Import Traffic in Women Recent police court cases, to which
attention was called at a meeting of the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene on Tuesday, have revealed a new form of traffic in women in this country. The procedure is simple. A foreign woman is imported by the souteneur, endowed, at a low price; with British nationality by formal marriage to a British citizen, and then set up in business as a prostitute in her own fiat. An anomaly in the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which excepts prostitutes and women of " known immoral character," from the clauses prohibiting third party procuration of women under 21, allows the souteneur to engage in thiS traffic without committing a punishable offence, and his task is made easy .because, acquiring • British nationality by marriage, the woman need not prove good character. She cannot, moreover, be deported, being no longer a foreigner. The trade would, however, become more difficult if, as the Association urged in a resolution, the Criminal Law Amendment Act were altered to prohibit the third party procuration of all women under 21, regardless of character. It is curious that, while sensational stories of an export white slave traffic, complete with kidnapping and hypodermic syringes are, for the most part, merely fables, the law, as it stands, allows an import traffic in women to go without punishment.
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