Historical interest in the Contagious Diseases Acts has principally focused on their cultural importance as explicit manifestations of mid-Victorian social and sexual ideology. This cultural interpretation, although important, has generally been presented in isolation from the political background surrounding passage of the acts and the administrative machinery and medical technology that facilitated their operation. The separation of the ideological and the practical origins of the acts has distorted the historical picture by making the acts appear to express a more programmatic and coherent social policy than was actually the case.

This chapter will offer a corrective to this oversimplified approach by investigating the interaction between ideology and its implementation under the acts. It will also examine the changing public rationale for the acts, from limited sanitary measures to far-reaching pieces of social legislation.