Throughout the nineteenth century, women suspected of practising prostitution in India were registered under a local lock hospital and given a registration ticket. Paying careful attention to these documents discloses unprecedented details of the lock hospital system in Madras. At first glance, the ticket’s purpose seems to be record-keeping and surveillance. Yet, this article will argue, firstly, that registration tickets in lock hospitals functioned not just as tools of surveillance but also as a medium to study Indian women’s bodies. Thus, they evidence the anthropometric undertones of lock hospital registration systems. Secondly, the article will emphasise how the use of the speculum vaginae within these lock hospitals contributed to defining the ideas around ‘deviant bodies’. I argue that by pointing out the physical difference between Indian and European bodies, the colonial government tried to mark Indian women’s bodies as deviant and, hence, justified surveillance over them. However, this physical categorisation to define someone’s character was not introduced by colonialism but was already prevalent within Indian society as a way of categorising caste hierarchies. This physiognomic categorisation intensified in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under colonialism, where the physiognomic categorisation of lower-caste women or men by upper-caste elite men had a ‘scientific’ validation in the form of anthropometry.

整个十九世纪，在印度，涉嫌卖淫的妇女都会在当地一家锁医院进行登记，并获得登记票。仔细研究这些文件，揭示了马德拉斯锁医院系统的前所未有的细节。乍一看，罚单的目的似乎是保存记录和监视。然而，本文首先要指出的是，锁医院的挂号票不仅起到监视工具的作用，而且还是研究印度妇女身体的媒介。因此，它们证明了锁定医院登记系统的人体测量意义。其次，本文将强调在这些闭锁医院中使用阴道窥器如何有助于定义“异常身体”的概念。我认为，通过指出印度和欧洲身体之间的身体差异，殖民政府试图将印度妇女的身体标记为异常，从而证明对她们的监视是合理的。然而，这种定义某人性格的身体分类并不是由殖民主义引入的，而是作为种姓等级分类的一种方式在印度社会中已经普遍存在。这种相貌分类在十九世纪和二十世纪初的殖民主义统治下得到了强化，高种姓精英男性对低种姓女性或男性的相貌分类得到了人体测量学形式的“科学”验证。