Walkowitz And Englitz Summary

Walkowitz and Walkowitz are attempting to address several problems surrounding the lower- class women in Plymouth and Southampton. The question being: what the “prostitutes” lives were like at home, in the streets, or in society during the Contagious Diseases Acts. They’re only taking into account the lives of women in Plymouth and Southampton due to the protests held by the inhabitants there. Firstly, they go through what the Contagious Diseases Acts are and how/why they were put into circulation, at first only in military bases, mainly due to the large number of venereal diseases in unmarried sailors and soldiers who were stationed in areas in Ireland and England, and then to larger cities where diseases were rampant. The authors show the way that these acts blamed and only affected the lower class women in the areas and try to show that not all of these women were common degenerate prostitutes but, instead, poor working women trying to survive when there are limited job opportunities that provide unsustainable wages. Walkowitz and Walkowitz prove this by showing the statistics surrounding two streets in Southampton and three streets in Plymouth that had a high count of “prostitutes” and …show more content…
They prove this time and time again by showing the poor lives of these women and the stories behind what brought them to be incarcerated. They also showed how the women of Plymouth and Southampton protested the Acts as best they could in the courts and in the lock hospitals. These women weren’t just trying to make a living, they were also trying to live