Officially designating the prostitute body as an object of specialized medical knowledge and a site of state intervention, the Contagious Diseases Acts created the conditions for intense public debate over the rights of women and the reach of medical authority. Designed to limit sexually transmitted diseases among enlisted men, the first two of these acts passed quietly in limited forms in 1864 and 1866. As Judith Walkowitz argues in Prostitution in Victorian Society (1980), their "exceptional status as national defense legislation" formed the basis for their initial acceptance. 1 In the late 1860s, their reported success in reducing disease informed a move to extend the procedures and their jurisdictional reach-as a public health initiative-to additional designated towns and portions of the civilian population (individuals residing within a certain radius of scheduled locations). With the passage of the third Contagious Diseases Act in 1869, the geographical scope, affected populations, and public scrutiny increased. Together, the series of acts called for the general identification and reporting of suspected prostitutes, allowed for the use of informants and plain-clothes policing, required "voluntary" submission to gynecological speculum examinations, provided for the detention of infected women for up to one year in a certified hospital (overseen by a military-appointed Medical Officer), and recorded women's names in a registry of "common prostitutes." 2 Delineating terms of surveillance, apprehension, and punishment, the Contagious Diseases Acts clearly outlined a carceral model of medical
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