 52
British Science Guild South Australian Branch 1910-191'4
4. "It serves the lustful beggars tiglrrt"z Social Hygiene and
World War I L915-\920
5. Proclamation, Propaganda and Prophylaxis:'Controlling' the 112
'Grave Menace' in Inter-war Adelaid e ]-921'-1939
6 "sexually cursed, mentally weak and socially untouchable"- 144
World War Two, National Security Regulations and
the New Campaign, 1939-1945
7. Conclusion 185
Part B
EDINBURGH Page
8. Compulsion in Edinburgh's public heatlh policy 1,89
9. "For the protection of others": venereal diseases and 201.
policy in Britain 19L6-1928
10. "The liberty to spread disaster": campaigning for compulsion 2L6
in interwar Edinburgh, 1928
11. "The lesser of two evils": war ressutes 1939-1947 243
12. Conclusion 267
Part C
13. Social Reponses to Venereal Disease 269
in Adelaide and Edinburgh
Bibliography 280
ABSTRACT
Control, compulsion and controversy:
venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh1910-1947
This thesis argues that despite the liberal use of social control theory in
the literature on the soical history of venereal diseases, rational discourses do
not necessarily lead to government intervention. Modern analyses usually
overestimate the capacity of social control strategies to hit their mark. Where
intervention was proposed the degree and method was, in the case of venereal
diseases, continually debated and revised. Through the unique experience of
the failed attempt to introduce compulsory notification and treatment for
venereal disease in Adelaide and Edinburgh in the period defined by the title it
will be demonstrated that legislators were constrained in these two cities by a
-zarietl of factors in determining the public health policy in regard to these
particular diseases. The complexity of the relationship between governments
and the societies for whom they legislate and the influences or otherwise of
social organisations, institutions and pressure groups are seen as important
factors in this relationship. Also, analyses that assume geographic as well as
empirical specificity demonstrate the difficulty for historians who attempt to
mould a national experience from a diverse set of circumstances. Comparative
analysis reveals that culturally similar iocations can experience simiiar impulses
and constraints to the development of social policy under differing
constitutional arrangements.
il
Acknowledgements
V/ithout the kind assistance of many this work would not have been completed. Thanks
are due to my supervisors, Dr. Adrian Graves (University of Adelaide), Associate
Professor Robert Dare and Dr. Roger Davidson (University of Edinburgh) for their kind
and patient guidance during the progress of this work. Also thanks to Dr. Katharine
Massam, and Professor Peter Mühlhaüsler for their much needed support. On this score
I also owe a debt of gratitude to the Department of History at the University of
Adelaide.
Susan Lemar February 2001
111
Abbreviations
BPP British Parliamentary Papers
BPD British Parliamentary Debates
DHS Department of Health for Scotland
EPHD Edinburgh Public Heaith Department
GRG Government Record Group
HH Home and Health Series
LHB Lothian Health Board
MJA Medical Journal of Australia
ML Mortlock Llbrary
MiL Mitchell Llbrary
MOH Medical Officer of Health
NAS National Archives of Scotland
SBH Scottish board of Health
SLSA State Llbrary of South Australia
SAAP South Australian Acts of Parliament
SAPD South Australian Parliamentary Debates
SAPP South Australian Parliamentary Papers
SRSA State Records of South Australia
WCTU Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Introduction
Control, Compulsion and Controversy:
venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh19\0-1947
(i)
Object
The historiography of the growth of government in modern industrial
societies has taken shape around the validity of two propositions. The first is
that governments tend inexorably to regulate social life through the elaboration
of an apparatus of inspection and compulsion. The second is that regulation in
turn tends toward the control by elites of subordinate and relatively powerless
social groups such as women and children, the poor the sick, immigrants and
non-Anglo Saxons. Changes in social policy over time, in other words, advance
a programme of "social control."
This thesis examines the history of venereal diseases control in Britain
and Australia to challenge this meta-narrative of social policy in four ways. It
shows the persistence of voluntary and non-compuisory forms of disease
control; i.t shows the contested and negotiated states of regulatory measures; it
shows that as far as venereal diseases control was concerned, transnationally,
compulsion was far from acceptable and popular approach to the problem; and
it shows that communities sharing remarkably similar social structures,
systems of government, moral codes and medical cultures could take similar
paths for the control of venereal diseases but produce quite different outcomes.
From its original preoccupation with sanitation, the issue of compulsion
in public health in Britain and Australia quickly incorporated a debate over the
liberty of the individual and his or her responsibility to the common weal. In
the matter of health care, "individual and corporate responsibility", "individuai
initiative", "exertion and diligence", and "personal discipline" were considered
by early public health theorists more valuable to the nation, more constructive
2
and permanent, than a too rapid or superficial provision of external facilities for
securing social well-being.l When the same principles were applied to the
control of infectious diseases a distinct discourse surrounding public health
was initiated. When venereal diseases were introduced into the equation
medical responses to public health issues merged with moral responses that
were often injected with pseudo-scientific prescriptions for national fitness.
Usually such prescriptions were also infused with related issues such as the age
of consent, prostitution, abortion, alcoholism and mental deficiency. The
conseqltences of such "social evils", rather than offering categorical justification
for decisive measures for their control, confronted social policy reformers with
considerations as to what was possible, what was practicable and what was
ethical.
This study intends to reveal the difficulties for historians in attempting
to reconcile motives and outcomes. Also it aims to demonstrate that localised
studies are useful in revealing the controversies of the compulsion debate
surrounding venereal diseases. The localised case-study approach is important
in revealing that the compulsion debate was intricate; that popular
explanations for the motivation and consequence of coercive health policy may
be qualified when experiences in particular circumstances are scrutinised; and
that, although it is always possible to uncover specific examples that do not
conform to grand theories, the relationship between governments and the
societies for whom they legisiate is always compiex. This complexity is well
demonstrated during the debate surrounding compulsion in the control of
venereal diseases in Adelaide and Edinburgh from 1910 to 7947.
1 E. E. Reynolds, Ourselues nnd tltc Contnutnity, Cambrid¡;e (University Press, Cambridge, 1932), p. 51
(ii) Historiography
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the debate over venereal
disease control was an international one. In the early twentieth century
international congresses drew together the medical profession from a variety of
countries. When determining legislative responses governments drew on the
experience of others. The strengths and weakness of proposals were vigorously
debated. The successes and faiiures of various strategies were scrutinised, and
compulsory and voluntary schemes were compared for their efficacy and
capability of enforcement. The dilemma over whether or not to enforce a
compulsory system of disease control incited considerable debate among liberal
social reformers, the medical profession, public health authorities and
legislators. The nature and content of this debate have been the subject of a
large body of work on the social history of venereal diseases. The basic
assumption underpinning the majority of this work is that the control of the
venereal diseases, syphilis, gonorrhoea and soft chancre, was a problem
beyond merely public health policy. Contemporary concerns about social
morals and racial fitness and the double sexual standard have underpinned
many studies into social responses to venereal diseases control.
Most studies, like those by Lucy Bland, acknowledge the growth of
eugenics, the 'science' of racial health and purity, as a dominant and motivating
ideology behind venereal disease control policy.2 Flowever, others, by focusing
on the creation of discourses surrounding sexuality, examine disease control in
respect of racial health and racial purity in more specific historical contexts. The
work of Sander L. Gilman on images of illness, health, sexuality and race has
been influential for its identification of the translation of theological concepts of
': The
and, (
lation
isease
History of Medicitrc and AIlicd Scie nccs, vol.43, no. 2 (1988), pp.747.