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The Association for Moral and Social Hygiene was created in 1915 following the merger of the British branch of the International Abolitionist Federation and the Ladies' National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts which became the Ladies' National Association for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice. The Association had worked under Josephine Butler and campaigned to abolish the Contagious Diseases Acts 1864-1869 which stipulated that women suspected of sex work in certain garrison towns be compulsorily examined and treated for venereal disease. These women had no right of appeal. The Association campaigned against the sexual double standard that legally regulated sex workers but not their male clients. The Acts were suspended in 1883 and repealed in 1886. The Association continued to campaign for the protection of sex workers from sexual exploitation by opposing solicitation laws, which criminalised women, and preventing trafficking of women and girls into the 20th century. Despite its name, the Association was not a social purity or social hygiene organisation.
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