Nine-year-old Annie McGuire and seven-year-old Elizabeth Martin were amongst hundreds of girls and girls admitted to Glasgow's Lock Hospital for Unfortunate Women, certainly one of a network of lock hospitals inbuilt Britain and its colonies within the Nineteenth century. There is one. Between 1846 and 1947.
A hospital established for the diagnosis and treatment of neurological diseases for girls and girls The infamous Glasgow System — The response of a Scottish city Communicable Diseases Act (CDA).
The CDA, introduced within the 1860s in garrison towns and naval ports in England and Wales, aimed to eradicate sexually transmitted diseases within the armed forces. Glasgow Lock played a key role within the unprecedented integration of the Glasgow system of police, courts, prisons, medical authorities and town. Magdalene Institutions.
Annie and Elizabeth were hospitalized with gonorrhea – and died there three years later. They, like all those that died within the lock, were buried in unmarked graves. These are the few details that remain of the short but brutal lives of those two little girls.
Although the hospital's records reveal little in regards to the personal stories of its patients, through them, as a part of my research on gender-based violence, I used to be in a position to explore working-class women and girls in Nineteenth-century Glasgow. I even have been in a position to see the glimpse of social oppression.
Here was a city whose mission was to eradicate the evil practices of girls and the “social evils” of prostitution and venereal disease. Vulnerable young girls like Annie and Elizabeth fell victim to those attitudes, and were blamed for the sexual violence they experienced. As a “treatment,” they were then subjected to more abuse – within the very institution that was speculated to protect them.
'Dangerous Sexes'
Alexander Peterson, certainly one of Locke's surgeons within the 1860s, advocated creation. of the Glasgow system for the eradication of prostitution and venereal disease – by specializing in women because the explanation for each.
Patterson's proposal was well received by city leaders, who were concerned about prostitution and Sexual diseases as “the most prominent symbol of social degradation in the industrial age”. Women and their “dangerous sexuality” were supposedly responsible. “The social evil that disgraces the earth”.
In their view, any woman was a “prostitute” if her behavior, speech, dress or lifestyle went against Victorian social or sexual norms. Prostitution involved what contemporary ethicists consider Degradation of working class culturewhereby women were free to roam the streets, posing a “dangerous temptation” to men and a danger to public morals and health.
Glasgow Police Act 1866 Officers got full discretionary powers to arrest any woman or girl they believed to be or vulnerable to prostitution. According to Glasgow Chief Constable Alexander McCallthis meant that any woman found on the road who was unable to account for a way she lived her life.
Thousands of individuals were arrested based on this definition (or on the whim of individual policemen), including homeless, unemployed or underemployed women, separated women and single moms, and part-time and casual female staff. .
Women and girls were first taken to the lock for a compulsory, brutal entrance examination. Its registers show the entry of ballerinas, actresses, shop girls, unemployed mill girls, housemaids, farm staff and wives and youngsters of soldiers and merchants.
Women entered Locke's doors under an indication proclaiming its goals: Cure – Knowledge – Reform. They were classified as certainly one of the next:
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“Vagabond” – a homeless, destitute young girl;
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“Gir” – A young woman who had turn into a well known prostitute.
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“Newly fallen” – A young woman or girl who has recently turn into involved in prostitution. or
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“Tough” – an adult woman working as a prostitute who was known to the police or who had previous convictions.
By 1910, Locke was admitting about 300 women a 12 months, with about 50 patients at a time. With shaved heads and regulation brown uniforms, these patients were highly visible and stigmatized outside the hospital partitions.
When sufficient, women worked in laundries, kitchens, and morgues, and attended classes provided by middle-class female volunteers, designed to coach patients in “acceptable” female behavior. .
A (short) lifetime of imprisonment
Glasgow Lock records show that many children under the age of 13, reminiscent of Annie and Elizabeth, contracted gonorrhea during incarceration in other institutions and reformatories – possibly after being raped by men. “The Virgin Cure” for venereal disease.
Girls' bodies, already severely damaged by sexual violence, often struggle to survive punishing situations – and Brutal but Largely ineffective Treatment – Lock is completed on them.
By the top of the Nineteenth century, the Glasgow system was incorporated. Duke Street Women's PrisonLocke, and the Magdalen Institution in Glasgow, were attempting to incarcerate, treat and reform hundreds of girls and girls.
Once treated, girls and young women deemed vulnerable to becoming prostitutes were admitted Magdalenewhere they were subjected to a strict regime of spiritual instruction and hard labor in a business laundry. Designed to divert them from prostitution and turn into submissive wives and laborers, it remained in operation until the Sixties.
While the Magdalene Laundry scandal is infamous in Ireland, Scotland's Magdalene Asylum are less known. Glasgow's Magdalene Institution for the Repression of Vice and Rehabilitation of Penitent Females was closely related to the Glasgow Lock.
In 1947, the hospital closed its doors after the brand new introduction of Britain. National Health Service. gave Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow It now has a dedicated locker room, which tells its story through powerful visual displays. Demolished in 1955, the unique Glasgow Locks are situated throughout the hospital sites. University of StrathclydeCampus area.