The Staff-Surgeon evidently thought it an easy task to buy or entrap twelve or fifteen girls in as many days. Then there was a copy of a letter addressed by herself to the Cantonment magistrate, which she had employed some one to write in English for her. This letter stated that she had brought four new girls with her who had several thousand rupees’ worth of jewelry with them (probably a lie by way of excuse), but their brothers had accompanied them (to effect their rescue?) and she asked the magistrate to require the girls to remain in the chakla, and then their brothers could not get near them. Native men not being allowed about the chakla, brothers and husbands who might be bent upon the rescue of female members of their families, who had been enticed away or stolen by the mahaldarnis, could be kept at a safe distance.
At other times we had opportunities to revisit this large chakla. There were about one hundred inmates, and accommodations for many more. The building was scarcely less than a huge fortification. High blank walls—excepting tiny well-barred windows high up, surrounded an open space of ground, or court; and the inner side of the wall was lined with small numbered rooms for the accommodation of the inmates. Most of the girls, here as elsewhere, because of constant association with British men, had learned to speak a little English, while a few spoke quite fluently. Although we always were accompanied by a good interpreter, yet often we were able to converse quite freely ourselves with the girls.
Our interpreter recognised one girl on our first visit, whom we shall call by her nickname, which was “Katy,” and asked her if she was not the girl who had run after her carriage two or three times, begging the interpreter to take her away. Katy said she had done so, and with streaming tears reiterated her desire to escape from a life of which she was so ashamed, and pleaded with us to take her. When we consented to take her that very day, she faltered, and then decided that she did not dare try to go until after the following day, which was the day of the bi-weekly examination, but she said that if we would give her our address she would come herself on the day following. As we drove away in our cab, and the girls waved farewell, poor Katy, with pitiful and despairing countenance, burst into tears. Her face haunted us for days, and as she did not come of her own accord to us, in a few days we went after her again.
We learned afterwards that Katy had made ineffectual attempts to come to us. When we returned to the chakla for her, we found her without difficulty, and told her our errand. With glowing, happy face, she arrayed herself in her best garments, arranged her hair neatly and with childish simplicity, and leaving her few earthly belongings behind, got into the cab with us. But soon her face clouded, she grew apprehensive, and said she would have to go and get permission of the Cantonment magistrate before she could venture to leave. Anticipating not the slightest difficulty in this matter, when we represented the case to the magistrate and became surety for the girl’s future good conduct and maintenance by a responsible Mission, we decided that it was best to let her have her own way. We did not then know India as we learned it afterwards. But the native policemen, seeing the girl with us, and being informed or suspecting our errand, refused, on enquiry, to inform us where the Cantonment magistrate could be found, and misled us in so far as they gave us any information.
We had a long, wearisome search, from which we learned somewhat of the difficulties that a poor Government slave-girl would encounter in trying, unaided, to disentangle herself from a life in the chakla. We took Katy away in the morning; we drove about, back and forth, mile upon mile, being sent hither and thither by misleading directions, and at last, considerably after mid-day, reached the magistrate’s court, and entered. We were received with respect and given seats. In the course of our search, the girl had told us that her real fear of leaving without the magistrate’s consent grew out of the fact that she had made one attempt to run away, and had been caught and fined, and had not yet paid the fine. She felt that if she went away again, without permission, it would only be to be ferreted out and fined yet more heavily. The timid girl, however, did not dare admit the whole truth to us, lest we might not consent to take her at all. Afterwards, we learned it from most reliable sources.
The girl had a very wicked mother and sister. An Englishman, who had known her from childhood, said that Katy had frequently come to him, saying she wished to be good and wanted to learn to read; but no way opened, apparently, for her to get free from the evil influences by which she was surrounded; and at last she was overcome, and became the “kept woman” of a British soldier at an early age. The soldier brought drink to their house, which she, in ignorance of the very strict laws to the contrary, permitted him to do. A native woman in the household of the man who related the facts to us, complained to the magistrate, and Katy was summoned to appear before him for punishment.
Frightened at the prospect, she managed to escape to a neighbouring village, was apprehended, brought back, sentenced to seven months’ imprisonment, and a fine of fifty rupees for contempt of court. When she had served out her sentence (three months before we knew her) the mahaldarni was allowed (Katy said) to take her into custody and become surety for the fine. The English gentleman could not tell us whether the girl’s statement that the mahaldarni was allowed to become her security was correct or not; but he believed it to be, from the fact that it was then that she went to the chakla and for the first time became a common prostitute. Learning these facts afterwards, we did not longer wonder that Katy had feared to try to come away without the magistrate’s consent, and had shown such lack of courage when she faced him.
Almost immediately upon our seating ourselves in the court-room the poor girl burst into tears and ran outside and hid round a corner. It was with great difficulty that we persuaded her to come back and face the magistrate, who apparently was treating her with the utmost kindness. After considerable parleying in Hindustani and English, the magistrate at last acceded to our wishes, and wrote out a permit for us to take the girl away from the Cantonment, although he explained again and again that she or any other woman was of course free to go; they never attempted to detain a woman against her will, etc., etc. But Katy was not willing to proceed on any uncertainty, and she then asked about the fine, and was assured that would be all right.
The magistrate then explained that she had been arrested on “some criminal charge,”—he did not quite know what—had fled the Cantonment, been arrested and brought back and fined fifty rupees for contempt of court. He made no mention of her long imprisonment in addition. After that he began to set forth to her, in Hindustani (the meaning of his threats we did not fully understand), that if she went out of the Cantonment she would never be safe from the insults of soldiers, nor protected from molestation, nor allowed ever again to see her relatives, etc., etc., until her courage wavered, and she said, “Then I don’t want to go.” At this he thundered at her so angrily that once again she ran from the court-room, and it was with the utmost difficulty we persuaded her to go back for the final adjustment of the case. On her return she began to plead to be allowed to see her friends; and the magistrate, then turning to us, advised us in a kindly tone to take her to see her mother and sister before removing her entirely from them.