CHAPTER 3.
HOW THE PROTECTOR PROTECTED.
Dr. Bridges, the Acting Attorney General at Hong Kong, who had framed the Contagious Diseases Ordinance of 1857, had given an assurance concerning it expressed in the following words: "There will be less difficulty in dealing with prostitution in this Colony than with the same in any other part of the world, as I believe the prostitutes here to be almost, without exception, Chinese who would be thankful to be placed under medical control of any kind; that few if any of the prostitutes are free agents, having been brought up for the purposes of prostitution by the keepers of brothels, and that whether as regards the unfortunate creatures themselves, the persons who obtain a living by these prostitutes, or the Chinese inhabitants in general, there are fewer rights to be interfered with here, less grounds for complaint by the parties controlled, and fewer prejudices on the subject to be shocked among the more respectable part of the community than could be found elsewhere." Mr. D.R. Caldwell, Protector, confirmed these views. But the views of the Chinese themselves had never been elicited, and immediately such prejudice was aroused among them that it was considered wise to subject only those houses resorted to by foreigners and their inmates, to medical surveillance. Says the report of the Commission: "So great has been the detestation of the Chinese of the system of personal examination, that it has been found practically impossible to apply it to purely Chinese houses of ill-fame [that is, places resorted to by Chinese only], to the present day." At once, then, the business of the Ordinance, as far as disease was concerned, became restricted to a fancied "protection" of foreign men given over to the practice of vice. But, as we show elsewhere on the statements of the officials who operated the Ordinance (made confidentially, but not intended for publication), that object was not realized, and in the very nature of things, never will be, by such measures. When the State guarantees the service of "clean women" to men of vicious habits, it actively encourages those vicious habits; and since these diseases are the direct outcome of such vice, the more the vice itself is encouraged the more the diseases resulting therefrom will increase in frequency.
The treachery and perfidy of the profession that this Ordinance was in large measure one intended to "protect" poor slaves, is clearly exposed in this letter of Dr. Bridges. "There will be less difficulty" in operating the measure because the women are not "free agents!" The very success of the measure, their own language betrays, depended upon their servitude. Then were they likely to strike a blow at that slavery? Their measure would, then, of course, lead to an increase and not to a mitigation of the hardships of servitude. They had "fewer rights to be interfered with" in Hong Kong "than could he found elsewhere." Away with a measure of "protection" which finds its chief source of gratulation in the curtailed rights of the "protected!"
The much-vaunted "protection" of the slaves, through medical surveillance, became limited at once to a certain class who associated with foreigners, whose interests were supposed to be "protected" by that surveillance. Nevertheless from that time almost to the present hour whenever it has been proposed to discontinue the compulsory medical examination, officials have raised a cry of pity for the poor slave-girls who would be left without "protection."
Since each registered house was to pay a fee to the Colonial Government, which was turned into the fund to meet general expenses (although the express reading of the Ordinance was against this practice), this gave additional reason for registering all immoral houses, beyond their being listed for the compulsory examinations, hence all houses of prostitution were registered whether for foreigners or for Chinese.
The Commission's report says: "This Ordinance seems to have been worked with energy by all concerned. Dr. Murray, who assumed charge of the Lock Hospital on the 1st of May, 1857,… discharged his duty with undoubted zeal. The Magistrates certainly threw no obstruction in the way of the working of the Ordinance; and the Government having, at a very early stage, determined that its efficacy 'should have a fair trial,' it doubtless received it at all hands."
During the ten years this law was in operation, there were 411 prosecutions, of which 140 were convictions for keeping unregistered houses, or houses outside the prescribed bounds. Fines were inflicted for these offenses and others, adding considerably to the amount collected regularly each month from each registered house. The Superintendent of Police, having refused to allow his force to operate as inspectors of brothels, in 1860 the first inspector was appointed, and he engaged an English policeman named Barnes to render services as an informer. This man brought charges in two cases, as to unlicensed (unregistered) brothels. The second case ended in acquittal, manifestly on the ground that the charges were trumped up. In the same year another inspector, Williams, acted as informer, and secured a conviction against a woman. Later, an inspector by the name of Peam, who succeeded Williams, employed police constables as informers, and lent them money for the purpose. All these performed their tasks in "plain clothes," as was the practice through subsequent years. In 1861, constables (Europeans) acted frequently as informers, and in one instance the Acting Registrar General,—in other words, the "Protector,"—played the role of informer. He took a European constable with him to a native house and caused him to commit adultery there, and on this evidence prosecuted the woman for keeping an unregistered brothel. During this year, an inspector named Johnson presented a woman with a counterfeit dollar, and because she accepted the money she was condemned as a keeper of an unregistered house, and fined twenty-five dollars. This sum she would be less able to pay than the average American woman ten times as much, so low are wages in that country.
In 1862, an inspector of brothels, a policeman, and the Bailiff of the Supreme Court, acted as informers; also in eleven cases European constables in plain clothes, and on two occasions a master of a ship. In 1863 the sworn belief alone of the inspector secured convictions in 10 cases. In 1864, as far as the records show, public money was first used by informers to induce women to commit adultery with them, in order to secure their conviction, fine them, and enroll their abodes as registered brothels. Inspector Jones and Police Sergeant Daly, having spent ten dollars in self-indulgence in native houses, the Government reimbursed them and punished the women.
In 1865, on three separate occasions, the "Protector," (Acting Registrar General Deane), "declared" houses, nine in number. Soon any sort of testimony was gladly welcomed, and Malays, East Indians and Chinese all turned informers, and money was not only given them with which to open the way for debauchery, but awards upon conviction of the women with whom they consorted. "The Chinese used for this work were chiefly Lokongs, [native police constables], Inspector Peterson's servant and a cook at No. 8 Police Station. The depositions show that in at least five cases the police and their informers received rewards. Three times their exertions were remunerated by sums of twenty dollars, although in one of these instances the evidence was apparently volunteered. Arch and Collins [Europeans] once got five dollars each, and Chinese constables received similar amounts." In many of these cases the immorality on the part of the informers who brought the charges seems to have been unblushingly stated. "The zeal of inspectors of brothels and informers had been stimulated by occasional solid rewards from the Bench, and the numerous prosecutions commenced seldom failed to end in conviction and substantial punishment."
Ten years after the Ordinance of 1857 had been in operation, the
Registrar General, C.C. Smith, wrote:
"There is another matter connected with the brothels, licensed and unlicensed, in Hong Kong, which almost daily assumes a graver aspect. I refer to what is no less than the trafficking in human flesh between the brothel-keepers and the vagabonds of the Colony. Women are bought and sold in nearly every brothel in the place. They are induced by specious pretexts to come to Hong Kong, and then, after they are admitted into the brothels, such a system of espionage is kept over them, and so frightened do they get, as to prevent any application to the police. They have no relatives, no friends to assist them, and their life is such that, unless goaded into unusual excitement by a long course of ill-treatment, they sink down under the style of life they are forced to adopt, and submit patiently to their masters. But cases have occurred where they have run away, and placed themselves in the hands of the police; who, however, can do nothing whatever toward punishing the offenders for the lack of evidence, the women being afraid to tell their tale in open court. Women have, it is true, willingly allowed themselves to be sold for some temporary gain; but that brothel-keepers should be allowed to enter into such transactions is of serious moment. I have myself tried to fix such a case on more than one brothel-keeper, but failed to do so, though there was no doubt of the transaction, as I held the bill of sale. The only mode of action I had under the circumstances was to cancel the license of the house. In the interest of humanity, too, it might be enacted that any brothel-keeper should be liable to a fine for having on his or her premises any child under 15 years of age."
This statement as to the increase of slavery under this Ordinance is just what might have been expected, but it is especially valuable as made by the Registrar General who knew most about the matter, and it contains most damaging admissions against himself, for as the Colonial Secretary, W.T. Mercer, states in a foot-note in the State document printing the Registrar General's statement: "Surely the bill of sale here would have been sufficient evidence." It is plainly to be seen from such statements that after a few efforts to take advantage of anti-slavery laws at Hong Kong, after a few appeals to the police for protection and liberty, slave girls would learn by terrible experience to cease all such efforts. Think of the fate of a girl when thrust back into the hands of her cruel master or mistress, by the heartless indifference of the "Protector," after having ventured to go to the length of producing her bill of sale into slavery. We should remember these things, when we hear of American officials going through Chinatown and asking the girls if they wish to come away, and in case they do not at once declare they wish it, reporting that there are no slave girls in Chinatown. These poor creatures have been trained in a hard school, and have no reason to believe that any foreign officials have the least interest in helping to obtain their liberty. And if they cannot secure protection by complaint, far better never admit that there is reason for complaint.
Note the calm admission of the Registrar General that nothing was being done to prevent the rearing of children in these registered brothels, where every detail was subject to Government surveillance. "It might be enacted," says the "Protector," that such a brothel-keeper should be "liable to a fine!" But why, in the face of such frank acknowledgement of the existence of slavery, were not the Queen's proclamation against slavery, and the many other enactments of the same sort, enforced? Listen, and we will tell why. These officials believed vice was necessary, and as there was no class of "fallen women," in our understanding of the term, the Oriental prostitute being a literal slave, then slavery was necessary when it ministered to the vices of men. Hence the Government-registered brothels were filled with women slaves. As to the unregistered brothels, the "protected woman" protected that, and also the nursery of purchased and stolen children being brought up and trained for the slave market, excepting those children which, as we have seen, were being trained in the registered houses. If an officer attempted to enter the house of a "protected woman," he was told: "This is not a brothel. This is the private family residence of Mr. So and So," mentioning the name of some foreigner. Thus the foreigners who kept Chinese mistresses furnished, in effect, that protection to slavery that led the Chinese to go forward so boldly in their business of buying and kidnaping children. Even when women were brought into court for keeping unregistered brothels, and although they were keeping them, yet if they could show that they were "protected women," they had a fair show of being acquitted.
Legislative enactments directed to the object of making the practice of vice healthy for men are called, in popular language, "Contagious Diseases Acts," because that was the first name given them. But of late years all such laws have met with such bitter opposition, that, like an old criminal, the measures seek to hide themselves under all sorts of aliases. Mrs. Josephine Butler describes such legislation in general in the following simple, lucid manner:
"By this law, policemen,—not the local police, but special Government police, in plain clothes,—are employed to look after all the poor women and girls in a town and its neighborhood. These police spies have power to take up any woman they please, on suspicion that she is not a moral woman, and to register her name on a shameful register as a prostitute. She is then forced to submit to the horrible ordeal of a personal examination of a kind which cannot be described here. It is an act on the part of the Government doctor such as would be called an indecent or criminal assault if any other man were to force it upon a woman. And it is the State which forces this indecent assault on the persons of the helpless daughters of the poor.
"If a woman refuses to submit to it, she is punished by imprisonment, with or without hard labor, until she does submit.
"If, after she has endured this torture, she is found to be healthy and well, she is set free, with a certificate that she is fit to practice prostitution; but observe, she is never more a free woman, for her name is on the register of Government prostitutes, and she is strictly under the eye of the police, and is bound to come up periodically,—it may be weekly or fortnightly,—to be again outraged.
"If she is found to have signs of disease, she is sent to a hospital, which is practically a prison, where she is kept as long as the doctors please. She may be kept for weeks or months, without any choice of her own. When cured, she is again set free with her certificate. During the first years of this law, a certificate on paper was given to every woman who had passed through this cruel ordeal; on this paper was the name of the woman, and the date of the last examination. The Abolitionist party, however, represented so strongly the shame of the whole proceeding, that the Government ordered that the piece of paper or ticket should not be given to the women any longer. But this change made no real difference, for it was well known that the women were forced to submit to the outrage of enforced examination…. You know that every criminal,—murderer, or thief, or any other,—has the benefit of the law; he or she is allowed an open trial, at which witnesses are called, and a legal advocate appears for the defense of the accused. But these State slaves are allowed no trial. It is enough that the police suspects and accuses them; then they are treated as criminals…. It will be clear to you that this law is not for simple healing, as Christ would have us to heal, caring for all, whatever their character or whatever their disease. This law is invented to provide beforehand that men may be able to sin without bodily injury (if that were possible, which it is not). If a burglar, who had broken into my house and stolen my goods, were to fall and be hurt, I would be glad to get him into a hospital and have him nursed and cured; but I would not put a ladder up against my window at night and leave the windows open in order that he might steal my goods without danger of breaking his neck.
"You will see clearly, also, the cowardliness and unmanliness of this law, inasmuch as it sacrifices women to men, the weak to the strong; that it deprives the woman of all that she has in life, of liberty, character, law, even of life itself (for it is a process of slow murder to which she is subjected), for the supposed benefit of men who are mean enough to avail themselves of this provision of lust.
"Besides being grossly unjust, as between men and women, this law is a piece of class legislation of an extreme kind. The position and wealth of men of the upper classes place the women belonging to them above any chance of being accused of prostitution. Ladies who ride in carriages through the street at night are in no danger of being molested. But what about working women? what about the daughters, sisters and wives of working men, out, it may be, on an errand of mercy at night? and what, most of all, of that girl whose father, mother, friends are dead or far away, who is struggling hard, in a hard world, to live uprightly and justly by the work of her own hands,—is she in no danger of this law? Lonely and friendless, and poor, is she in no danger of a false accusation from malice or from error? especially since under this law homeless girls are particularly marked out as just subjects for its operation; and if she is accused, what has she to rely on, under God, except that of which this law deprives her, the appeal to be tried 'by God and my country,' by which it is understood that she claims the judicial means of defense to which the law of the land entitles her?
"I will only add that this law has a fatally corrupting influence over the male youth of every country where it is in force. It warps the conscience, and confuses the sense of right and wrong. When the State raises this immoral traffic into the position of a lawful industry, superintended by Government officials, what are the young and ignorant to think? They cannot believe that that which the Government of the country allows, and makes rules for, and superintends, is really wrong."
Such measures as these have acquired a foothold in the United States more than once, but have been driven out again. They are proposed every year almost, at some State Legislature, and often have been proposed at several different legislatures during a single year. They are in operation, to some extent at least, under the United States flag at Hawaii, in the Philippines, and at Porto Rico. The enforcement of the Acts must depend to a large extent upon the co-operation of the male fornicator with the police and officers of the law, and places good women and girls terribly in the power of malicious or designing libertines.
It appears from official records, that in Hong Kong, during six months in 1886-7, out of 139 women denounced by British soldiers and sailors as having communicated contagion, 102 were on examination found free from disease, and only 37 to be diseased; and during a similar period in 1887-8, out of 103 women that were denounced, 101 were on examination found free from disease and only two diseased. We can judge from this of both the worthlessness of the measure for tracing diseased women, and the mischievousness of the measure as an aid to libertines in getting girls they are endeavoring to seduce so injured in reputation that they can easily capture their prey.
As a sanitary measure, the Acts have invariably proved a failure, as shown by honestly handled statistics. There have, to be sure, been many doctors, some of high scientific qualifications, who have produced statistics strongly tending to prove the sanitary benefits of such measures on superficial survey. But these statistics have afterwards been shown to be mistakenly handled or designedly manipulated to make such a showing. This is not a medical book, and any extended treatment of figures as to disease would be entirely out of place in it, so we will content ourselves by saying that during late years physicians of prominence from every part of the world have assembled twice at Brussels for Conferences in regard to this matter. These physicians are in large numbers Continental doctors, the very ones who have had most to do in enforcing such measures. Each time the number of opponents to the Contagious Diseases Acts has rapidly increased, after listening to the testimony from all sides as to their inutility; in fact, the whole force of opinion at each of these Conferences, in 1899 and 1902, was against State Regulation, though there was a division of opinion as to the substitute for it.
In 1903, the Minister of the Interior of France, the country where these Acts originated, nominated an extra-Parliamentary Commission to go thoroughly into these questions. This Commission held its numerous sittings in 1905, and in the end by almost a two-thirds' majority condemned the existing system of regulation in France, and furthermore rejected the alternative proposal of notification with compulsory treatment, by sixteen votes to one. In reporting on the Conferences held in Brussels, the Independence Belge said, in a leading article: "Regulation is visibly decaying, and the fact is the more striking because the country that instituted it (France) is at present the one that meets it with the most ardent hostility."