‘Gendered’ Quarantine, Control and Exploitation: Lock Hospitals in Nineteenth Century Colonial India

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2024

DOI:

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‘Gendered’ Quarantine, Control and Exploitation: Lock Hospitals in Nineteenth Century Colonial India

Nibedita Kuiry

ABSTRACT:

The term ‘quarantine’ that had its origin in the fourteenth century Ragusa (Modern Croatia) was used as a preventive measure against contagious diseases of unknown origin (Gensini, Yacoub and Conti, 2004). During the second half of the nineteenth century this safeguard in the form of Lock Hospitals were extensively used when a large number of soldiers in the British army, chiefly Europeans, got hospitalised being affected by venereal diseases. However, instead of strictly controlling the sexual liaisons of the soldiers, the British enforced laws to quarantine public prostitutes for providing safe-sex to the soldiers. The paper, focusing on archival documents, argues that though the purpose behind establishing Lock Hospitals in different Presidencies was to check the spread of venereal diseases in military Cantonments, the rules set under clause 7, Section XIX of Act XXII of 1864 used ‘health’ of public prostitutes as a tool of colonial regulation. This Act enabled the British to restrict the physical movements and rights of public prostitutes, in particular, and women in general by labelling their bodies as ‘unhealthy’. Contrarily, public women with ‘healthy’ bodies also incurred economic and sexual exploitations in the hands of colonial agents within the Cantonments. In short, the paper unravels the interaction of gender and health politics enforced by the Act of XXII of 1864 that enabled the British to have maximum control over women in colonial India.

keywords: Gender, Health, Lock Hospital, Prostitutes, Venereal Diseases