ck 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