In March, 1892, we arrived at a huge Cantonment about midnight. As there was no dak bungalow at the place, we spread our rugs on the settees in the ladies’ waiting-room, and slept till morning. The dak bungalow is an institution kept up by the Government for the convenience of military men and their families, although other travellers take advantage of its shelter, and was preferable to an hotel for our purpose, for our meals were served in our private rooms always, and we could lead a very retired life. After breakfast in the dining-room, we went out and engaged a cab, explaining, as was our custom, to the driver, that we were Christian missionaries, and in accordance with the teachings of our religion, we were searching out the most despised and disreputable of women, to tell them of God’s care for them and to see what we could do for them; therefore we wished him to drive us to see the chakla women of the Cantonment. He looked a little bewildered, and then drove off with us.

After traversing a considerable distance, he entered a public garden, and began to drive slowly, that we might enjoy the flowers and foliage. We called to him, bidding him drive on rapidly, as we did not care to see the sights of the Cantonment. He nodded assent, and touching his horse with the whip, drove away in another direction. Presently he paused before another object to which he was accustomed to take visitors. Then we called him from his seat to the cab window, and told him that if he took us out of our way again, we should be obliged to leave his cab, call another, and dismiss him. We made sure he understood exactly what we wished, and he admitted that he did, but intimated that he scarcely thought it a proper place for us to visit. However, he consented, and drove off, and in a few moments brought us to an open field where two regiments were encamped. Fortunately, some drill of an unusual sort was going on, and a good many people had driven out to witness it; this, therefore, absorbed the attention of all. The Lord appointed all our seasons for us during our Indian investigations.

Taking a road leading to the back part of the camp, we left our cab and driver where several other cabs were standing, and walking along together, observed by no one, entered one of the ten little tents we found enclosed in a sort of fence of matting. The women received us cordially, although with real astonishment at such unusual visitors. The mahaldarni was not a bad-meaning woman in many regards, and she told us, with great satisfaction, of a sister of hers who had been promoted from the rank of a common soldiers’ woman to be a mahaldarni, saying that she had left off her wickedness, prayed four times a day and read her Koran. She joined with her girls in expressions of utter abhorrence of the examinations to which the girls were subjected, saying, “Shame! Shame!”

She told us how the soldiers, when in drink, knocked the poor girls about in a most cruel manner, and reaching her own conclusion as to the meaning of our call, advised us not to join their number, telling us that the city was far preferable. She and the girls told of the heavy fines to which they would be liable if they did not go to the examinations, or attempted to leave the Lock Hospital when held there. She said if they made any fuss about the fine, then they would be imprisoned. A military guard was placed within the enclosure, in one of the tents; but he had either gone to sleep, or wandered out to get a view of the exercises that were going on near by. We gave a simple gospel talk through our interpreter, and she sang and prayed with the girls; then we made our way to the women of the adjoining Rest Camp.

Again we entered the enclosure surrounding the little tents, and reached the women without attracting the attention of the guard. They told the same story of compulsion and fines continually hanging over their heads. Almost every Cantonment girl we ever questioned, was held to her wretched life by debt and fines, so that she could not think of getting free without being apprehended on account of them. Here likewise they warned us not to join them, but go rather to the city. Again we talked of Jesus, the Friend of the oppressed, and after song and prayer, bade them good-bye.

Returning to our cab, we told our driver to take us to the Lock Hospital; and after a long drive under the burning sun, we stopped before buildings enclosed within a very high brick wall with broken glass on its top to prevent the escape of inmates. A large, strongly-spiked gateway, with double doors, gave the impression of a veritable prison; and there, standing in the open gateway, was an uniformed armed guard. Previous experiences had not led us to expect anything quite so formidable, although there was generally some sort of a guard or watchman at hand, and the native physician usually resided on the premises. We had often said, and promised God, that, sacred as was the nature of the work, we would never prevaricate in order to cover up our real object, if closely questioned. We were not ordinary detectives, playing a part, but Christian women, and the difference was not to be lost sight of.

Our interpreter had not been instructed as to the full significance of our work, but was content to ask few questions if only she might be allowed to follow her bent freely and preach the gospel, which we gladly encouraged and helped in every way possible, for we should have felt that our mission was very incomplete had we met these women solely to hear their pitiful stories, and never utter a word to them of the love of the Heavenly Father, in the midst of such distressing surroundings. Our interpreter always carried religious tracts with her; and while we were hesitating to know how to encounter the armed sentinel, in the simplicity of her holy zeal she walked up to him, gave him a tract, and said a few words of a helpful nature. The guard noticed no more than that some ladies were being delayed at the gate, so he motioned us through, continuing his consideration of the leaflet, and forgetting to ask our errand. How easy for God to hide his own as He had hidden us again and again that day from guard and sentinel! We have frequently been asked how we escaped observation. We can only say that we made but little effort on our own part to do this, and trusted the Lord to do it all for us.

A dozen women gathered around us in a ward of the hospital that day. With them we had a little service, as usual, after which they eagerly poured out their sad life stories, and told of the oppressions of the system under which they were held in an evil life. The hospital nurse showed us through the wards and the examination room, where we found the grim rack for the torture of the examination, brutal to the patient, but convenient for the surgeon to do as much villainy as possible in a given length of time. No diseases are so rife or dreadful in their consequences but that their compulsory treatment, when it involves the indecent exposure of woman or man, is worse in its effects than the disease itself. And this in the case of actual disease. What, then, can be said as an excuse for such exposure simply to find out whether there be disease? Yes, further, what possible plea can be made when the object of such compulsory exposure is to discover whether the subject is “fit”[4] for a life of infamy?

Mrs. Butler has well expressed the encouragement to vice that the compulsory examination of women leads to in the following words: “We all approve of healing disease and taking care of the sick, no matter what has brought on their disease, no matter how sinful and degraded they may be. The Abolitionists have always pleaded for plenty of free hospital accommodation for men and women afflicted with this curse. But it will be clear to you that this law is not for simple healing, as Christ would have us heal, caring for all, whatever their character, and whatever their disease. This law is invented to provide beforehand, that men may be able to sin without bodily injury—if that were possible, which it is not. If a burglar, who had broken into my house and stolen my goods, were to fall and be hurt, I would be glad to get him into a hospital and have him nursed and cured; but I would not put a ladder up against my window at night and leave the windows open, in order that he might steal my goods without danger of breaking his neck.”

But to return to the Lock Hospital mentioned. The nurse produced the records for our examination. In the correspondence book was the copy of a letter from the military surgeon, informing the Cantonment magistrate of six girls suspected of disease, and asking that they be apprehended and sent to the hospital for examination. That looked simple enough, and why not?

Imagine yourself the one apprehended, and the case assumes a different aspect. A policeman comes to your door and reads a warrant for your arrest as a common prostitute; you ask on what authority; you are informed that the name of the informant is not made public, because if a man can be induced to help trace out diseases—it being regarded as a “point of honour” to inform other men where danger lurks—his confession must not be made known, it would injure his reputation. (We are now describing the exact conditions always existent where there is compulsory examination of women.)

You contend that you have a right to your good name, and that it is a principle of justice that no one can be punished on secret and unproved evidence, and that it is punishment of the worst sort to be taken by a policeman through the streets to a hospital used exclusively for the treatment of a certain class of disorders. You are then informed that unless you will go at once without any trouble, you will be taken out of the town in which you live, set down as a common vagrant by the roadside, and if ever again found within the limits of the city in which your parents, brothers, and sisters live, you will be arrested and put in jail. What will you do? Yet these were exactly the laws under which these poor women, among whom we were spending the day, lived.

By such a system of delivering over the bodies of women as public property, any woman of humble circumstances upon whom any man of lecherous design casts his eyes, could be made to come to his terms of existence by the aid of the police force, if necessary, and magistrates of evil design could condemn any woman to a life of prostitution. And in this hospital all this wicked compulsion was set down in a book, every page of which was headed, “Prostitutes attending Voluntary Inspections.”

From the Lock Hospital we drove to a large chakla, and talked with a group of about twenty girls, among them a little girl of twelve, and another of four. Everywhere we went among the degraded women of India, we found children in the chaklas, these Government-regulated brothels, with their ever-present guards, so that Englishmen knew perfectly that children were being trained under Government regulation for prostitution. The advocates of licensed prostitution for India are fond of insisting as an excuse for licensing the evil, that it does no great harm because the recruits come from “the prostitute caste.” Repeatedly we made enquiries of Englishmen, native physicians, and in one case applied to the census office for some information concerning this special class. Its existence was practically denied, excepting those cases which can be found in every land, in which women of all classes may fall into shame and train their daughters after their own evil ways. It is scarcely necessary in this connection to mention the temple and nautch girls of India, who are found in civil lines. They are a wholly distinct class from the enslaved women who are set apart to minister to the vices of the British soldiers. Among the latter we found Hindus of all castes, from high-caste Brahmins down; and we also found Mohammedans, Arabs, Egyptians, Afghans, Kashmiris, Jewesses,—recruits, in fact, from those among whom “caste” does not prevail. If it were true that all these chakla women constitute one caste, for what object did the Government of India, in times past, provide invariably (so far as our observation extends) for a record of the “caste” of the women to whom registration tickets were given? The ticket which we purchased of a woman at Meean Meer in 1892 (a fac-simile of which is given in this volume, Appendix B) recorded her “name,” “caste,” “registered number,” “place of residence,” “date of registry,” and “personal appearance.”[5]

But there is a class in India being trained to prostitution, though not a “caste,” properly speaking, and they are getting their training in the brothels established and managed by Englishmen, and many of the candidates in this class are the children of Englishmen, who have been deliberately placed there, or allowed to go there, by their inhuman fathers. This is, properly speaking, the prostitute class of India, those born to their fate; the reader may judge whether the existence of the class justifies licensing it for the purpose.

In the chakla we sang, “Where He leads me I will follow,” and its interpretation constituted our Gospel message. With tears in their eyes the girls assured us, with characteristic gesture, that we were “on their eyes and on their hearts”; in other words, had won their affections; and spoke feelingly of the honour it was to them that Englishwomen should come to see them, saying that usually Englishmen forbade their wives to even look at them. One girl said that when at Cawnpore missionaries used to come to them, and that for days after their visits her heart was so sore that it seemed as if it would burst. The girls stood in the doorway, many of them with streaming eyes, and waved good-bye as we departed, begging us to come again soon.

We hastened to the railway station for the three o’clock train. When we alighted, we spoke a few kind words to our cabman, for he had served us most faithfully, all these hours under the mid-day glare of the sun, after so unpromising a beginning. We wished to pay him well, and asked him to set his own price on his services. The simple, rough native man hesitated a moment, stammered something unintelligible, burst into tears, and averting his face with noble shame, said, “I don’t want anything at all. I never saw anything like this before; I would like to help, too.” Thrusting a coin into his unwilling hand, ample for both fee and present, we hastened to our seats in the car, and were soon rolling away to our next destination. We wrote up our notes of the day’s doings on the way, and arrived at our next field of operations the following morning at two o’clock, stealing into another Cantonment unobserved, excepting by the Heavenly Father, without whom not even a sparrow can fall. We give this history of one day as a sample; the work was heavy and painful; but we encouraged each other often with the words, “Even if we fall by the way, we could not die in better work.”

We visited a Rest Camp at Meerut. As usual, we had no difficulty in passing the sentinels; God took care of that. We learnt from official records that the regiment had only been in India two weeks; yet the complete paraphernalia of vice was at hand. There were fourteen little tents for women, and near their quarters a huge tent pitched for those who wished to smoke opium. Think of it, fathers and mothers, boys of the age of from eighteen years upwards, supplied by their superior officers, before they could have made a demand for the same, with every convenience for giving themselves over to debauchery! The sight of their fresh young faces touched us deeply.

At another place, away up on the northern frontier, we found only five girls; the others had somehow escaped their cruel bondage. As we entered the gateway of the mud wall that surrounded their quarters, a native man standing near threw up his hands in great astonishment, exclaiming, “O God! (‘Allah’), how wonderful that ladies should come to such a place!” It was a dreary, weird scene. The evening was piercingly cold, and we were well wrapped. The old mahaldarni and her girls were trying to warm themselves by a wretched little pot of charcoal, stretching their thin fingers by turns over the coals.

While we talked, the sudden night of a country without a twilight came on, although it was not really very late. One of the girls lighted a native lamp of the rudest sort—a bit of wick floating in an earthenware cup of oil—and set it in a niche in the wall. The room was unfurnished excepting the charpoy, or cot bed, on which we sat. The girls and mahaldarni sat, native fashion, on the floor, their cotton chuddars and skirts fluttering in the cruel wind that came in at the open archway, for door there was none.

They said the men of their regiment were very bad, and often when drunk beat them and robbed them, not only refusing to pay them any money, but even taking away their cotton quilts and selling them to their own native servants for a few pice with which to buy drink. They described the case of one woman who was beaten terribly by a soldier, and cut in the arms and breast; after this, several of the girls had effected their escape. We have often spoken of this as one of the most deeply shaded pictures in our memory, not only because of the dreary, comfortless surroundings, but because of the cruelty and oppression that weighed these helpless women down, from which there seemed no hope of escape. We talked to them out of the fullness of our sympathy, and promised to pray and work in their behalf, that they, and others like them, might have an opportunity to turn to a good life.

But turning from the physical injury inflicted on these poor women, we wish to present a view of their mental sufferings. It has been urged by many advocates of the regulation of vice that the whole nature of a woman was changed by her sinful life—that she had no sensitiveness and no deep sense of the degradation of her position. We utterly deny this on behalf of the scores of women with whom we have talked in India—whether of high or of low caste, Hindoo or Mohammedan, and of whatever nationality; whether brought up in virtue and afterwards betrayed, or brought up from infancy in vicious surroundings. We deny it even in regard to the mahaldarnis placed over the women, whom avarice might blind, and the ordinary routine duties of their position might harden. Yet when their womanly feelings were appealed to, they always responded, and felt shame with and for the women under their care.

In all our conversations there was shown a most remarkable patience, on the part of the women, in regard to the various inconveniences and hardships which the regulations entailed upon them. The fire of their hatred and indignation all centred upon the heart of the regulations, the examinations, and the violation of womanhood which these examinations were felt to be. It is of no use for any one to deny to us that these women have deep feelings in regard to their wrongs and their shame. We have felt the beating of their aching hearts against our own; we have heard histories that throbbed with the strong agony of betrayed innocence; we have seen a hopeless woe in eyes that will haunt us for ever.

At Peshawar, the women said, when speaking of the great hardship of being turned out of the Cantonment, “Where can we go to? We are prostitutes. No one would give us work.” And again, “Every one under this Government is treated well but ourselves; we only are despised.”

We do not present these facts with any thought of taking our position with those who argue that the better regulation of vice implies a better protection of the degraded women; but rather to show that in the working out of such regulations the woman is absolutely lost sight of, and only the prostitute is considered. Every interest in the woman’s character, happiness, health, life itself, is made subservient to the health and convenience of the British soldier. Every assertion that would put a humanitarian gloss on the regulation of vice is utter hypocrisy.

At Meerut, where there were a good many women present, one, without any question whatever on our part, suddenly broke forth into the most intense expressions of disgust at the Governmental regulation of vice, in which those girls gathered about her sympathized, one especially taking part in the conversation from time to time, and corroborating what was being said. She said, “The Queen does not approve of this; it is the Commander-in-Chief and the officers who are doing these things! Oh, what a shame that the Government does these things!” Then she burst into a passion of indignation, describing in vivid language and with a natural eloquence of gesture the whole shameful proceeding, and the humiliation to which they were subjected.

Words fail to convey the force, and fire, and pathos with which that poor, untaught woman pleaded the cause of her sisters. It was one voice out of many protesting against this cruel wrong, and representing the undying dignity of a woman’s nature, even when forced into a deeper abyss than she ever voluntarily chose to enter. We asked if the other women felt as this one did, and they all answered indignantly, “We all hate it.” The first woman cried out, “It is very disgusting; oh, shame!” We told them it was a grief to us that those who called themselves Christians should do such things, and that they ought not to bear the name. She replied bitterly, “Yes; the Commander-in-Chief, the Colonel, and all of them, all the way down—your Christian men!—they all favour these things. The Queen does not countenance it, for she has daughters of her own; and she cares for her daughters in India also. It is the Commander-in-Chief” (meaning Lord Roberts).

The accounts we have given in previous pages reveal the extremely tender age at which some of these girls were thrust into a life of shame by court proceedings under the Contagious Diseases Acts, when they were openly enforced. Two Benares girls declared they were taken up by the police at fourteen, and one Sitapur girl said she was sold to a mahaldarni at eleven. Much has been said of the horrors of child-marriage in India, and these atrocities should not be minimized, even though we bear in mind the usually slender type of Eastern manhood; but what shall we say when the robust British soldier has had placed at his mercy a little girl of fourteen years old, of the delicate Oriental type; and this done by regular process of law “to preserve his health”?

Then again considering the heathen training of these women, we were led to expect that we should find blindness of the moral sense in relation to this sort of wrong-doing. On the contrary, they expressed great shame and humiliation, never tried to justify their sinful acts, spoke almost universally of their hatred of the life, shed bitter tears, and told us how burdened their hearts were in thinking of their sins. Unlike what we met elsewhere in speaking of religion to the natives, they had little desire for controversy. With not a single exception, we were made welcome, treated courteously, and listened to and blessed for our message. Even in the case of the mahaldarnis we found them not inaccessible, but inclined to expressions of contempt for the whole system of regulation, and of apology for being the hirelings of such a system—an excuse which must have more weight than in a country where industries are open to women. Rahiman of Meerut was an exception. She said she considered her business perfectly legitimate, because she was in a “Government position.”

Several times we asked the women, “What do you wish us to do for you?” and were surprised at the answer. Desperately poor as many were, there was never an appeal for money; rather they said, “Pray for us;” or, “If you would build us homes, so that we could go to them, and not sin any more, what more could we ask?” and, “If you will help us to have the examinations stopped.” Above all, we were astonished at the appeals made to us concerning the latter outrage. We told none of them our whole object in coming among them, yet with great care they described and expressed their abhorrence of the examinations, as well as the wickedness and illegality of them; and in two or three instances they mentioned that they had heard of ladies interested in their behalf, and suggested the possibility that we might do something for them. In one instance several of the women, after telling us of their humiliation, clasped their hands together, and lifting their eyes to heaven, prayed to God that He would “help us to help them.” They invariably exonerated the Queen from all blame in this matter, saying, “She is a woman herself; she would not do this. She cares for her daughters in India.”

Says Mrs. Josephine Butler: “It is impossible not to think of the fathers and mothers of the young Englishmen, mere boys, who go out to India as soldiers, and who are trained in this disgusting manner by the military authorities; not only in the indulgence of their vices, but in cowardly and brutal cruelties towards the weaker sex. It seemed a grand object indeed on the part of Lord Roberts and his subordinates to aim at sending back their discharged soldiers to England free from physical disease, regardless of their manliness, their moral character, their respect for women, and decent habits of life! Would not the loss of these be bought too dearly by the mere exemption from physical disease, even if this could be made possible?”

After months of toil, we were now far up towards the north-western frontier of India. We requested our cabman to drive us to the quarters of the Government women of the Cantonment. We left the cab just outside the narrow street. As we walked past the native shops and turned into a little sort of lane, a woman shouted in great concern from her doorway to us, “Why do you come here? Don’t come here; all are prostitutes who live here.” With a smile of re-assurance we replied, “We know it, and you are just the women we are seeking; we have a message for you.”

With surprise, she then welcomed us most warmly and invited us in, saying she would go and call all the women and bring them to hear the message. In a few minutes chairs had been borrowed for us to sit upon, and nine native women were clustered on the floor at our feet.

We both exclaimed regarding the remarkable personal appearance of the woman who had addressed us first. She closely resembled, in fine bearing and apparent intellectuality, a much-beloved mutual friend in Chicago, a woman of more than local fame in scientific pursuits; it touched us deeply. With utmost simplicity and confidence this woman came and seated herself by Mrs. Andrew’s side, leaning her arm across her lap, and many a time during the interview that followed, her earnest, wistful eyes met ours, while Mrs. Andrew gently stroked her shoulder, her heart almost breaking with pity as the woman told her sad story.

A plaintive native song was sung by our interpreter, and tears flowed freely. After that the simple Gospel message was given. They told us then some of the painful details of the conditions under which they were living, saying that they must either meet these conditions or be expelled from the Cantonment, and added, “If we are expelled, where shall we go? we must leave all our friends, and no one will give us work. It means great hardship; we would starve.” Speaking of the hateful examinations, they said the Queen had forbidden these things, but the officers yet compelled them to go on.

The woman at Mrs. Andrew’s side told us the following: “Some time ago a lady in Calcutta saw a woman weeping as she was going to the Lock Hospital with other women. The lady asked her why she wept. She told why she was obliged to go, and how she hated the examinations.

“The lady could not understand this, but took the woman home with her, and closely questioned into the matter. Then the lady said to her, ‘This ought not to be,’ and promised that she would do all she could for them. Then the lady went home to England and talked to the Queen. She spoke with wonderful power in behalf of the poor women of India. She said to the Queen that she (the Queen) was a woman, and these in India were women, and their shame was the Queen’s shame, and for them to be outraged was as though she (the Queen) was outraged, that it was a shame for women to be treated so when a woman was Queen. Then the Queen ordered it to be stopped. But the officers still carry it on.” This she added sorrowfully, all the other women joining in the assertion. Then a sudden thought came into the woman’s face, and she asked: “Are you like that lady of Calcutta, going to try to do something to help us?” We told them we would work and pray for them that help might come and homes be provided for them. They blessed and thanked us over and over. We told them, “We are your sisters;” they replied, “We are your slaves.”

Then the woman whom we have especially described lifted her hand and with impressive solemnity uttered a vow that she would no longer lead a life of shame.

The next morning we went back to the same place and stopped before the open door. The old mother was sitting on the floor by a little charcoal fire preparing the breakfast. The two daughters of the house were putting their simple little abode in order for the day. The penitent one came forward and smiled so faint a welcome, and seemed so embarrassed at our coming, that we at first thought she was offended; but they exclaimed almost instantly, “We were awake at midnight last night talking of you, and we said it must have been the true God who had sent you to tell us of your religion.” We replied that they had been sorely on our hearts, so that we could not sleep, and that we too were awake at midnight, talking of them and praying for them. They then poured out blessings upon us, with hands clasped in prayer.

As we talked earnestly and lovingly to them, through our interpreter, the one who had made the solemn vow came forward and knelt beside Mrs. Andrew, who was standing, and timidly took her hand. Mrs. Andrew laid it on the poor girl’s shoulder as on the day before, but the interpreter said, “Put your hand on her head; she is asking you to bless her.” Tears streamed from the eyes of the penitent, and she shook with sobs as Mrs. Andrew fervently blessed her in the name of our God, and pleaded with Him for the way to open for her escape from bondage. Then in like manner the other daughter came and was blessed. Then the poor old mother threw herself with her forehead on the ground, laying her hands on Mrs. Andrew’s feet, and while Mrs. Andrew prayed over her, groaned and cried bitterly, saying, “I am a sinner, I am a sinner. For twenty-five years I led a life of shame, and brought up my daughters to it.”

We then wrote down their names, promising to pray for them, a pledge which we have faithfully kept ever since.

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