"It may be mentioned here," says the report of the Commission, from which we cull these cases, "that from this date (July 6th, 1868) the practice has apparently prevailed of apprehending all the women found in unlicensed brothels" (in more correct language, those houses penetrated into by informers and reported to the Registrar as brothels). These accusations were not always true, by any means. Seven women were apprehended at one time during this year, on the charge of a watchman, that they kept and were inmates of an unlicensed brothel, "the chief witness being a child 10 years old … five of the women were married, and two, children of 13 and 14 years old, are described as unmarried." They were all, even the children, convicted, and sent to the Lock Hospital for the indecent examination, in order to determine if they were in proper health to practice vice. Afterwards the Registrar concluded that the case had been got up by the watchman to extort money from the women. But the establishment of their innocence did not put them right again. Think of the horrible ordeal and the dirty court details through which these young girls had been put, on the testimony of a child of ten, and of a watchman determined that they should learn to give him money when he demanded it, or he would drive them into prostitution. One wonders how many hundreds of respectable families were thus bled of their small incomes by the vile informers who were being rewarded by Government for their extortion. Imagine the terror that respectable Chinese women suffered, knowing that any man might denounce them, out of malice, and thereby reduce them to the very worst conceivable form of slavery! Within a few years, nearly all the respectable Chinese women had disappeared from Hong Kong. Chief Inspector Whitehead testified before the Commission: "When an unlicensed brothel [i.e., a native house accused of being such] is broken up, the women have to resort to prostitution in most cases for a living." During 1869, one poor woman signed a bond to deport herself for five years rather than be taken to the Lock Hospital. But the "protected women," with their nursery of children they were raising for brothel slavery, being the mistresses of foreigners, were not persecuted in this manner, so, by a kind of mad infatuation the Government seemed bent on encouraging and developing immoral women and driving decent women either into prostitution, or, by the reign of terror, out of the Colony. In 1869, five women were charged before the Registrar General, and three of them were discharged as innocent. Then the Registrar General decided to make the punishment of the first of the remaining two depend upon the state of health of the second. This second was examined and found diseased, and in consequence of that fact, the first one was fined fifty dollars or two months' imprisonment! The Commission speaks of this as a "somewhat curious" case. We wonder how the punished woman described it. Afterwards, the case was reopened, and "evidence was given calculated to throw the gravest doubts on the credibility of the informers" against these five women. What was then done? Were the informers punished for giving false evidence designed to work incalculable injury to five innocent women? Not at all. A few days later the same informers were employed again as witnesses, and secured the conviction of three more women. In one case, in 1870, it was proved that an informer had entered a house and made an indecent assault upon a woman, doubtless expecting to get his reward as usual. But he was fined ten pounds instead. But how many others may have done the same thing under circumstances where a sufficient number of witnesses to the assault could not be produced. And then, the man would be rewarded and the woman forced at once to take up her residence in a licensed house of shame. The Acting Registrar General played the part of informer during 1870, and punished as judge the woman he accused before himself,—for the law, as we have said, that came into force in 1867 gave the Registrar General both prosecuting and judicial powers. He probably also induced the woman on Government money to commit adultery with him. Then as the judge he would confiscate the money again, and give her a fine of fifty dollars instead. We wonder if he likewise gave himself a "substantial award from the bench," as the Registrar General was accustomed to give other informers when they succeeded in getting evidence sufficient for conviction. It is noticed by the Commission that one woman this same year escaped by the roof at the peril of her life. No one knows how many more may have done the same.
An inspector, Peterson, and a constable, Rylands, each induced women on the street to accept money of them, and these women were punished as prostitutes in hiding and not registered. Two prosecutions during this same year are mentioned as having been instituted from malice. One woman jumped from her window and severely injured herself, trying to escape Inspector Douglass. One woman dared to assault an informer who was after her, and was punished by ten days' imprisonment, with hard labor. Inspector Jamieson brought charges against three women for obstructing him in the discharge of his official duties, and was himself found guilty of illegal conduct.
In the records of 1871 is the case of two men who had a falling out, Alfred Flarey and Police Constable Charles Christy, for some reason not mentioned. Each of these men kept a private mistress. Flarey went to an inspector, and obtained money to be used in tempting the mistress of Christy. He then accused her before the courts, she was condemned, and paid a fine of ten dollars. On the following day, Christy appeared in court against the mistress of Flarey, with two fellow-policemen, to describe their own vileness in order to get revenge on Flarey by depriving him of his mistress and reducing her to the level of a common prostitute. The woman was discharged, indicating that it was a trumped up case. The Commission's report, in describing the details declares: "The law, in these two instances, was put in motion obviously for the vilest of purposes."
In 1872, Inspector Lee, who had become an inspector in 1870, and of whom we shall have more to say, acted himself as informer, and employed his boy twice in the same capacity. Inspector Horton acted as informer eleven times, and Inspector King four times. During this year the Registrar General so far forgot that there was even a sanitary pretext for the Ordinance for the law he was set to operate as to employ as an informer one Vincent Greaves, whom he knew to be diseased. From about this time on, many cases of conviction were secured against women where it was evident the matter had gone no further than that they had accepted the marked money of the informers, or, as was actually proved in some cases, this marked Government money had been secreted by the informers in the rooms occupied by women. Inspector Lee in one instance found the money on a table in a room into which an informer had insinuated himself. The woman denied having ever accepted it of him, yet she was convicted on that evidence alone. With rewards offered to men of the lowest character, who would secure the conviction of women so that the latter could be forced into the life of open prostitution, all the presumptive evidence should have turned such a case as this against the informer. Many similar cases of the conviction of women of being keepers and inmates of secret brothels, were secured on this sort of evidence. One young girl of 14 was entrapped by marked money being found in her toilet table. The court records showed that this was the second time she had been entrapped in this manner. This second time she was convicted and sent to the Lock Hospital where, upon examination, exceptional conditions demonstrated beyond doubt that she was still a virgin. But what of the many young girls with whom exceptional conditions did not exist, when they were brought to the examination table?
During the year 1873, two women were severely injured by jumping out of their windows to escape the informers. One fractured her leg.
The cook of Inspector King testified in the Registrar General's court: "Yesterday I received orders of Mr. King to go to Wanchai, and see if I could catch some unlicensed prostitutes." This man was employed, and his employer orders him off to this wicked business, and he must either obey or take his discharge. A Chinese servant ordered to go commit adultery by the man who employed him as his cook. These things were constantly done by employers of Chinese men. Yet these native servants are all married men, for they marry so young in the Orient. And Government money was furnished them besides to pay for the debauchery, and if they brought in a good case for prosecution they got a reward in money besides. So this cook is ordered off by his master to "catch some unlicensed prostitutes," with the same sang froid as though ordered to go catch some fish for dinner. The cook seemed to know where to get the most ardent assistance for the task his employer had set him, for he says: "I got the assistance of a man who is master of a licensed brothel in Wanchai." To be sure; who would be so interested in capturing women and getting them condemned to go and live in a house licensed by the Government as the man in the town at the head of the licensed house? The cook was given a dollar as bait, with which to catch the woman. Inspector Lee, who followed up the men to make sure of the capture, found the dollar given by King to his cook "lying on the bed" in the room occupied by the women, and they were convicted on no other evidence than this and Lee's "suspicions."
Private Michael Smith of the 80th Regiment was given four dollars by Inspector Morton and instructed to go to a certain Mrs. Wright at her quarters, and try to debauch her; he drank brandy with her [at Government expense?] from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m., but failed in his errand. Why did she not turn him out of the house? Women were frequently fined for daring to resent the aggressions of these informers. In one case a man was struck for trying to obstruct the arrest of a girl of 14, and later was punished. This girl was proved to be a virgin afterwards. Many women and girls, against whom there was no sufficient evidence, were sent to the Lock Hospital for examination in order to determine in that manner their character. In half-a-dozen cases or so, it is recorded that the result determined the virginity of the person. But such a test as this rests upon the accidental presence of an exceptional condition among even virgins, and what became of those who did not answer to the exceptional test, and yet were as pure as the rest? They would everyone of them be consigned to the fate of a brothel slave.
One informer, "with the assistance of public money, and in the interests of justice," according to the Commission's report, sinned with a child of fifteen in order to get her name on the register. Inspector Horton bargained for the deflowering of a virgin of 15, "in the interests of justice," with the owner of the slave child. The child as well as the owner were then taken to the Lock Hospital, where the latter was proved to be a virgin. A Chinese informer consorted with a girl named Tai-Yau "against her will, which led to his being rewarded, and to her being fined one hundred dollars." She was unable to pay the fine, and sold her little boy in part payment for it, in order to escape a life of prostitution.
But need we go into further painful details? There are hundreds more of such cases of cruel wrong on record, and God alone knows how many thousands of cases there are that have never been put on record. We only aim to give a case here and there in illustration of the many forms of cruelty practiced upon innocent women in order to force them into prostitution, and to demonstrate that brothel slavery at Hong Kong cannot truthfully be represented as the outcome of Chinese customs which foreign officials have found difficulty in altering.
But why should Americans be called upon to acquaint themselves with such loathsome details? In order that Americans may have some just conception of their duty toward the large number of these poor, unhappy slaves who have been brought from Hong Kong to their own country.