1 For an excellent overview see Valiulis, Maryann, ‘Power, gender and identity in the Irish Free State’ in Journal of Women’s History, vi-vii (1995), pp 117-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent work includes: Ryan, Louise, ‘Negotiating modernity and tradition: newspaper debates on the “wmodern girl” in the Irish Free State’ in Journal of Gender Studies, vii (1998), pp 181-95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, ‘“Furies” and “die-hards”: women and Irish republicanism in the early twentieth century’ in Gender and History, xi (1999), pp 256-75; Valiulis, Maryann, ‘Neither feminist nor flapper: the ecclesiastical construction of the ideal Irish woman’ in O’Dowd, Mary and Wiehert, Sabine (eds), Chattel, servant or citizen: women’s status in church, state and society: Historical Studies XIX (Belfast, 1995), pp 168-78.Google Scholar

2 For some general discussion see Howell, Philip, ‘Prostitution and racialised sexuality: the regulation of prostitution in Britain and the British Empire before the Contagious Diseases Acts’ in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, xviii (2000), pp 321-39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Bernstein, Laurie, Sonia’s daughters: prostitutes and their regulation in imperial Russia (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), p. 9Google Scholar. For a more subtle understanding of the Russian case, and the relations between state and society, see Engelstein, Laura, The keys to happiness: sex and the search for modernity in fin-de-siècle Russia (Ithaca, N. Y., 1992).Google Scholar

4 Gibson, Mary, Prostitution and the state in Italy, 1860-1915 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1986).Google Scholar

5 Regan, John M. and Cronin, Mike, ‘Introduction: Ireland and the politics of independence, 1922-49: new perspectives and re-considerations’ in Cronin, Mike and Regan, John M. (eds), Ireland: the politics of independence, 1922-49 (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 9.Google Scholar

6 T. F. Higgins is almost certainly Thomas Francis O’Higgins, the elder brother of Kevin O’Higgins, later president of the Army Comrades’ Association and of the Blueshirts, while John Duff was the brother of Frank Duff, co-founder of the Legion of Mary and scourge of the ‘Monto’ (see below, p. 330). McDonnell was later to be appointed Chief Medical Officer by de Valera.

7 Report of venereal disease in the Irish Free State (Dublin, 1926) (N.A.I., S 4183), p. 4; see also University College Dublin Archives (henceforth U.C.D.A.), Ernest Blythe papers, P24/119. Note that the official report is a censored version of the initial draft, which contains as an appendix the earlier army report on venereal disease in the army, written by Major J. Donai Carroll, the chief sanitary officer to the army, in 1924; the latter army report is referred to in the files, and in this article, as Report ‘A’. References in this article are to the official cabinet report (cited as Report) unless otherwise specified.

8 Report, p. 19.

9 Ibid., p. 5.

10 Here the commissioners did depart from the earlier army report’s castigation of the metropolis, which commented: ‘As heretofore, Dublin has been the chief centre for the spread of the disease. Fifty-three per cent of our infected soldiers have been infected there; and it seems to me that, with so many troops in the Dublin District there will always be danger, no matter what steps we take, until Dublin is made a place where a girl or a man can walk alone through the streets after dark without being submitted to insults and solicitations’ (Report ‘A’, p. 19).

11 Report, p. 3.

12 Report ‘A’, p. 18.

13 For the Curragh see: Costello, Con, A most delightful station: the British army and the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland, 1855-1922 (Cork, 1996), pp 139-74Google Scholar; Luddy, Maria, ‘An outcast community: the “wrens” of the Curragh’ in Women’s History Review, i (1992), pp 341-55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, ‘Women and the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1864-1886’ in History Ireland, i (1993), pp 32-4; eadem, ‘“Abandoned women and bad characters”: prostitution in nineteenth-century Ireland’ in Women’s History Review, vi (1997), pp 485-503. For the ‘Monto’ see Finegan, John, The story of Monto: an account of Dublin’s notorious red light district (Cork, 1978)Google Scholar; Kearns, Kevin C., Dublin tenement life: an oral history (Dublin, 1994)Google Scholar; O’Brien, Joseph V., ‘Dear, dirty Dublin’: a city in distress, 1899-1916 (Berkeley, 1982), pp 179-98Google Scholar; Prunty, Jacinta, Dublin slums, 1800-1925: a study in urban geography (Dublin, 1999)Google Scholar. For a very useful discussion of Dublin and the place of prostitution see also Wills, Clair, ‘Joyce, prostitution, and the colonial city’ in Waters, John Paul (ed.), Ireland and Irish cultural studies, special issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly, lxxxxv (1996), pp 79-95.Google Scholar

14 Logan, William, The great social evil: its causes, extent, results, and remedies (London, 1871).Google Scholar

15 McAvoy, Sandra L., ‘The regulation of sexuality in the Irish Free State, 1929-1935’ in Jones, Greta and Malcolm, Elizabeth (eds), Medicine, disease and the state in Ireland, 1650-1940 (Cork, 1999), pp 253-66.Google Scholar

16 Report, p. 33.

17 Correspondent to the Irish Times, quoted in O’Brien, ‘Dear, dirty Dublin’, p. 194.

18 Report ‘A’, p. 10.

19 Report, p. 14.

20 Ibid., p.l7.

21 See Walkowitz, Judith R., Prostitution and Victorian society: women, class and the state (Cambridge, 1980), pp 79–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Report, p. 25.

23 Ibid., p. 10. That this is a matter of expedience rather than principle is summed up in the committee’s statement that ‘the general adoption of a system of Prophylaxis is desirable, but in the present state of public opinion cannot be recommended’ (ibid., p. 9).

24 This is a matter of interpretation, regulationist policies existing in a variety of forms as part of a continuum of measures: see Howell, ‘Prostitution & racialised sexuality’, pp 321-4. For neo-regulationism see in particular Corbin, Alain, Women for hire: prostitution and sexuality in France after 1850 (London, 1990).Google Scholar

25 Report, p. 10.

26 Fitzpatrick, David, The two Irelands, 1912-1939 (Oxford, 1998), p. 117.Google Scholar

27 Brandt, Allan M., No magic bullet: a social history of venereal disease in the United States since 1880 (Oxford, 1987), p. 92Google Scholar. See also, for Britain, : Bland, Lucy, ‘“Guardians of the race”, or “vampires upon the nation’s health”? Female sexuality and its regulation in early twentieth-century Britain’ in Whitelegg, Elizabethet al.(eds), The changing experience of women (Oxford, 1982), pp 373-88Google Scholar; eadem, ‘In the name of protection: the policing of women in the First World War’ in Julia Brophy and Carol Smart (eds), Women-in-law: explorations in law, family and sexuality (London, 1985), pp 23–49; Levine, Philippa, ‘“Walking the streets in a way no decent woman should”: women police in World War I’ in Journal of Modern History, lxvi (1994), pp 34–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For another case of civil militarisation and sexual regulation in time of war see Smart, Judith, ‘Sex, the state and the “scarlet scourge”: gender, citizenship and venereal diseases regulation in Australia during the Great War’ in Women’s History Review, vii (1998), pp 5–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Novick, Ben, Conceiving revolution: Irish nationalist propaganda during the First World War (Dublin, 2001), p. 154.Google Scholar

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30 Dáil Éireann rep., 1921-2, p. 132.

31 Initial draft report (N.A.I., S 4183), p. 44. It can be noted here that Murphy had experience in the British military as acting lieutenant-colonel of the South Staffordshire regiment of territorials (see Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 166).

32 Initial draft report, p. 44.

33 Report, p. 4.

34 Novick, ‘Propaganda’, p. 48.

35 Initial draft report, p. 40.

36 Report, p. 29.

37 Ibid., p. 30.

38 Ibid., p. 29.

39 Ibid., p. 31 (original emphasis).

40 Ibid., p. 33.

41 Ibid., p. 29 (original emphasis).

42 Devane advocated in 1923-4, in a memorandum to the Department of Justice, the pursuance of fathers of illegitimate children, noting that ‘Many unfortunate unmarried mothers are denied the shelter of their own families and it is possible that some of them, who might otherwise reform, drift into the prostitute class in a spirit of despair induced by the hardships they suffer’ (Illegitimate Children (Affiliation Orders) 1929 (N.A.I., LG 205)).

43 Regan, John M., The Irish counter-revolution, 1921-1936 (Dublin, 1999)Google Scholar. Regan has commented on the prevalent ‘martial machismo culture’ (p. 37), although he also points out that this was far more than a straightforward civil versus military struggle.

44 Ibid., p. 86. Vere White, Terence de, Kevin O’Higgins (Dublin, 1986)Google Scholar is the only major biography of O’Higgins, and his version of events is hotly contested by other leading participants such as Mulcahy: for the latter’s comments see U.C.D.A., Mulcahy papers, P7/D3.

45 In 1963 Mulcahy recalled that ‘as early as the end of 1922 O’Higgins was tapping army sources for information ministering to his dissatisfaction with the army’ (U.C.D.A., Mulcahy papers, P7/D3). See also ibid., Blythe papers, P24/323, for the reports circulated by O’Higgins of murders, armed robberies and sexual attacks carried out by the National Army (Regan, Irish counter-revolution, pp 173-4,, 178).

46 See Garvin, Tom, 1922: the birth of Irish democracy (Dublin, 1996)Google Scholar. For a different view see Valiulis, Maryann Gialanella, Almost a rebellion: the Irish army mutiny of 1924 (Cork, 1985)Google Scholar; eadem, Portrait of a revolutionary: General Richard Mulcahy and the founding of the Irish Free State (Dublin, 1992). Also useful here is Prager, Jeffrey, Building democracy in Ireland: political order and cultural integration in a newly independent nation (Cambridge, 1986), pp 95–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Fanning, Ronan, Independent Ireland (Dublin, 1983), p. 47.Google Scholar

48 Further resentment came from the serving and demobilised officer corps associations that formed the embryo of the Blueshirts, of which Thomas O’Higgins was later to become a leading member. With the Blueshirts, the military ethos and military glamour would again be pitted against civil authority, though in a reversal of the political polarities of the 1920s.

49 Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 172. For state-society relations more generally see O’Halpin, Eunan, ‘Army, politics and society in independent Ireland, 1923-1945’ in Fraser, T. G. and Jeffery, Keith (eds), Men, women and war: Historical Studies XVIII (Dublin, 1993), pp 158-74Google Scholar; idem, Defending Ireland: the Irish state and its enemies since 1922 (Oxford, 1999).

50 Note that the anti-treaty I.R.A., at least in Cork, took exactly the same view of the morality and indiscipline of the Free State army: see Hart, Peter, The I.R.A. and its enemies: violence and community in Cork, 1916-1923 (Oxford, 1998), p. 148.Google Scholar

51 Statements and comments submitted to the Army Enquiry Committee (U.C.D. A., Mulcahy papers, P7/C/23). It was noted that Jephson O’Connell had been a Roman Catholic chaplain in the British army, and that he had been subsequently suspended by the bishop of Cork for taking up arms for the Republic (ibid., P7/C/27). For O’Connell’s reward see Executive Council minutes, 18 Dec. 1924 (N.A.I., G2/4).

52 Reports of proceedings at army inquiry interviews (U.C.D.A., Mulcahy papers, P7/C/23). See also ibid., P7/C/15 for a supplementary statement by O’Connell.

53 Statements and comments submitted to the Army Enquiry Committee (ibid., P7/C/12).

54 From a conversation with Lieutenant-General Costello, 23 May 1963 (ibid., F7/D/3).

55 Ibid.

56 Lee, J. J., Ireland 1912-1985: politics and society (Cambridge, 1989), p. 105Google Scholar; Regan, Irish counter-revolution, p. 196.

57 Copy of letter from Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Home Affairs, commenting on statement of Richard Mulcahy, 12 May 1924, but dated 11 Jan. 1923 (U.C.D.A., Mulcahy papers, P7/C/21). For O’Higgins’s characterisation of social disorder see Lee, Ireland 1912-1985, p. 153; Fanning, Independent Ireland, pp 51-2.

58 O’Hegarty, P. S., The victory of Sinn Féin:how it won it, and how it used it (Dublin, 1924), p. 179.Google Scholar

59 Memorandum, 4 Jan. 1927 (U.C.D.A., Blythe papers, P/24/119) (original emphasis). See also Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 227.

60 Dr T. F. O’Higgins was deputy director of the Army Medical Services and was stationed at the old British regulationist centre, the Curragh. See the memoirs of his son: O’Higgins, T. F., A double life (Dublin, 1996), pp 19–20.Google Scholar

61 Regan, Irish counter-revolution, p. 191.

62 McDonnell claimed that the archbishop was highly pleased with the report, favouring the postponement of publication but not suppression of the report: ‘The only comment his grace made upon the substance of the committee’s findings was that he was greatly surprised to learn that the chief disseminators of the infection were non-prostitutes’ (memorandum, 13 May 1926 (U.C.D.A., Blythe papers, P24/119)).

63 Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 228, argues that the suppression of the report must be understood in terms of the government’s caution in implementing the more radical demands for social regulation emanating from the burgeoning Catholic Action movement and increasingly from the clergy. But this view does not recognise that this is a report recommending regulation rather than the repression of prostitution.

64 There are close parallels here with the fate of a later moral audit of the Free State: see Finnane, Mark, ‘The Carrigan Committee of 1930-31 and the “moral condition of the Saorstát”’ in I.H.S., xxxii, no. 128 (Nov. 2001), pp 519-36.Google Scholar

65 See Lee, Ireland 1912-1985; Keogh, Dermot, The Vatican, the bishops and Irish politics, 1919-39 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; and, especially, Murray, Patrick, Oracles of God: the Roman Catholic church and Irish politics, 1922-37 (Dublin, 2000).Google Scholar

66 Fanning, Independent Ireland, pp 59, 159. See also Dunphy, Richard, The making of Fianna Fail power in Ireland, 1923-1948 (Oxford, 1995), p. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kissane, Bill, Explaining Irish democracy (Dublin, 2002), pp 162-3.Google Scholar

67 Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, pp 224-37; Lyons, F. S .L., Ireland since the Famine (London, 1973 ed.), p. 486.Google Scholar

68 Whyte, J. H., Church and state in modern Ireland, 1923-1979 (2nd ed., Dublin, 1980), p. 36.Google Scholar

69 See the Lenten pastorals of 1931 (N.A.I., S 6134) for some characteristic condemnations of sexual laxity.

70 Regan, Irish counter-revolution, p. 140; Murray, Oracles of God, p. 89; Owens, Rosemary Cullen, Smashing times: a history of the Irish women’s suffrage movement, 1899-1922 (Dublin, 1984), pp 130-33.Google Scholar

71 Dunphy, Making of Fianna Fáil power, p. 45.

72 But note too, in addition to the evident rapprochement with the Catholic church, Fianna Fáil’s quasi-military character: ibid., p. 128. On this theme see also Benton, Sarah, ‘Women disarmed: the militarization of politics in Ireland, 1913-23’ in Feminist Review, i (1995), pp 148-72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 See McAvoy, ‘Regulation of sexuality’.

74 See Fitzpatrick, The two Irelands, p. 230; see also Beaumont, Caitríona, ‘Women, citizenship and Catholicism in the Irish Free State, 1922-1948’ in Women’s History Review, vi (1997), pp 563-84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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76 De Valera’s enthusiasm for groups such as Catholic Action (see Lyons, Ireland since the Famine, p. 545; Murray, Oracles of God, p. 247) should not be overstated: see Riordan, Susannah, ‘The unpopular front: Catholic revival and Irish cultural identity, 1932-48’ in Cronin, & Regan, (eds), Ireland: the politics of independence, pp 98–120Google Scholar; see also Broin, Leon Ó, Frank Duff (Dublin, 1982)Google Scholar and the research material on Frank Duff in N.L.I., MSS 31670, 31673, 31676.

77 Keogh, Vatican, bishops & Irish politics, p. 224.

78 I should like to acknowledge with gratitude the comments and advice of Philippa Levine, Maria Luddy, Katy Mullin and John Regan. The faults that remain are my responsibility. Most importantly, I am indebted to Gerry Kearns — this article being ninety per cent his inspiration, ten per cent my perspiration.