Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

by Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew; Katharine C. Bushnell

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."

CHAPTER 4.

MORE POWER DEMANDED AND OBTAINED.

In 1866 the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell, determined upon the repeal of Ordinance 12, 1857, in order to inaugurate "a more vigorous policy of coercion," (says the Commission's report): "The key note of the new regime was struck by the Governor's first minute on the subject, dated 20th October, 1866, in which he wrote he was 'anxious early to introduce to the Council an amended Brothel Ordinance, conferring necessarily almost despotic powers on the Registrar General." … Be it said to the honor of Attorney General (now Sir Julian) Pauncefote, that in the face of this he urges the most weighty objections to the policy of "subjecting persons to fine and imprisonment without the safeguards which surround the administration of justice in a public and open court." But these objections were not allowed to prevail.

It appears that some hesitation was felt on the part of the home authorities in giving approval to the new ordinance. It may have been the warning given by Attorney General Pauncefote, it may have been something else. Whatever it was, the Commission informs us: "The Ordinance 10 of 1867 received its final sanction when the conclusion arrived at by the Colonial Government was before the home authorities, showing that in the event of the ordinance becoming law, revenue would be derived from the tainted source of prostitution among the Chinese." (The italics are the authors').

Ordinance 10, 1867 now came into operation, with the following additional powers in the hands of the "Protector" of Chinese, the Registrar General:

1st, Not only were keepers of unregistered houses to be fined or sent to prison, but the women—"held in practical slavery for the purposes of prostitution"—when found in unregistered houses were also subject to fine and imprisonment.