Many, many instances of the grossest cruelty occur daily wherever the inspection system is in force. Police supervision can reach only a small number of loose women, and such are easily blackmailed. The great mass of harlots seek to hide their shame, and never come forward voluntarily to be blacklisted; these go about with their secret diseases, and never can be included in the inspection.
The infected women should in every way be encouraged to seek medical relief; but if a clandestine prostitute apply for treatment she is certain to be reported and put on the register. Naturally they detest the thought of being in the power of the police doctors and of being compelled to report for examinations; and they do not wish to be forced to withdraw from their avocation, even temporarily. Consequently these women, being led to hide their disease, are more dangerous by far than the prostitutes in unregulated countries, who do not hesitate to apply for relief at the dispensaries and hospitals.
Compulsory examination is in its abstract audacity a legalized assault. It is an easy matter for the police to entrap and register and outrage every unprotected woman who has no visible means of support; but it is an awful sight to see those of them who refuse to be degraded by examination in the ugly prison garb which is put upon them as a punishment.
Such injustice is intolerable in enlightened countries. Without trial, without the right of appeal, with no provision for redress, robbed of all the most inviolable personal rights, these women are to be more grossly enslaved by the police authorities than ever the Africans were, and are to be forcibly subjected to the authoritative will of the most unscrupulous and inefficient pariahs of the medical profession, those low caste officers of the law styled "medical inspectors of prostitutes".
The days of a nation are numbered when it allows considerations of policy to supersede conscience when it metes out injustice and brutality when it protects a commerce which places the young, the poor, and the innocent at the mercy of the foulest bidders for human flesh, and when it fashions its laws in compromise with the Devil.
In plain words, such a system gives sanction and protection to brothels, though not disputing that these quarters are the manufactories of everything that is indecent, and the harbors of refuge for every class of men whom the detectives seek. In no possible way could the State do more to demoralize society, spread disease, ruin posterity, and protect criminals. This has been so obvious in those countries where the regulation laws have been in force, that municipality after municipality has seen fit to abandon them; and royal commissions of eminently well qualified men, including some of Europe's most eminent scientists, such as Huxley, Virchow, Blaschko, Neumann, etc., have unanimously and unequivocably proclaimed this method most unscientific and a complete fraud.
See how the results of this system appeared in Berlin in 1892. "In the consideration of this question, the proportion of public to private prostitution in Berlin is important. While more than 5,000 prostitutes are registered, according to police estimates more than 60,000 live by prostitution".