At about the time of the report of the Departmental Committee, there was formed in England an association with the object of securing the re-establishment of legalized vice in India. The names of high British military officials make up its membership list, in large part. The association printed a pamphlet, based upon the Departmental Committee's Report in favour of a return to the old conditions, a Report that was calculated to frighten the public, if possible, into acceding to their demands, on the supposition that a fearful scourge was upon them, and that no time was to be lost in getting it under check. Then Lord George Hamilton, on March 26, 1897, sent a dispatch to the Government of India, calling attention to the Report of the Departmental Committee, and ordering stricter measures for the suppression of diseases due to vice, but adding: "There must be no provision of women, ... no registration, ... no compulsory examination of women," etc., but urging that it was "imperatively necessary that this disease should not be exempted from the measures adopted to prevent the spread of other contagious diseases." "If there be any compulsion, it is precisely of the same kind as that which has been accepted as necessary and enforced without any objection in the case of diphtheria or typhoid fever."
Now the first quotation given effectually contradicts the second, at the point of the compulsory examination of women; and such instructions were, in fact, a virtual order to repeal the Amendment Act of 1895, very covertly expressed, and so it was recognised immediately by the British Committee for the Abolition of State Regulated Vice, which promptly issued a memorial on the subject addressed to Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India.[9]
On April 21, 1897, there appeared in the London _Times_ part of a letter from Lady Henry Somerset to Lord George Hamilton, in which she "expresses gratification at finding incorporated in a document of such importance a statement of inspiring and controlling principles." She notes with satisfaction the "inclusion of this disease among other contagious diseases," as the "only rational and scientific principle on which its eradication can be attempted." "It is not however, proposed to carry out this principle to its full logical result; and herein lies the point on which she finds herself at issue with Lord George Hamilton." At the end of the letter is affixed the system of legislation best suited to the end, in the opinion of Lady Henry Somerset, and it will be seen at a glance that her propositions would indeed carry out the principle to its full, logical end. A special importance attaches itself to these propositions, because of the strategic position held by Lady Henry Somerset as president of the British Women's Temperance Association of England, and first vice-president of the World's W.C.T.U., and her action put her in absolute opposition to the purity department of both those societies.