contusions, of which she died…. The jury aforesaid are further of opinion that Inspector Lee, the aforesaid Inspector of Brothels, exceeded his powers by entering the house, No. 42, Peel Street, without a warrant, or any direct authority from the Registrar General or the Superintendent of Police, and would strongly recommend that the whole system of obtaining convictions against keepers of unlicensed brothels be thoroughly revised, as the present practice is, in our opinion, both illegal and immoral.”[A]
[Footnote A: Inspector Lee testified on this occasion that he sometimes had chased women over the roofs of as many as twenty contiguous houses.]
On Nov. 1st, 1877, Governor Hennessy wrote to the Colonial Office, London:
“I have taken the responsibility of putting a stop to a practice which has existed in this Colony since September, 1868, when Sir Richard MacDonnell sanctioned the appropriation of Government money for the pay of informers who might induce Chinese women to prostitute themselves, and thus bring them under the penal clauses of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance. For many years past this branch of the Registrar General’s office has led to grave abuses. It has been a fruitful source of extortion, but what is far worse, a department of the State, as one of the local papers now points out, which is supposed to be constituted for the protection of the Chinese, has been employing a dangerously loose system, whereby the sanctity of native households may be seriously compromised. I had no idea that the Secret Service Fund was used for this loathsome purpose until my attention was drawn to an inquest on the bodies of two Chinese women who were killed by falling from a house in which one of the informers employed by the Registrar General was pursuing his avocations…. I am taking steps to institute a searching inquiry into the whole subject. The European community are ashamed at the revelations that have been made at the inquest, and amongst the Chinese the practice that has been brought to light is, viewed with abhorrence.”
This was the incident which led to the appointment of the Commission of Inquiry into the working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, the report of which Commission we have already had occasion to quote from more than once.
Later, Governor Hennessy wrote to the Colonial Office:
“Whilst the Attorney General is of opinion that, strictly speaking, there is a _prima facie_ case of manslaughter made out against Inspector Lee, and that possibly a conviction might be obtained, he advises against a prosecution. I do not concur with the Attorney General in the reasons he gives for not instituting a prosecution in this case.”
During the year previous, 1876, Ordinance No. 2 had been passed, depriving the Registrar General of the much-abused judicial powers he had exercised since 1867, and transferring them to the police magistrates.
Speaking of the incident of Tai Yau having sold her boy to pay her fine, Governor Hennessy wrote the Colonial Office, under date of December 6th, 1877:
“I am now informed that the Commissioners have obtained from the records of the Registrar General’s department and from Mr. Smith’s evidence the clearest proof that this practice of selling human beings in Hong Kong was well known to the department. One of the records has been shown to me in which a witness swears, ‘I bought the girl Chan Tsoi Lin and placed her in a brothel in Hong Kong’; and on that particular piece of evidence no action was taken by the department.”
Lord Carnarvon was Secretary of State for the Colonies at this time, and his replies to Sir John Pope Hennessy were small encouragement to the course the Governor had taken. He criticises his “somewhat unusual course” in the appointment of a Commission “composed of private persons to inquire into the administration of an important department of the Government.” He says: “I am unable to concur in the suggestion made in your despatch as to the advisability of prosecuting Inspector Lee.” He implies that in his opinion “Inspector Lee was acting strictly within his powers on this unfortunate occasion.” “It is quite possible,” Lord Carnarvon continues, “that there may be abuses connected with the Contagious Diseases Ordinance which ought to be removed; but I would point out that such abuses arise from the imperfections in the system as established by law…. While ready to give consideration to the subject of amending the system, if necessary, I fail at present to observe wherein the officers … have exceeded the duty imposed upon them by law.”
From such responses as these we readily learn that it was not alone in Hong Kong that these outrageous abuses of every principle of justice in dealing with Chinese women failed to arouse more than a lukewarm interest in their behalf, and all the way through Sir John Pope Hennessy, with one or two notable exceptions, so far as the records go, was shown but scant sympathy in his efforts to correct these abuses.
On April 2nd, 1878, Sir Harcourt Johnstone asked in the House of Commons the Secretary of State for the Colonies, “whether his attention has been directed to a recent outrage committed … at Hong Kong, which is now forming the subject of inquiry by a Commission appointed by the Governor. And if he will cause special investigation to be made as to the manner in which the revenue derived from licensing houses of ill-fame is raised and expended for the service of the Colony.”
In answer to this question, the Commission reported that, “the monies raised both by the licenses from houses of ill-fame, and from the fines inflicted under the provisions of these Ordinances, have been expended in the general services of the Colony; and that the actual revenue derived from this source, since and including 1857 down to the end of 1877, amounted to $187,508, to which must be added the Admiralty allowance from 1870 to 1877, amounting to $28,860, and fines estimated at $5,000, making a total of $221,368.00.”
After July 1st, 1878, the fund derived from brothels was used for the operation of the provisions of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance only.
Later, on July 28, 1882, Governor Hennessy received in London a large deputation of gentlemen interested in the abolition of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance of Hong Kong. To these he addressed the following words descriptive of the condition of things at Hong Kong unearthed by the Commission:
“I saw in the Colony abuses existing which have effect far beyond the range of Hong Kong. Let me instance one or two only. We get from Great Britain some European police. They are men selected with care for good conduct, and they are sometimes married men; their passages and their wives’ passages have been paid to Hong Kong, where married police quarters are provided. But what transpired when that Commission was held? The Registrar General had recorded in his book, morning after morning, the evidence of informers _selected from that police force_, whom _he had employed to commit adultery_ with unlicensed Chinese women; and borne of these men were married police, whose wives were brought to Hong Kong; so that in point of fact, he was _not only encouraging adultery but paying for it with the money of the State_. Well, I stopped that, of course…. At the head of the Registrar General’s Department in Hong Kong, we appoint an officer, as we believe, of the highest character. One of the gentlemen so employed puts on a false beard and moustache, he takes marked money in his waistcoat pocket, and proceeds to the back lanes of the Colony, knocks at various doors, and, at length, gains admission to a house. He addresses the woman who opens the door and tells her he wants a Chinese girl. There is an argument as to the price, and he agrees to give four dollars. He is shown up to the room, and gives her the money. What I am now telling you is the gentleman’s own evidence. He records how he flung up the window and put out his head and whistled. The police whom he had in attendance in the street, broke open the door and arrested the girl. She is brought up the next day to be tried for the offence; but, before whom? Before the Acting Registrar General–before the same gentleman who had the beard and moustache the night before. He tries her himself, and on the books of the Registrar General’s office (I have turned to them and read his own evidence recorded in his own handwriting) there is his own conviction of the girl, of the offence, and his sentence, that she be fined fifty dollars and some months’ imprisonment! I mention this for this reason–that the officer who did this was appointed because he was supposed to be a man of exceptionally high moral tone, and good conduct and demeanour. But what would be the effect on any man having to administer such an Ordinance? There was laid before my Legislative Council a case of one of the European Inspectors of brothels, and I was struck by this fact in his evidence. He says: ‘I took the marked money from the Registrar General’s office, and followed a woman, and consorted with her, and gave her the money; and the moment I had done so, I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the badge of office, and pointed to the Crown, and arrested the woman.’ She was henceforth ‘a Queen’s woman’.”
CHAPTER 6.
THE PROTECTOR’S COURT AND SLAVERY.
The justification for the passage of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance at the beginning, as set forth in Mr. Labouchere’s dispatch on the 27th of August, 1856, to Sir John Bowring was, that the “women” “held in practical slavery” “through no choice of their own,” “have an urgent claim on the _active protection_ of Government.” It has been claimed again and again by officials at Hong Kong and Singapore that protection is in large part the object and aim of the Ordinance. For instance: In 1877, Administrator W.H. Marsh, of Hong Kong, learning that there was a likelihood of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance being disallowed by the Home Government, wrote to the Secretary of State for the Colonies:
“It is the unanimous opinion of the Executive Council that the laws now in existence have had, when they have been properly worked, a most beneficial effect in this Colony … in putting the only practical check on a system of brothel slavery, under which children were either sold by their parents, or more frequently were kidnaped and sold to the proprietors of brothels. These unfortunate girls were so fully convinced that they were the goods and chattels of their purchasers, or were so terrified by threats, that they rarely if ever made any complaints even when interrogated. It was very seldom that sufficient evidence could be obtained to punish such nefarious traffickers.”
A document enclosed in this letter to the Colonial Secretary at London, signed by the Acting Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong, the Colonial Surgeon, and the Registrar General, states: “Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of the Ordinances is the means they place in the hands of the Government for coping with _brothel slavery_.” From the moment Mr. Labouchere put this false claim to the front it has been the chief argument advanced by officials eager for the Contagious Diseases Ordinance as a method of providing “clean women,” in order to win to their side the benevolent-minded.
On this point the Commission reported: “In regard to the only result worthy of a moment’s consideration, viz., that referred to by Mr. Labouchere’s dispatch, of putting down the virtual slavery of women in brothels, the conclusions of those in the best position to form trustworthy opinions is not encouraging.” Mr. Smith, who took over charge of the Registrar General’s office in October, 1864, and who had many years of experience in that position, is quoted as saying: “I think it is useless to try and deal with the question of the freedom of Chinese prostitutes by law or by any Government regulation. From all the surroundings the thing is impracticable.” Mr. Lister, another Registrar General, says: “I don’t think the new Ordinance had any real effect, or could have had any effect upon the sale of women. I don’t think any good is done by preventing women emigrating to San Francisco or other places, as their fate is just the same whether they go or not.”
The Commissioners state:
“The well-meant system devised by the Registrar General’s Department which requires every woman personally to appear before an Inspector at the office, and declare her willingness to enter a licensed brothel, and that she does so without coercion, before she can be registered, may probably act as some check upon glaring cases of kidnaping, so far as the licensed brothels are concerned. But it seems clear that for the supply of such establishments, there is no need to resort to kidnaping, in the ordinary acceptance of the term. There can be no doubt that, with the exception of a comparatively few who have been driven by adversity to adopt a life of prostitution, when arrived at a mature age, the bulk of the girls, in entering brothels, are merely fulfilling the career for which they have been brought up, and even if they resent it, a few minutes’ conversation with a foreigner, probably the first many of them have ever been brought into communication with, is but little likely to lead them to stultify the results of education, according to whose teachings they are the property of others and under the necessity of obeying their directions. The idea that they are at liberty not to enter a brothel unless they wish it, must, to girls so brought up, be unintelligible. To what other source indeed could they turn for a livelihood? Who can tell, moreover, what hopes or aspirations have been instilled into the minds of these girls? The life on which she is about to enter has probably not been painted to her in its true colors. Why should they shrink from it? As a matter of fact they never do…. Mr. Smith, however, thinks, with regard to these women, Government supervision does ameliorate their condition somewhat. The women are periodically seen in their houses by the inspectors, and the cleanliness and comfort of the houses is carefully looked after.’ With the internal cleanliness and comfort of brothels, we think the Government has little to do. But the amelioration of the inmates is a matter which certainly stands on a different footing, and is one in which the Government has a deep interest.”
The Report goes on to state that the Commissioners do not endorse the views of Mr. Smith as to the amelioration of the condition of the inmates of brothels, through Governmental registration and supervision, and states:
“Young girls, virgins of 13 or 14 years of age, are brought from Canton or elsewhere and deflowered according to bargain, and, as a regular business, for large sums of money, which go to their owners…. The regular earnings of the girls go to the same quarters, and the unfortunate creatures obviously form subjects of speculation to regular traders in this kind of business, who reside beyond our jurisdiction. In most of the regular houses, the inmates are more or less in debt to the keepers, and though such debts are not legally enforceable, a custom stronger than law forbids the woman to leave the brothel until her debts are liquidated, and it is only in rare cases that she does so.” “As to the brothel-keepers, there is nothing known against them, and they are supported by capitalists. Mr. Lister speaks of them as ‘a horrible race of cruel women, cruel to the last degree, who use an ingenious form of torture, which they call prevention of sleep,’ which he describes in detail…. It seems that although the Brothel Ordinances did not call into being this ‘horrible,’ ‘cruel,’ and ‘haughty’ race of women, they have armed them with obvious powers, which they would not otherwise have possessed, and there is consequently reason to apprehend that Government supervision accentuates in some respects rather than relieves the hardships of the servitude of the inmates.”
The records furnish many instances to prove that the Registrar General’s Department was not operated with the least idea of relieving the slave from her bondage. These are culled from the court records. We will condense some of them.
1. Three sisters were brought by their foster-mother from Macao to Hong Kong, on the promise of a feast; they were taken to the house of an old brothel-keeper, to whom the foster-mother sold the girls, receiving ten dollars apiece for them, to bind the bargain, and she went away, leaving the girls with this old woman, who began immediately to urge them to become prostitutes; they cried and refused, asking to be allowed to go to their foster-mother who had brought them up,–not suspecting that they had been already sold by her into shameful slavery. The old woman locked them up, and beat one of the girls, who had resisted her cruel fate. Their meals were all taken into the room where they were kept close prisoners from that time. Brought into court, the foster-mother was set at liberty, although the history was fully set forth, and the old woman declared: “She pledged the girls in my house, by receiving thirty dollars from me…. I have a witness who saw the money paid.” The brothel-keeper was convicted only of assault for beating the girl, and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labor. No reference was made to her own admissions as to buying these girls, and endeavoring to force them into prostitution. Ten days later, her case was brought up again, and the remaining portion of her sentence was remitted, and she was fined twenty-five dollars. No record is made as to what became of these hapless girls; it is to be assumed that they were sent back to the brothel.
2. Two girls brought before the Registrar General, both of whom pleaded for protection against their owner, stating that she intended to sell them to go to California. One of these had been bought by this woman for eighty dollars; the girl saw the price paid for her; the other said her mother was very poor, and sold her for twenty dollars. Each declared she had been living under the “protection” of a foreigner until recently, and that she had not “acted as a prostitute”; they now feared being “sold into California” by the woman in charge. The Inspector said: “There has been at times a number of women residing in the house, and I do not know what has become of them. I believe that they have been sent to California by the defendant.” One of the girls being recalled, and seeming to have gained courage, witnessed that she had been in the house when several women had been brought there and after some time had been sent away to California. She had been present when bargains were struck for the women, the price being various; bought here, the women cost from fifty to one hundred and fifty dollars, and when sold in California they were to be disposed of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty each.[A] She said the woman had “made a great deal of money. She has told me so.” She also said some were unwilling to go, but were afraid to resist. She said between ten and twenty women had passed through the woman’s hands, to her knowledge. The brothel-keeper’s reply was, that the last witness owed her money, and had taken some ornaments which belonged to her–together with a denial that she had bought anybody or sent anyone to California. What was the outcome of this dreadful arraignment of crimes against Chinese girls? The woman was “ordered to find security (two sureties of $250 each) for her appearance in any court, for any purpose and at any time within twelve months.” No record as to the fate of the two girls who had sought “protection” of the authorities.
[Footnote A: The market price of a Chinese girl at the present time (1907) in California is $3000.]
3. Two young girls were found in a licensed house of shame, whose names were not on the list, the keeper and a woman, Ho-a-ying, who had brought the girls from Canton to Hong Kong, were summoned before the Registrar General. Ho-a-ying represented the girls as sisters, and that she visited them in Canton and found their mother dead, and that she brought them to Hong Kong because of their appeal to her to find them work, and that she put them into defendant’s brothel. She contradicted herself in her testimony as to the name and house of the girls’ mother, and the girls themselves declared that they were not sisters, and had never seen each other until they met on the steamer at Canton the day before. One of the girls declared: “I was sold by Ho-a-ying to the mistress of the brothel. I heard them talking about it, and so I know it. Ho-a-Ying also told me that I had been sold. I do not know for what sum.” The brothel-keeper stated that Ho-a-Ying came and asked if she wanted two girls, as she had two who had come from Canton. “The girls were brought, and after being in the house a short time the Inspector came. I purposed having their names entered on the following morning.” The brothel-keeper was fined five dollars for keeping an incorrect list of inmates. Ho-a-Ying was convicted of giving false testimony, and fined fifty dollars; in default, three months’ imprisonment. No information as to the disposal of the girls, and no punishment for this bargaining in human flesh.
4. Six Chinese persons from licensed brothel No. 71, Wellington Street, were arraigned before the Registrar General, charged with buying and selling girls for evil purposes, and also with selling girls to go to California, and with disturbing the peace. The Inspector described the house thus: “I found all the defendants on the first floor. I found six girls in the house and three children. The floor was very crowded … four of the girls were in a room by themselves at the back of the house. They were all huddled up together, and seemed frightened. The defendants were in the front part of the house. The girls at the back part of the house could not have got out without passing through the room where the defendants were. This house has been known to me for a long time as one where young girls were kept to be shipped off to California.”
A watch-repairer and jeweler who had resided opposite this place for three or four years declared that he knew the first defendant, A-Neung, and that she had lived there some years, on the first floor; that he had seen a number of girls going in and out of the house, seeming to arrive by steamer, some in chairs and some walking, and that he knew from what he had seen of her and the girls that she was a buyer and seller of girls. A carpenter living below in the same house deposed: “I have always seen a number of young girls being taken in and out of the house. The age of the girls ranged from 10 to 20 years. There was always a great deal of crying and groaning amongst the girls up-stairs. I have not heard any beating, but the girls were constantly crying. The crying was annoying to me and the other people in the shop. The people living in the neighborhood have, together with myself, suspected that the girls were bought and sold to go to California.” Another neighbor deposed to knowing the third defendant as “in the habit last year of taking young girls of various ages, from 10 to 20, about the Colony for sale. I knew this defendant wanted to sell the girls, as she asked me if I knew any woman who wanted to buy them. She comes from Canton.” A girl from Wong-Po found in No. 71 brothel, told of being taken to Canton at eleven years of age and sold by her sister as a servant to the Lam family. After being in this family three or four years, her mistress and the second defendant, Tai-Ku, a relation of her mistress and daughter to the first defendant (A-Neung, keeper of the brothel), took her to a “flower-boat,” and the next day by steamer to Hong Kong, and she was taken to the house of A-Neung. Her mistress stayed in the house three days, and sold her to the first and second defendants (mother and daughter) for $120. She added: “This was in the tenth month last year…. I was never allowed to go out. I have never been out of the house since I came to Hong Kong [nearly six months]. First, second and third defendants never went out of the house together [some one always being on guard]. Last year Tai-Ku and A-Neung told me that I should have to go to San Francisco. This year I was again told that I was going to San Francisco. I said I did not want to go. Tai-Ku then beat me.” Another girl only 19 years old, married about four years, declared that in consequence of a quarrel between herself and another wife of her husband, he sold her to Sz-Shan, fifth defendant, for $81, who brought her from Tamshui by steamer to Hong Kong, and took her to A-Neung’s house, where she was being held for sale. She finished her testimony thus: “Several men have been up to the house to see me. They were going to buy me if they liked me.” A letter was produced by the Inspector, which he found in A-Neung’s house, from Canton to the writer’s sister-in-law in Hong Kong, urging that as the owner had lost money on the “present cargoes,” a higher price must be set on them and the sale hastened, as soon as the letter should arrive, and word returned that they had been disposed of; also directing that “after the transaction, one cue-tassel and one shirting trouser” were to be taken back and sent to Canton by the hand of a friend at first opportunity. (This as a pledge of good faith.)
A-Neung, first defendant, declared that she was “a widow, supported by her son-in-law now in California. Mine is a family house. The girls are visitors at my house.” The second defendant, Tai-Ku, daughter of the preceding, declared herself to be a married woman, and that her husband was in California, on a steamer; that the girls were not hers, and that she was “not in the habit of sending girls to California.” The third defendant deposed that she came from Canton to ask A-Neung for some money, and added: “I never buy and sell girls.” Fourth defendant claimed to be utterly ignorant of the girls being sent to California, and said she was supported by Tai-Ku; the fifth defendant declared she knew nothing of the buying and selling of girls; and the sixth defendant claimed she had gone to the house to obtain the payment of a debt; she was discharged.
The sentence was:–First, second, third, fourth and fifth defendants to find two securities, householders, in $500 each, to appear at any time within the next six months, to answer any charge in any court in the Colony.
Whether the girls were sent to California to swell the number of wretched slaves on the Pacific Coast, or remained in slavery in Hong Kong, there is no record to be found; nor, even with abundant evidence concerning this licensed brothel which the Inspector himself declared he was long familiar with as a place “where young girls were kept to be shipped off to California,” and with the evident collusion between A-Neung and Tai-Ku with the son-in-law and husband respectively of the two women, situated most favorably on a steamer for managing this wicked business at the California end of the line, and with all the testimony of the neighbors and the girls, yet no effort was made by the Registrar-General to punish these people for trafficking in human flesh.
5. An old man complained before the Registrar-General, that his granddaughter, A-Ho, had got into debt because of sickness, and in order to pay the money, she was induced by an uncle of Su-a-Kiu to apply to the latter for help. Su-a-Kiu promised to advance her the money, $52, if A-Ho would serve her eight months in a brothel kept by a “friend” of the woman in Singapore. A-Ho’s stress was so great that she entered into these hard terms, the woman paying her $52 at the steamer, as it was going, and A-Ho handed it to her grandfather to pay her debt. A-Ho left on the “26th of the 8th moon” for Singapore. On the evening of “the fourth day of the 10th moon” he received a letter from A-Ho to the effect that she had been sold for $250, to another party. When the grandfather went to Su-a-Kiu and asked her why she had sold his granddaughter, she cajoled him by promising to take him to Singapore to see A-Ho. Later, the man who lived with Su-a-Kiu, came and threatened to accuse him of extortion, acknowledging of himself that he “lived by selling women into brothels of Singapore.” The grandfather reported the case to the Registrar-General. The woman Su-a-Kiu stated: “I took A-Ho to Singapore. I took her to the “Sai-Shing-Tong Brothel” in Macao Street. She is still in that brothel.” The Registrar-General ordered her to find security in the sum of $100 to appear to answer any charge within the next three months. The grandfather was also ordered to find similar security in the sum of $70.
The girl A-Ho, in seeking to pay her debt contracted through sickness, by servitude for eight months, was entrapped and sold as a slave for life, and the Registrar-General, when acquainted with the facts, seems to have taken no steps to punish this slave-trader. Governor Hennessey, in calling the attention of the Home Government to these, out of many similar ones, says: “The accompanying extracts from the printed evidence [taken by the Commission] show that the Registrar-General’s Department was not ignorant of the fact that Chinese women were purchased for Hong Kong brothels, and that the head of the Department thought it useless to try to deal with the question of the freedom of such women…. That the buying and selling was not confined to places outside the Colony is clear from the evidence of other witnesses, and from the notes of cases taken by the Registrar-General himself. It will also be seen that where the persons guilty of such offences were sometimes punished, it was generally for some minor offence, such as not keeping a correct list of inmates, or for an assault.”
Doubtless slavery would spring into prominence in almost any land when once it became known that in places actually licensed by Government, such as were the houses of ill-fame at Hong Kong, where the inspectors made almost daily visits, slaves could be held with impunity, and that when slave girls made a complaint, and their cases were actually brought into court, charging the buying and selling of human beings, the officers of the law would ignore the complaints.
CHAPTER 7.
OTHER DERELICT OFFICIALS.
The Registrar General was not the only official at Hong Kong who did not believe in the extermination of slavery, as we shall proceed to show, although the Governor had strong sympathy from the Chief Justice.
On May 30th, 1879, Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of the Colony of Hong Kong, wrote a letter for the information of the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, to the effect that he had sentenced, on the previous day, two poor women to imprisonment with hard labor, for detaining a boy 13 years old. The women sold the little boy to a druggist for $17.50. The relatives traced their lost boy, came from Canton and claimed him, but the druggist refused to give him up, producing a bill of sale, and the boy was not given up until they appeared in the police court. The Chief Justice adds:
“I am satisfied from the evidence that the great criminal is this druggist, and that it is an opprobrium to the administration of justice to punish these poor women as I have done, and allow the druggist to escape. I therefore ask His Excellency to direct that proceedings be forthwith taken against the man, and that the case be conducted at the magistracy by the Crown Solicitor, so that he may be committed for trial before the Supreme Court.”
He then speaks of a case of a woman whom he sentenced on May 6th, 1879, to two years’ imprisonment with hard labor for stealing a female child. He adds:
“The woman was merely a middle woman, and received a small sum, but it came out in the evidence that Leung A-Luk had bought the child for $53, and was actually confining her in a room where the child was discovered. She was the great criminal. It is an opprobrium to justice to punish this poor woman, and to allow Leung A-Luk to go unpunished. I am aware that, according to precedents here and at home, it is within the province of the presiding judge to direct prosecutions such as these to be instituted, but I think it more convenient to ask His Excellency, as the head of the Executive (whose province it especially is to originate criminal proceedings) to direct prosecution. To let these chief offenders go unprosecuted, and to punish such miserable creatures, exposes the court to the contempt of the community, and tends to destroy all respect for the administration of justice in the Chinese community.”
Accordingly the Governor forwarded this request on the part of the Chief Justice to the Attorney General, saying: “It is clear from the evidence and from documents published by the Contagious Diseases Commission that practices of this kind have prevailed unchecked, or almost unchecked, for many years past in this Colony.” The Governor then referred to a case in point that he had submitted to the former Attorney General, but he “did not seem disposed to enforce the rights of the father, on the ground that he had sold the child.” The Governor concludes: “I did not agree with his view of the law.”
The last case was referred back to the Acting Police Magistrate to know why the woman, Leung A-Luk, was allowed to go unprosecuted. The Police Magistrate replied: “It appeared to me that 4th defendant (Leung A-Luk) being a well-to-do woman, and having no children of her own, had purchased the girl with a view to adopting her.” He adds: “When Acting Superintendent of Police last year, I wished to prosecute a man for detaining a child … but as it was shown that the boy had been sold by his father some months previously, the Attorney General considered the purchaser was _in loco parentis_, [in the place of a parent] and could not be purchased.”
On the two cases to which the attention of the Governor had been brought, the Attorney General reported:
“With the greatest respect for the Chief Justice, I doubt the policy of prosecuting the woman he refers to, having regard to the fact that the magistrate had discharged her for want of testimony, and looking to his further report. The magistrate should always be supported if possible; and if he discharged the woman, and put her at the bar as a witness, and she was used again at the Supreme Court, it might look like a breach of good faith to treat her now as a criminal…. As to the druggist’s case, I think that the only thing that can be said is that it would look to be a breach of faith to proceed against him now.”
When the case was referred to the Crown Solicitor, he said:
“As to the druggist the parties had now left the Colony, and there were no witnesses against him. The purchase by Chinese of young orphans, and indeed of others whose parents are too poor to keep them, is a social custom amongst the natives, and is of constant occurrence in Hong Kong. These ‘pocket-children,’ as they are usually termed, are often treated with great affection, and are far better off than they were previous to their being so bought.”
It was the 30th of May when the Chief Justice called the Governor’s attention to these cases. It was July before the Attorney General and the Crown Solicitor seem to have paid any attention to the cases. It was no wonder, then, that some of the witnesses could not be found. Meanwhile the Governor had left the Colony for a trip to Japan, and W.H. Marsh was acting in his place. On July 16th, he returned answer to the Chief Justice that he had now received a report on the cases from the Attorney General, the committing magistrate and the Crown Solicitor, and
“I regret to inform you that … I do not see my way to directing the prosecutions of the two persons indicated by you; first … because I do not agree with you in looking upon them as the principal criminals; and, secondly, because I think that after the evidence of these persons has been taken both before the committing magistrate and the Supreme Court without any warning having been given them that their evidence might be used against them, it would appear like a breach of faith to treat them now as criminals.” “Should the prosecution of these persons result in their acquittal, which seems to me not improbable, I fear that the good effect produced by the severe reprimand, which I understand that your Honor administered publicly to all the parties concerned in these two cases, might be to a great extent neutralized.” (!)
On September 29th, 1879, the Chief Justice sentenced more criminals for trafficking in children. A Japanese girl, Sui Ahing, eleven years old, was brought to the Colony by a Chinaman who had bought the child in Japan of its parents. Needing money to go on to his native place, this Chinaman borrowed $50 of a native resident at Hong Kong, and left the child as security for the debt. The wife of the man in whose custody the child was left beat the child severely and she ran out of the house. She was found wandering on the street late at night, and the finder took her and sold her to another Chinese party, who threatened to send her to Singapore as a prostitute. It was plain the last purchaser intended either to send her to Singapore or keep her at Hong Kong for vile purposes. This case illustrates well the frequency with which children are sold and re-sold in that country. The parties to the last transaction, the finder of the child and the purchaser of the child from the finder, were both found guilty, one of selling, the other of buying a child for the purposes of prostitution. His Lordship, the Chief Justice, said:
“I will call upon the prisoners at another time. This is a case of far larger proportions than the guilt or innocence of the two prisoners at the bar. I take shame to myself that the appalling extent of kidnaping, buying and selling slaves for what I may call ordinary servile purposes, and the buying and selling young females for worse than ordinary slavery, has not presented itself before to me in the light it ought. It seems to me that it has been recognized and accepted as an ordinary out-turn of Chinese habits, and thus that until special attention has been excited it has escaped public notice. But recently the abomination has forced itself on my notice. In some cases convictions have been had; in two notable instances, although I called for prosecution, the criminals escaped. They were Chinese in respectable positions, and I was given to understand that buying children by respectable Chinamen as servants was according to Chinese customs, and that to attempt to put it down would be to arouse the prejudices of the Chinese. The practice is on the increase. It is in this port, and in this Colony especially, that the so-called Chinese custom prevails. Under the English flag, slavery, it has been said, does not, cannot ever be. Under that flag it does exist in this Colony, and is, I believe, at this moment more openly practiced than at any former period of its history. Cyprus has been under our rule for about a year, and already, both in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords, questions have been asked, and the Members of the present Ministry have assured the country that slavery in every form shall be speedily put down there. Humanity is of no party, and personal liberty is held to be the right of every human being under English law, by, I believe, every man of note in England. My recent pleasant personal experience in England assures me of that. But here in Hong Kong, I believe that domestic slavery exists in fact to a great extent. Whatever the law of China may be, the law of England must prevail here. If Chinamen are willing to submit to the law, they may remain, but on condition of obeying the law, whether it accords with their notions of right or wrong or not; and, if remaining they act contrary to the law, they must take the consequences…. I shall deal with these people when I shall have more fully considered the case.”
During the proceedings of the trial of these two prisoners, the Attorney General had declared his intention not to call the former owners of the child, Wai Alan, the woman who beat the child, or Pao Chee Wan, her husband. The Chief Justice now said:
“I now direct you, Mr. Attorney General, to prosecute these two people, Pao Chee Wan and Wai Alan.” Attorney General:–“My Lord, I intimated before that this matter was under consideration; I do not think I am at liberty to say under whose consideration.” His Lordship:–“I direct the prosecution, and will take the responsibility. It is the course in England and I will pursue it here.” The Attorney General:–“You have publicly directed it; and I will report it to the proper quarter.” His Lordship:–“The Attorney General at home is constantly ordered by the Court to prosecute. On my responsibility alone I do this.” The Attorney General:–“May I ask your Lordship to say on what charge?” His Lordship:–“Under Sections 50 and 51 of No. 4 of 1865, and also for assault.” The Attorney General continued to raise objections, when the Chief Justice said: “I have said as much as I choose to say, and I will not be put to question by the Attorney General. If you have any difficulty, come to the Court in Chambers.”
Governor Hennessy, in reporting the incident to the Secretary of State at London, adds: “I sent a note to the Attorney General, saying I thought that the prosecution suggested by the Chief Justice should take place; but it was found that the accused parties were not in the Colony.” After this manner many cases brought to the attention of the officers of the law by parents or guardians of children of kidnaping and trading in girls and children failed to secure the attention they deserved. It seems to us not at all amazing, when one reads this past history, that by the time Chinese girls have seen and learned all that they must in the Colony of Hong Kong, when brought to this country they are utterly incredulous as to the good faith of police and other officials. They must enter a complaint at the risk of their lives, and if the officer of the law will not prosecute the case in spite of all its difficulties (which are largely imaginary on the part of lukewarm officials), then the girl must be returned to the master she has informed against, to be in his power for him to vent his wrath upon her. A case in point occurred in Oakland only a few months ago, and we had a chance to interview the girl. The Captain of Police went through the brothels of Oakland’s Chinatown, accompanied by some missionary ladies, in order to discover if possible any girls who would acknowledge that they wished to come away. Every girl was questioned, in the absence of the keepers, and not one, or perhaps only one, said she wished to come away. There were some one hundred and fifty Chinese slave girls in Oakland at this time, and one might say they all had a chance to escape, and of their own will chose to remain. But was that the truth? Not at all; the result did not prove at all that one, and only one wished to come away. It proved merely that only one was inspired with sufficient confidence and courage, after her long, hard experience with foreigners, to _say what she wished._ It is the universal testimony of all the girls who have been rescued, so we have been told, by those who have been engaged in this rescue work for many years–that every slave in Chinatown plans and dreams of nothing else but of the day when, having served long enough to buy her freedom, she will be granted it by her master or mistress, and then she can be honorably married. But unless her freedom is purchased for her by some lover, the cases are rare, indeed, that a girl is allowed to earn her own freedom, though they are kept submissive by constant promises that the goal is just ahead of them. A few days after the Oakland papers had triumphantly asserted that it had been demonstrated that there was not a single slave girl in Chinatown–a statement that everyone who had any intelligence on the subject, including the newspapers themselves, knew to be false–a lady in mission work received a cautious hint in a round-about way that one of the girls she had seen when the rounds were made desired to be set at liberty. “How did you learn this?” we eagerly and quite naturally asked the missionary. She replied that on no account could she tell a human being how the intelligence was conveyed to her, as it might cost others very dearly, even to the sacrifice of life, if the knowledge leaked out. “But,” she said, “I will show you the girl and you may talk with her yourselves.” We gathered from the girl that she was a respectable widow, the mother of two children, living with her parents not far from Hong Kong on the mainland. As they were very poor, she went to Hong Kong to work at sewing to help support the family. An acquaintance there told her that she could earn as much as thirty dollars a month at sewing in California, and he could secure her passage for her at economical cost. She returned to her home and consulted her parents, and they thought the chance a good one, so bidding her little ones good bye, she returned to Hong Kong and paid for the ticket, being instructed that a certain woman would meet her at the wharf at San Francisco whom she must claim as her “mother,” since the immigration laws were so strict that she must pass herself off as the daughter of this woman (for this daughter, who was now in China, having lived in the United States was entitled to return to her mother). Reader, have you ever traveled on another’s ticket? If so, or if you have known a professing Christian to have done so, do not be too harsh in your judgment of this heathen, and declare she deserved the terrible fate that overtook her. The “mother” met the sewing-woman, brought her to Oakland, and imprisoned her in a horrible den to earn money for her. With utmost caution our missionary friend rescued her. The Captain of Police and other officers were at hand to help the missionary, and when the girl was taken, she struggled frantically and called for help as though being kidnaped. Had the policemen been there alone they would have let the captors have their slave, believing they had made a mistake. But they had not; the missionary knew that; the girl was only thinking ahead of the possibility of the plot failing and of falling back into the hands of her captors. She must never betray to them, until safely out of their clutches, that she _wished_ to come away. She must make it appear that she was dragged away against her will. And this is free America! Do you wonder that these girls do not tell everybody who asks them that they are unwilling captives? Doubtless they would if our officers of the law showed their good faith by laying hold of these slave dealers. Nothing was done or attempted to punish the horrible creatures who captured this girl. They are going on unmolested with their nefarious business, though many of them could be easily punished. This part of the work–punishing slave-dealers–has never been taken up seriously here on the Pacific Coast. And until these terrible criminals are immured in prison, most certainly these Chinese slave girls will not declare their desire for freedom, for if it were granted them they would not be safe–at least they have no reason to believe they would be, though there are missions where they would be protected. But what reason have they for believing this is the case, after the years of training they have had in the perfidy of all those with whom they come in contact! Many girls have been rescued on this Pacific Coast, by brave missionary workers. But it is to the lasting shame of our country that such wicked creatures are allowed to exist here to import these slaves. Imprison the importers, and the slaves are rescued. That is the short road to freedom. But that was not the path pursued by officials in general at Hong Kong, nor is that course being pursued in the United States. This sewing woman has been returned to her home. Many another woman has at equal peril to herself made her complaint and it has fallen upon the deaf ears of officials, and the poor slave has had to settle with her masters for her fool-hardiness.
Now we will return to Hong Kong, and to past history. We will cite just one more case to show something of the reluctance of officials there to prosecute the traffickers in human flesh. A Chinaman, Tsang San-Fat, petitioned the Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong in regard to the custody of his little daughter, whom, “under stress of poverty,” he had given away to a man named Leung A-Tsit, the October previous, the understanding being that the latter should find her a husband when she grew up, and should not send her away to other ports. In May the parents learned from A-Sin, employed by Leung A-Tsit, that the latter was going to take away the little girl to another place. After taxing the man with this, and receiving only excuses in reply, the father petitioned that Leung A-Tsit should be prevented from carrying out his design. Leung A-Tsit filed a counter-petition, stating that Tsang San-Fat, being unable to support a family, handed over to him his little daughter, aged six years; that the little girl was to become his daughter and to be brought up by him, he paying $23 to the parents. He accused the father of trying to extort money from him, and appealed for “protection” from “impending calamities.” Later, further facts came out, showing that the father of the child had borrowed $5 three years before from Leung A-Tsit, which, with interest at ten cents per month for every dollar, now amounted to $23. The September before, his creditor came and demanded payment, and when the father told him he had no money, and found it very difficult to provide for his family, Leung A-Tsit said: “Very well, you can give me your daughter instead, and when she is grown up I will find her a husband.” It was finally agreed that he should have the little girl for $25, viz., the $23 already owing, and $2 to the mother as “tea-money.” The $2 were paid and he took the child away. The mother said: “I was very sorry about it and cried.” (But mothers have little to say as to the disposal of the children they bear in the Orient). The Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, took a deep interest in this case, when he heard of it, regarding it as “an illegal transaction,” and urged upon the Attorney General, Mr. G. Phillipo, to prosecute, on his behalf, the purchaser of the girl, and that both the father of the child and Leung A-Tsit be notified that the father was entitled to the child by British law, and referring the father to the police magistrate. The police magistrate requested of the Colonial Secretary that the Attorney General’s opinion be obtained, as to what course the magistrate should pursue. The final outcome of the case is told by Governor Hennessy in a despatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
“I made a minute on the petitions, directing them to be sent to the Attorney General, as ‘the parties appear to acknowledge being concerned in an illegal transaction.’ In a few days the papers were returned to me with the following opinion of the Attorney General: ‘The transaction referred to would not be recognized in our laws as giving any rights, except perhaps as to guardianship, but I am unable to say there is anything illegal in the matter beyond that. I do not think it a criminal offence if it goes no further than the adoption of a child and the payment of money to its parents for the privilege.'”
Later, when His Excellency was calling the attention of Acting Attorney General Russell to a somewhat similar case, he states, in reference to this above-described case:
“Mr. Phillipo, before whom the papers were laid, did not seem disposed to enforce the rights of the father, on the ground that he had sold the child. I did not agree with Mr. Phillipo’s view of the law.”
CHAPTER 8.
JUSTICE FROM THE SUPREME BENCH.
On October 6th, 1879, Sir John Smale, the Hon. Chief Justice for Hong Kong, passed judgment in three cases on prisoners convicted of various degrees of crime connected with the enticing, detaining, buying and selling of children. Governor Hennessy, in reporting the remarks made by the Chief Justice on that occasion to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, pronounced it “an able and elaborate judgment on the existence of slavery at Hong Kong.”
Said Sir John Smale:
“Various causes have occasioned delay in passing sentence, of which I will only refer to one: The gravity of the fact that these and other cases have recently brought so prominently to the notice of the Court that two specific classes of slavery exist in this Colony to a very great extent, viz., so-called domestic slavery, and slavery for the purposes of prostitution. The three cases now awaiting the sentence of the Court are specially provided for by Ordinances of 1865 and 1872, prohibiting kidnaping and illegally detaining men, women, and children; and no difficulty ever arose in my mind as to the crimes of which these prisoners are severally convicted, or as to the sentences due to such crimes; and there is no question as to crimes or punishment of cases where women are smuggled into brothels, some licensed and others unlicensed, or otherwise dedicated to immoral purposes. But the enormous extent to which slavery in this Colony has grown up has called into existence a greatly increasing traffic, especially in women and children. The number of Chinamen in this Colony has increased and is increasing rapidly, whilst their great increase in wealth has fostered licentious habits, notably in buying women for purposes sanctioned neither by the laws nor customs on the mainland. I hold in my hand a placard in Chinese, torn down from the wall of the Central School, Cough Street steps, in this city. The translation appears at length in the Hong Kong _Daily Press of_ August 15th, 1879. The purport of that translation is shortly that the advertiser, one Cheong, has lost a purchased slave girl named Tai Ho, aged 13 years. After a full description of the girl a reward is offered in these terms:–‘If there is in either of the four quarters any worthy man who knows where she is gone to, and will send a letter, he will be rewarded with four full weight dollars, and the person detaining the slave will be rewarded with fifteen full weight dollars.’ These words are subsequently added:–‘This is firm, and the words will not be eaten.’ I recently spoke in reprobation of slavery from this Bench, and in consequence of my remarks a gentleman who tore down this placard gave it to the editor of the _Daily Press_, and in a letter in that paper he stated that such placards are common, and that he had torn down a hundred such placards. Has Cuba or has Peru ever exhibited more palpable, more public evidence of the existence of generally recognized slavery in these hotbeds of slavery, than such placards as the one I now hold in my hand, to prove that slavery exists in this Colony? The notices have been posted in a most populous neighborhood, and have been in all probability read–they ought to have been, they must have been read–by scores of our Chinese policemen.
“Important as this Colony is, politically and commercially, it is but a dot in the ocean; its area is about half that of the county of Rutland; the circumference of this island is calculated at about 27 miles, whilst that of the Isle of Wight is about 56 miles. The cultivated land on this island may be to the barren waste about one-half per cent, and there is no agrarian slavery here in nearly the total absence of farms, and on this dot in the ocean it is estimated that the slave population has reached ten thousand souls! I first became fully alive to the existence of so-called domestic slavery in this Colony at the Criminal Sessions in May last, on the trial of two cases…. But it is said that what is called domestic slavery, as it exists in Hong Kong, is mild, and it is said to be the opinion of a gentleman of great experience in Chinese, that, as it exists here, it is not contrary to the Christian religion, and that it is as general a fashion for Chinese ladies in Hong Kong to purchase one or more girls to attend on them as it is for English ladies to hire ladies’ maids, and that the custom is so general that it would be highly impolitic, if not impossible, to put down the system. It may be that slavery as it exists in the houses of the better classes in Hong Kong is mild, and that custom among the better classes renders servitude to them a boon as long as it lasts. It is, I believe, an admitted duty that when the young girl grows up and becomes marriageable she is married; but then it is the custom that the husband buys her, and her master receives the price always paid for a wife, whilst he has received the girl’s services for simple maintenance; so that, according to the marriageable excess in the price of the bride over the price he paid for the girl, he is a gainer, and the purchase of the child produces a good return. But the picture has another aspect. What, if the master is brutal, or the mistress jealous, becomes of the poor girl? Certain recent cases show that she is sold to become a prostitute here or at Singapore or in California, a fate often worse than death to the girl, at a highly remunerative price to the brute, the master. It seems to me that all slavery, domestic, agrarian, or for immoral purposes, comes within one and the same category.”
Every word uttered on this occasion by Sir John Smale, Chief Justice, has value, but it is impossible for us to quote it all. Referring to the purchase of kidnaped children from the kidnapers by well-to-do Chinese residents of Hong Kong, without effort on the part of these purchasers to ascertain from whence the children came, he says:
“In each of these cases I requested the prosecution of these well-to-do persons, purchasers of these human chattels, who had bought these children, whose money had occasioned the kidnaping, just as a receiver of stolen goods buys stolen property without due or any inquiry to verify the patent lies of the vendors. I have reason to believe that H.E. the Governor was desirous that my request should, if proper, be complied with; but on reference to former cases it appeared that a former Attorney-General had found that the system had been almost if not altogether unchecked for many years past, and that in particular, when His Excellency had desired to enforce the rights of a father to recover his child, he was not disposed to enforce that right because the father had sold that child.”
He relates the details of yet another case concerning which he says: “I took the responsibility to direct the Acting Attorney General to prosecute this man and his wife.” But the Attorney General, it seems, did not.
“Is it possible that such a being as man can, according to law … become a slave even by his own consent?” asks the Chief Justice. “I say it is impossible in law, as Sir R. Phillimore, 1 Phill., International Law, vol. 1, p. 316, has said in a passage I read with the most respectful concurrence, but too long for full quotation.” “It is unnecessary for me to trace how it became the Common Law of England that whosoever breathes the air of England cannot be a slave.” After reference to notable decisions on the part of England’s highest authorities as to the unlawfulness of slavery; to the claim that slavery was secured to the Chinese residents by the promise not to interfere with their customs, and reminding his hearers that the promise was made only “pending Her Majesty’s pleasure”; after quoting the Queen’s proclamation against slavery at Hong Kong, and the assurance in that proclamation that “these Acts will be enforced by all Her Majesty’s officers, civil and military, within this Colony,” he asks:
“Have all Her Majesty’s officers, civil and military, enforced these Acts within this Colony? I think they have not; I confess I have not. Our excuse has been in the difficulty of enforcing these Acts, but mainly in our ignorance of the extent of the evil. What is our duty, now that we know that slavery in its worst as in its best form exists in this dot in the ocean to the extent of say 10,000 slaves,–a number probably unexceeded within the same space at any time under the British Crown, and, so far as I believe, the only spot where British law prevails in which slavery in any form exists at the present time?”
Then he deals with the pretext that this slavery is Chinese custom, in words we have already quoted in the first chapter of this book. He passes on to consider and affirm the propriety of the Chief Justice directing the Attorney General to prosecute these cases, and answers some of the objections raised by the latter officer, concluding this portion of his remarks with the words: “What I have said has been said to meet arguments, doubts, and difficulties which have paralyzed public opinion and public action here; which arguments, doubts and difficulties are the less easy to combat because they have been rather hinted at than avowed.”
The Chief Justice then sentenced several prisoners for enticing, kidnaping or detaining children with intent to sell them into slavery, to penal servitude for terms ranging from 18 months to 2 years.
On October 20th, Sir John Smale wrote the Governor:
“I cannot understand why such classes should as classes increase in this Colony at all, unless it be that (in addition to the Chinese demand for domestic servants and brothels) there be an increased foreign element increasing the demand. I fear that a high premium is obtained by persons who kidnap girls in the high prices which they realize on sale to foreigners as kept women.[A] No one can walk through some of the bye-streets in this Colony without seeing well dressed China girls in great numbers whose occupations are self-proclaimed; or pass those streets, or go into the schools in this Colony, without counting beautiful children by the hundred whose Eurasian origin is self-declared. If the Government would inquire into the present condition of these classes, and still more, into what has become of these women and their children of the past, I believe that it will be found that in the great majority of cases the women have sunk into misery, and that of the children the girls that have survived have been sold to the profession of their mothers, and that, if boys, they have been lost sight of or have sunk into the condition of the mean whites of the late slave-holding states of America. The more I penetrate below the polished surface of our civilization the more convinced am I that the broad undercurrent of life here is more like that in the Southern States of America, when slavery was dominant, than it resembles the all-pervading civilization of England.” “My suggestion that the mild intervention of the law should be invoked was ignored. It was also met by the assertion that custom had so sanctioned the evils in this Colony as that they are above the reach of the law, and that by custom the slavery was mild.”
[Footnote A: Rather, it would seem in later years, by renting them for a monthly stipend.]
The Governor, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary at London about this time, informs the Colonial Secretary of his own failure also to induce the Attorney General to prosecute cases to which His Excellency had called his attention, and furthermore he explains that other of his principal executive officers held to the same views as the Attorney General.
CHAPTER 9.
THE CHINESE PETITION AND PROTEST.
We get additional and valuable light on social conditions at Hong Kong, through statements drawn up by prominent Chinese men and laid before the Governor. As a representation from the Chinese standpoint it has peculiar value at all points excepting where self-interest might afford a motive for coloring the truth.
The occasion of these statements was as follows: On November 9, 1878, a month before the report of the Commission was published, certain Chinese merchants had petitioned the Governor to be allowed to form themselves into a society for suppressing kidnaping and trafficking in human beings. This petition states that the worst kidnapers are “go-betweens and old women who have houses for the detention of kidnaped people.” They declare that these
“inveigle virtuous women or girls to come to Hong Kong, at first deceiving them by the promise of finding them employment (as domestic servants), and then proceeding to compel them by force to become prostitutes, or exporting them to a foreign port, or distribute them by sale over the different ports of China, boys being sold to become adopted children, girls being sold to be trained for prostitution.” “Your petitioners are of opinion that such wicked people are to be found belonging to any of the [neighboring] districts, but in our district of Tung Kun such cases of kidnaping are comparatively frequent, and all the merchants of Hong Kong, without exception, are expressing their annoyance.”
Accompanying the petition was a statement of the situation:
“Hong Kong is the emporium and thoroughfare of all the neighboring ports. Therefore these kidnapers frequent Hong Kong much, it being a place where it is easy to buy and to sell, and where effective means are at hand to make good a speedy escape. Now, the laws of Hong Kong being based on the principle of the liberty of the person, the kidnapers take advantage of this to further their own plans. Thus they use with their victims honeyed speeches, and give them trifling profits, or they use threats and stern words, all in order to induce them to say they are willing to do so and so. Even if they are confronted with witnesses it is difficult to show up their wicked game…. Kidnaping is a crime to be found everwhere, but there is no place where it is more rife than at Hong Kong…. Now it is proposed to publish everywhere offers of reward to track such kidnapers and have them arrested…. The crimes of kidnaping are increasing from day to day.”
This proposal on the part of Chinese merchants to form such a society was cordially accepted by officials, and the Governor requested that two police magistrates, whom he named, the Captain Superintendent of Police and Dr. Eitel, should draw up a scheme to check kidnaping, in concert with the Chinese petitioners. This committee met, and decided that the objects of the “Chinese Society for the Protection of Women and Children” should he as follows:
1. The detection and suppression of kidnapers and kidnaping. 2. The restoration to their homes of women and children decoyed or kidnaped for prostitution, emigration, or slavery. 3. The maintenance of women and children pending investigation and restoration to their homes. 4. Undertaking to marry or set out in life women and children who could not safely be returned home.
At a subsequent meeting of these gentlemen, Mr. Francis, Acting Police Magistrate, asked the Chinese merchants present, “If there was of late any special _modus operandi_ observed in the proceedings of kidnapers differing from what had been observed and known formerly?” To this the Chinese gentlemen present replied that “there was indeed a marked difference observable in the proceedings of kidnapers of late, because they had become acquainted with the loopholes British law leaves open, also with the principle of personal freedom jealously guarded by British law, and that through this knowledge their proceedings had not only become less tangible for the police to deal with, but the kidnapers had been emboldened to give themselves a definite organization, following a regular system adapted to the peculiarities of British and Chinese law, and using regular resorts and depots in the suburbs of Hong Kong.” In support of this, Mr. Fung Ming-shan laid on the table two documents written in Chinese. One of these contained a list of 38 different houses in the neighborhood of Sai-ying-pim and Tai-ping-shan used by professional kidnapers, whose names are given, but whose residence could not be ascertained. The other document consists of a list of 41 professional kidnapers whose personalia have been satisfactorily ascertained.
The foreign Magistrates present then pointed out to the Chinese members of the meeting that one great difficulty the Government frequently met in dealing with such cases was the question, what to do with women or children found to have been unlawfully sold or kidnaped; how to restore them to their lawful guardians in the interior of China; how to provide for them in case such women or children had actually been sold by their very guardians, who, if the woman or child in question were restored to them, would but seek another purchaser; how to deal with persons absolutely friendless, etc. The Chinese members of the meeting replied that they were prepared to undertake this duty. They would employ trustworthy detectives to ascertain the family relations of any kidnaped person, who would see to such persons being restored to their families upon guarantee being given for proper treatment; and in cases where restoration was impossible or not advisable, they would take charge of such kidnaped persons, maintain them, and eventually see them respectably married. It was then decided that the Magistrates present should draw up a succinct statement of the provisions of the British law forbidding the sale of persons and guaranteeing the liberty of the subject, which should be translated into Chinese, and circulated freely in the neighboring districts.
Although the action on the part of the Chinese merchants in forming themselves into an organization to put down kidnaping was received with much appreciation by the Governor and Secretary of State at London, as well as by many of the officials at Hon’ Kong, there were those who from the first doubted whether the motives of the Chinese in thus uniting were wholly disinterested on the part of the majority. Such were confirmed in their doubts by the action of these same Chinese as soon as Sir John Smale set to work in earnest to exterminate slavery, and declared in his court a year later than the formation of this Chinese Society:
“I was given to understand that buying children by respectable Chinamen as servants was according to Chinese customs, and that to attempt to put it down would be to arouse the prejudices of the Chinese…. Humanity is of no party, and personal liberty is to be held the right of every human being under British law…. Whatever the law of China may be, the law of England must prevail here. If Chinamen are willing to submit to the law, they may remain, but on condition of obeying the law, whether it accords with their notions of right or wrong or not; and if remaining they act contrary to the law, they must take the consequences.”
Sir John Smale’s utterance created intense feeling among these Chinese merchants, who at once called upon the Governor to represent their views and to protest. The Governor informed them that “slavery in any form could not be allowed in the Colony.” They protested that their system of adoption and of obtaining girls for domestic purposes was not slavery; “and they referred to the more immoral practice of buying girls for the Hong Kong brothels, which, they alleged, Government departments had connived at, though it was a practice most hateful to the respectable Chinese.” The Governor then asked them for their views in writing, and they sent them to him in the form of a memorial, containing the following words:
“Your petitioners are informed that his Lordship, the Chief Justice, after the trial of a case of purchasing free persons for prostitution, said, in the course of his judgment, that buying and selling of girls for domestic servitude was an indictable offense;–which put all native residents of Hong Kong in a state of extreme terror; all great merchants and wealthy residents in the first instance being afraid lest they might incur the risk of being found guilty of a statutory offence, whilst the poor and low class people, in the second instance, feared being deprived of a means to preserve their lives (by selling children to be domestic servants).”
These petitioners claimed:
That the buying of boys for “adoption” and of girls for domestic servitude, “widely differs from the above-mentioned wicked practices” of kidnaping and buying and selling of girls into brothels.
That the domestic slaves “are allowed to take their ease and have no hard work to perform,” and when they grow up, “they have to be given in marriage.”
That all former Governors had let them alone in the exercise of their “social customs.”
That Governor Elliott had promised them freedom in the exercise of their native customs.
That infanticide “would be extremely increased if it were entirely forbidden to dispose of children by buying and selling;” parents deprived of the means of keeping off starvation by selling their children would “drift into thiefdom and brigandage.”
Following the petition was an elaborate statement on the subject, full of subtle arguments, misstatements and perversions, together, of course, with some well-put statements, forming ten propositions in favor of domestic slavery. Their first claim is not exactly true, as even Dr. Eitel, who defended domestic servitude, was bound to declare, namely, That Chinese law does not forbid adoption and domestic servitude. We have already quoted Sir John Smale’s statement of the Chinese law, which restricted the adoption of boys to the taking of one with the same surname as the family. And as to the buying of girls for domestic servitude, though largely _practiced_ in China, yet these Chinese merchants could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that it was an _illegality_ before the Chinese law. “The reason of this,” says the Chinese protest, “is the excessive increase of population, and the wide extent of poverty and distress.” But there was neither over-population nor distress at Hong Kong which should necessitate the introduction of the practice into that Colony. “If all those practices were forbidden, poor and distressed people would have no means left to save their lives, but would be compelled to sit down and wait for death.” In other words, these men would claim that their motives were wholly, or largely benevolent in purchasing the children of the poor! And what better could the poor do for a living than to beget children and sell them into slavery to the rich!
“Whilst all those practices, therefore, may be classed together as buying and selling (of free persons), it is yet requisite to distinguish carefully the good or wicked purposes which each class of practice serve, and accordingly apply discriminately either punishment or non-punishment.” But anti-slavery legislation has never done this, and never will. The question is not to any large extent the comfort or misery of the chattel, but the forbidding that one human being should be allowed to deal with another _as a chattel_ at all.
This attitude of the Chinese merchants who allied themselves with the British officials for the Protection of Women and Children gave no omen of good from the very first. Yet from that day to the present these men have had a large share in the government of the native women of Hong Kong and Singapore, rendering it very difficult ever to elevate the standard of womanhood, or to educate Chinese women in principles that should be the common inheritance of all who live in a so called free country.
The statement continues:
“Since the last few years many Chinese have brought their property, wives and families to the place, supposing they would be able to live here in peace, and to rejoice in their property. …Chinese residents of Hong Kong have, therefore, been in the habit of following all native customs which were not a contravention of Chinese statute law [but it seems _this sort_ of buying and selling of human beings is contrary to Chinese law. This is a misrepresentation]. It is said that the whole increase and prosperity of the Colony from its first foundation to the present day is all based on the strength of that invitation which Sir Charles Elliott gave to intending settlers, and that this present intention of applying, all of a sudden, the repressive force of the law to both the practice of buying or selling boys or girls for purposes of adoption or for domestic servitude is not only a violation of the rule of Sir Charles Elliott, but moreover will, it is to be feared, not fail to trouble the people.”
They speak of infanticide as an evil that
“must be classed with evils almost unavoidable. Now if the buying of adoptive children and of servant girls is to be uniformly abolished, it is to be feared that henceforth the practice of infanticide will extremely increase beyond what it ever was. The heinousness of the violation of the great Creator’s benevolence, which constitutes infanticide, is beyond comparison with the indulgence granted to the system of buying and selling children to prolong their existence.”
As though these benevolent persons only bought slaves for this one laudable purpose, to preserve their lives! “As regards the buyers, they look upon themselves as affording relief to distressed people, and consider the matter as an act akin to charity,” etc.
A flood of light is let in upon the matter of the reluctance of British officials to move in the putting down of domestic slavery and the buying and selling of boys among the natives, in the following well-deserved thrust at the weak point in the armor of the British officials:
“The office of the Registrar-General was charged with the superintendence of prostitutes and the licensing of brothels and similar affairs. But _from 80 to 90 per cent of all these prostitutes in Hong Kong were brought into these brothels by purchase, as is well known to everybody_. If buying and selling is a matter of a criminal character, the proper thing would be, first of all, to abolish this evil (brothel slavery). But how comes it that since the first establishment of the Colony down to the present day the same old practice prevails in these licensed brothels, and has never been forbidden or abolished?”
This was a center shot, and calculated to weaken the hands of at least the guilty officials. What could they say? Were the officials prepared, since the report of the Commission a few months before had made public the scandals connected with the licensing and inspection of brothels, to set about reforming the abuses by radical measures? Certainly the Chief Justice was. He did everything in his power to abolish slavery _as slavery_, not simply to abolish slavery when unconnected with brothels. But subsequent history seems to indicate that, from this point on, the British officials were ready to compromise with the Chinese merchants, and the testimony from this time forward was well-nigh universal in Hong Kong circles that domestic slavery, or “domestic servitude,” as Dr. Eitel recommended that it should be called instead (since a weed by another name may help the imagination to think it a rose), was very “mild” and “harmless,” and that the adoption of purchased boys was a “religious” duty, or at least, had a religious flavor about it, as practiced by the Chinese. But as we have already said, that adoption in order to be lawful in China must be the adoption of one of the same surname.
On October 27th, 1879, the Chief Justice, at an adjourned sitting of the Court for the purpose, sentenced two more offenders, one for kidnaping a boy, and the other for detaining a girl with intent to sell her. In the first case the Judge said:
“Received as you had been into the father’s house in charity, you availed yourself of the opportunity to steal his child, and tried to sell the child openly, probably having hawked him from door to door. The sentence of the Court on you, Tang Atim, is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for two years, and that you be kept in solitary confinement for a period of one week in every two months of your imprisonment.”
Chan Achit, an old woman, convicted of having unlawfully detained a female child of 11 years of age, with intent to sell her, was next placed in the dock. His Lordship said:
“The evidence in this case has shown the extraordinary extent to which, under cloak of China custom, the iniquity of dealing in children has extended. From the evidence, I have no doubt that a vagabond clansman to whom the father had occasionally given out of his penury had originated the crime in enticing the child away, and it seems to me to be clear that the prisoner was as well known as a ‘broker of mankind’ as a receiver of stolen children, to sell them on commission, as receivers of old iron and marine stores could be found in this Colony to dispose of stolen property. The little girl bought and sold, aged 11 years, is a very intelligent child, and described the negotiations for her sale with great clearness.”
The Chief Justice then went on to repeat the little girl’s testimony as to these “brokers of mankind,” and the child’s knowledge, from personal observation of these purchases and sales, to which he adds:
“Let me here ask, Is the trade, or rather profession, ‘broker of mankind,’ also a sacred China custom? I will not ask the queries which would naturally arise in case the question were answered in the affirmative. At present, however, I must say that, custom or no custom, the practice of this profession is prohibited by statute, and it is my duty to meet its exercise by punishment.”
The prisoner was sentenced to two years’ penal servitude. The Chief Justice concluded his remarks on that occasion by replying to the statements made in the Chinese petition.
He called attention to the Chinese resting their claim on the temporary promise of Governor Elliott in 1841; of the fact that they ignored the proclamation of the Queen in 1845. He said that infanticide was also a Chinese custom in the same sense that slavery was, on the words of the petition:
“Amongst the Chinese there has hitherto been the custom of drowning their daughters. The Chinese threaten the increase of this ‘custom’ of drowning children if their sale is put down…. I can only say that in case father, mother, or relative were convicted of infanticide, Chinese custom would be no protection, and, unless I am grievously mistaken, the presiding judge would have no alternative but to sentence the perpetrator to death … the one custom is tolerated just as the other custom is tolerated, and both alike or neither must be claimed as sanctioned by Governor Elliott’s proclamation. All remedies which ever existed by common law or by statute in England up to 1845 against ownership of human beings, against every form of slavery, extend by their own proper force and authority to Hong Kong; and, if that were not enough, all English laws applicable to Hong Kong, including those against ownership in human beings, were by express Ordinances 6 of 1845, and 12 of 1873, embodied into the laws of Hong Kong, whilst the worst forms of slavery are especially punished by Ordinance 4 of 1865, and 2 of 1875. I am bound by my most solemn obligations to enforce all these laws. I must, therefore, without fear, favour or affection, discharge this duty to the best of my ability.”
CHAPTER 10.
NOT FALLEN–BUT ENSLAVED.
The Report of the Commission affords the following instructive account of the difference in the moral and social status between the prostitute of the East and West:
“In approaching the subject of prostitution, as it is found in Hong Kong at the present day, it is absolutely necessary for a full and just comprehension of it, to keep in mind two distinct considerations. One is the almost total identity of the whole system of prostitution, which since times immemorial is an established institution all over the large empire of China. The other point to be kept in mind is the radical difference which distinguishes the personal character, the life and the surroundings of Chinese prostitutes from all that is characteristic of the prostitutes of Europe.” … “At the present day the Chinese prostitutes of Hong Kong have but very little to distinguish them, either in the past, present, or future of their personal lives, or in their position and surroundings, from the prostitutes of the 18 provinces of China…. Those of the prostitutes of Hong Kong who are inmates of brothels licensed for foreigners only, or who live in sly brothels for foreigners, have adopted a different style of dress, but are otherwise in no essential point differently situated from prostitutes in China, except that the inmates of brothels licensed for foreigners are subject to compulsory medical examination, and consequently far more despised by their countrymen and even other prostitutes.”
“Prostitutes in Europe are, as a general rule, fallen women, the victims of seduction, or possibly of innate vice. Being the outcasts of society, and having little, if any, prospect of being again admitted into decent and respectable circles of life, deprived also of their own self-respect as well as the regards of their relatives, occasionally even troubled with qualms of conscience, they mostly dread thinking of their future, and seek oblivion in excesses of boisterous dissipation. The Chinese prostitutes of Hong Kong are an entirely different set of people…. Very few of them can be called fallen women; scarcely any of them are the victims of seduction, according to the English sense of the term, refined or unrefined. The great majority of them are owned by professional brothel-keepers or traders in women in Canton or Macao, have been brought up for the profession, and trained in various accomplishments suited to brothel life…. They frequently know neither father nor mother, except what they call a ‘pocket-mother,’ that is, the woman who bought them from others…. They feel of course that they are the bought property of their pocket-mother or keeper, but they know also that this is the feeling of almost every other woman in China, liable as each is to be sold, by her own parents or relatives, to be the wife or concubine of a man she never sets eyes on before the wedding day, or liable, as the case may be, to be pledged or sold, by her parents or relatives, to serve as a domestic slave in a strange family…. They have the chance, if they are pretty and accomplished, of being wooed … and they may look forward with tolerable certainty to being made the second, or third, or fourth, or at any rate the favorite wife of some wealthy gentleman. If not possessed of special attractions or wealthy lovers, they look forward to being taken out of the brothel by an honest devoted man to share the lot of a poor man’s wife. Or they may endeavor to save money by singing, music and prostitution combined, and not only to purchase their freedom, but to set up for themselves, buying, rearing, and selling girls to act as servants or concubines or prostitutes, or they may finally come to keep brothels as managers for wealthy capitalists or speculators. There is further a certain proportion of prostitutes in Hong Kong who have, by the hand of their own parents or husbands, been mortgaged or sold into temporary servitude as prostitutes, or who of their own will and accord act as prostitutes under personal agreement with a brothel-keeper, for a definite advance of a sum of money, required to rescue the family, or some member of it, from some great calamity or permanent ruin.”
“There is, however, one class of women in Hong Kong who can scarcely be called prostitutes, and who have no parallel either in China, outside the Treaty Ports, or in Europe. They are generally called ‘protected women.’ They may originally have come forth from one or other of the above-mentioned classes of prostitutes, or may be the offspring of protected women….”
The Report describes the situation of the “protected woman” in the following terms:
“She resides in a house rented by her protector, who lives generally in another part of the town; she receives a fixed salary from her protector, and sublets every available room to individual sly prostitutes, or to women keeping a sly brothel, no visitor being admitted unless he have some introduction or secret pass-words. If an inspector of brothels attempts to enter, he is quietly informed that this is not a brothel, but the private family residence of Mr. So and So…. This system makes the suppression of sly brothels an impossibility…. The principal points of difference between the various classes of Chinese prostitutes of Hong Kong and the prostitutes of Europe amount therefore to this, that Chinese prostitution is essentially a bargain in money and based on a national system of female slavery.”
“It must not be supposed, however, from what is said above, that the Chinese, as a people, view prostitution as a matter of moral indifference. On the contrary, the literature, the religions, the laws and the public opinion of China, all join in condemning prostitution as immoral, and in co-operation to keep it under a certain check. The literature of the Confucianists, which, as regards purity and utter absence of immoral suggestions, stands unrivalled by any other nation in the world, does not countenance prostitution in any form…. The laws and public opinion … agree in keeping prostitution rigidly out of sight. Although the Chinese are a Pagan nation, they have no deification of vice in their temples, no indecent shows in their theatres, no orgies in their houses of public entertainment, no parading of lewd women in their streets…. In short, as far as outward and public observation goes, China presents a more virtuous appearance than most European countries.”
The report goes on to show that nevertheless the practice of polygamy,
“leaving the childless concubines liable to be sold or sent adrift at any moment, the law of inheritance neglecting daughters in favour of sons,” and “the universal practice of buying and selling females combined with the system of domestic servitude,” makes the suppression of prostitution difficult. “This intermixture of female slavery with prostitution has been noticed in Hong Kong at the very time when the Legislature first attempted to deal with Chinese prostitution.”
We now understand the nature of this wretched form of slavery as carried on at Hong Kong. There did not exist a class of women brought to the pitiable plight of prostitution by the wiles of the seducer, or through the mishap of a lapse from virtue, after which all doors to reform are practically closed against such, as in Western civilization, nor were there those known to have fallen through innate perversity; but such as existed among the Chinese were literal slaves, in the full sense of that word. From the standpoint of these officials, for the most part, prostitution was necessary. This was plainly declared in many official documents. The fact that they licensed brothels proves also that prostitution was considered necessary. And since necessary, if the means failed whereby brothels in the Occident are maintained, then they must be maintained by Oriental means,–which was slavery. Under such circumstances, to license prostitution meant, from the very nature of the case, to license slavery. To encourage prostitution, as it always is encouraged by the Contagious Diseases Acts, meant to encourage slavery. Hence they reasoned, and declared–to use the language of the Registrar General, Cecil C. Smith–that it was “useless to try and deal with the question of the freedom of Chinese prostitutes by law or by any Government regulation. From all the surroundings the thing is impracticable.”
It must be admitted that the conditions at Hong Kong favored the development of social impurity. From the moment of British occupation, and before, in fact, there were at that place large numbers of unmarried soldiers and sailors, many of very loose morals; also many men in civil and military positions as officials, and numerous merchants, etc., most of them separated far from their families and the restraints that surrounded them at home. On the Chinese side, there were men accustomed to deal with their women as chattels, willing to sell them to the foreigners.
But we need to inquire a little further into the matter before conceding that because a thing will almost inevitably take place, therefore it is best to license it in order to keep it within bounds. The superficial sophist says: “Prostitution always has existed and always will exist. Painful as the fact is, such is the frailty of human nature. You cannot make men moral by act of parliament, and it is foolish to try. We will have to license the thing, and thus control it as best we can. That is the only practical way to deal with this evil.” Such reasoning as this exhibits the most confused notions as to the nature of law.
No law is ever enacted except with the expectation that an offense against it will take place. Law anticipates transgression as much as license; but law provides a _check_ upon offenses and license provides an _incitement_ to them. “The law was not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.” Have not murder and stealing always existed? Are they not likely to exist in spite of laws against them, so long as human nature remains so frail? Then why not license _them_ in order to keep _them_ under control? It is perfectly apparent to all that to license murder and stealing; would be the surest way of allowing them to get quickly beyond control. “But you cannot make men moral by act of parliament, and it is foolish to try; to put a man in jail will not change him from a thief into an honest man.” “But,” you reply, “we do not punish men for stealing and for murder for their own good, but for the good of the community at large.” Certainly. Then what becomes of the argument that because men will not become pure by act of parliament they are to be allowed to commit their depredations unmolested? The primary object of law is not reformatory but protective,–for the victims of lawlessness.
Our great Law-Giver, Jesus Christ, admitted a certain necessity of evil, but He did not say, “therefore license it, to keep it within bounds.” He said, “It _must needs be_ that offenses come.” But His remedy for keeping the offenses within bounds was, “woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” As inevitably as the offense was committed so invariably must the punishment fall on the offender’s head. That is the only way to keep any evil within bounds. This is the principle that underlies all law.
These Hong Kong officials who believed in the licensing of brothel slavery and brought it about, have much to say about the “unfortunate creatures” who were the victims of men. But if the advocate of license is self-deceived in his attitude toward this social evil, we need not be deceived in him. One does not propose a license as a remedy for an evil, except as led to that view by secret sympathy with the evil. A license of an evil is never proposed excepting upon the mental acquiescence in that evil.
British officials who licensed immoral houses at Hong Kong did not wish the libertine to be disturbed in his depredations. The Chinese merchants were able to see this fact if those officials were not ready to admit it even to themselves. They knew how to throw a stone that would secure their own glass houses. Hence they said in their memorial to the Governor:
“From 80 to 90 per cent of all these prostitutes in Hong Kong were brought into these [licensed] brothels by purchase, as is well known to everybody. If buying and selling is a matter of criminal character the proper thing would be first of all, to abolish this evil (connected with the brothels). But how comes it that since the first establishment of the Colony down to the present day the same old practice prevails in these licensed brothels, and has never been forbidden or abolished?”
It is to be noted that none of the officials at Hong Kong accused the Chinese merchants of slander in saying that from 80 to 90 per cent of the thousands of prostitutes in the Colony were absolute slaves. The Government was placed in a very awkward position by this challenge on the part of the Chinese. How could a Government that held slaves in its licensed brothels forbid Chinese residents holding slaves in their homes? But the Governor did not propose to be compromised. He wrote to the Secretary of State at London: “I believe I only anticipate your instructions, in giving orders that the law, whatever may be the consequences to the brothel system, should be strictly enforced so as to secure the freedom of the women.” But he reckoned without his host. The Secretary of State did not stand by the Governor. So far as the records show, the Governor and Chief Justice stood alone, his entire Executive Council taking the opposing side. What was to be done?
CHAPTER 11.
THE MAN FOR THE OCCASION.
Consistency demanded that either the brothel system at Hong Kong should be abolished, or domestic slavery and so-called “adoption” should be tolerated. No other courses were open. In his perplexity, the Governor asked his learned Chinese interpreter, Dr. Eitel, to give him further light as to this domestic slavery and “adoption” prevalent among the Chinese. This request was granted in a document entitled “Domestic servitude in relation to slavery.” Dr. Eitel’s main points were:
Slavery as known to the Westerner “has always been an incident of race.” “Slavery, therefore, has such a peculiar meaning … that one ought to hesitate before applying the term rashly” to Chinese domestic slavery. Slavery in China grows out of the fact that the father has all power, even to death, over his family. The father, on the other hand, “has many duties as well as rights.” Therefore his power over his family “is not a mark of tyranny, but of religious unity.” “Few foreigners have comprehended the extent of social equality, … the amount of influence which woman, bought and sold as she is, really has in China,… the depth of domestic affection, of filial piety, of paternal care.” “To deal justly with the slavery of China, we ought to invent another name for it.” “The law, although sanctioning the sale of children for purposes of adoption within each clan, and even without, is here in advance of public opinion, as it expressly allows, by an edict, … the sale of children only to extremely poor people in times of famine, and forbids even in that case re-sale of a child once bought.”
This last admission on the part of Dr. Eitel, a fact already pointed out by Sir John Smale, seems to us to clearly demonstrate that a pretext was now being sought to justify at Hong Kong a state of things as to slavery that the laws of China forbade and which in no wise could be justified as Chinese “custom.” “The reason for this immense demand for young female domestics lies in the system of polygamy which obtains all over the empire, and which has a religious basis.” By this he means that it is from the Chinese standpoint a religious duty for a father to leave a son, upon his death, to continue the family sacrifices. Therefore if the father has no son by his first wife, he will “take a second or third or fourth wife until he procures a son.” “A family being in urgent distress, and requiring immediately a certain sum of money, take one of their female children, say five years old … to a wealthy family, where the child becomes a member of the family, and has, perhaps, to look after a baby…. But the child may be sold out and out. In that case invariably a deed is drawn up.” And this is the state of things concerning which Dr. Eitel says: “Few foreigners have comprehended the extent of social equality … the amount of influence which woman, bought and sold as she is, really has in China … the depth of domestic affection, of filial piety, of parental care,” etc.
He adds:
“Considering the deep hold which this system has on the Chinese people, it is not to be wondered at that Chinese can scarcely comprehend how an English judge could come to designate this species of domestic servitude as ‘slavery.’ On the contrary, intelligent Chinese look upon this system as the necessary and indispensable complement of polygamy, as an excellent counter remedy for the deplorably wide-spread system of infanticide, and as the natural consequence of the chronic occurrence of famines, inundations, and rebellions in an over-populated country. But the abuses to which this system of buying and selling female children is liable, in the hands of unscrupulous parents and buyers, and the support it lends to public prostitution, are too patent facts to require pointing out.”
“The moment we examine closely into Chinese slavery and servitude,” declares Dr. Eitel, “from the standpoint of history and sociology, we find that slavery and servitude have, with the exception of the system of eunuchs, lost all barbaric and revolting features.” (!) “As this organism has had its certain natural evolution, it will as certainly undergo in due time a natural dissolution, which in fact has at more than one point already set in. But no legislative or executive measures taken in Hong Kong will hasten this process, which follows its own course and its own laws laid down by a wise Providence which happily overrules for the good all that is evil in the world.”
There was, indeed, a certain justice in defending the Chinese as against the foreigner, on Dr. Eitel’s part. But two wrongs do not make a right. From this time onward, the word of sophistry is put in the mouth of the advocate of domestic slavery, just as the word of sophistry had been put in the mouth of the advocate of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance. Mr. Labouchere had spoken of the latter as a means of protection’ for the poor slaves, and the expression, ‘protection,’ has been kept prominently to the front ever since Dr. Eitel suggested, likewise, not a change in the conditions, but a change in the name by which they were known. Let it be called ‘domestic _servitude_’ instead of ‘domestic _slavery_.’ All the advocates of this domestic slavery from that time have called the noxious weed by the sweeter name.
Governor Hennessey asked the opinion of others of his officials. One Acting Police Magistrate replied ‘When the servant girls (or slaves girls, as some prefer to term them) in the families in this Colony are contented with their lot, and their parents do not claim them, the police cannot be expected to interfere.’ Another said ‘Buying and selling children by the Chinese has been considered a harmless proceeding, its only effect being to place the purchaser under a legal and moral obligation to provide for the child until the seller chose to repudiate the bargain, which he could always do under English law.’
The Attorney General, Mr. O’Malley, when asked (at a later period) his opinion as to the utterances Sir John Smale had made from time to time on the subject of slavery, replied to the Governor
“With regard to Sir John Smale’s observation, I know that difficulties national, social, official and financial beset the Government in reference to the special questions I have raised, I have only to observe that I have never heard of those difficulties. My own impression is that the respectable parts of the community, Chinese as well as European, including the Government and the police, are fully alive to the brothel and domestic servitude systems, and as well informed as Sir John Smale himself as to the real facts. One would suppose from the tone of his pamphlet that he stood alone in his perception and denunciation of evil. But I believe the fact is that the Executive and the community generally are quite as anxious is he is to insist upon practical precautions necessary to prevent the abuses, and to diminish the evils naturally connected with these systems, but they look for this to practical securities and not to declamation. The obvious line of practical suggestions to take is that of careful registration and constant inspection of brothels, so that full and frequent opportunity may be given to all persons whose freedom may be open to suspicion to know their legal position, and to assert their liberty if they like … Particularly it might be thought right to create a system of registration applicable to domestic servants and strangers in family houses. It would be a good thing if Sir John Smale would place at the disposal of the Government (as I believe he has never yet done) any facts connected with the brothel system or the domestic servitude of which he possesses any real knowledge.”
This letter gives us some conception of the almost insuperable difficulties Sir John Smale had to encounter in his endeavor to put down slavery, for not a case could come up in the Superior Court for conviction on the Judge’s information, of course, for that would be assuming both prosecuting and judicial powers, and the men who occupied in turn that office, during Sir John Smale’s incumbency, refused to act in unison with him, and this Attorney General’s language betrays hot prejudice, lack of candor as regarded the facts, and insolence toward Sir John Smale.
The Attorney General has a fling at the Chief Justice as “impracticable,” yet the only practical suggestion that the former makes in his letter as to how to meet the conditions he seems to have taken from Sir John Smale’s own words upon which he was asked to express an opinion. The Chief Justice had said:
“I think the evils complained of might be lessened,–(1) By a better registration of the inmates of brothels, and by frequently bringing them before persons to whom they might freely speak as to their position and wishes, and by such authoritative interference with the brothel-keepers as should keep them well in fear of exercising acts of tyranny. (2) By a stringently enforced register of all inmates of Chinese dwelling-houses, &c., (at least of all servants) with full inquiry into the conditions of servitude, and an authoritative restoration of unwilling servants to freedom from servitude. This would apply to 10,000 (according to Dr. Eitel 20,000) bond servants in Hong Kong.”
The injustice of the attack of the Attorney General upon Sir John Smale was not ignored by Governor Hennessy, when he forwarded Mr. O’Malley’s letter to London. He said:
“The apparent difference between Mr. O’Malley’s views on brothel slavery and the views of Sir John Smale is due to the fact that Sir John Smale knew that the real brothel slavery exists in the brothels where Chinese women are provided for European soldiers and sailors, whereas Mr. O’Malley, in discarding the use of the word slavery, does so on the assumption that all the Hong Kong brothels form a part of the Chinese social system, and that the girls naturally and willingly take to that mode of earning a livelihood. This is a misconception of the actual facts, for though the Hong Kong brothels, where Chinese women meet Chinese only, may seem to provide for such women what Mr. O’Malley calls ‘a natural and suitable manner of life’ consistent with a part of the Chinese social system, it is absolutely the reverse in those Hong Kong brothels where Chinese women have to meet foreigners only. Such brothels are unknown in the social system of China. The Chinese girls who are registered by the Government for the use of Europeans and Americans, detest the life they are compelled to lead. They have a dread and abhorrence of foreigners, and especially of the foreign soldiers and sailors. _Such girls are the real slaves in Hong Kong._”
We underscore the last sentence as a most painful fact in the history of the dealings of the British officials with the native women of China, set forth on the authority of the Governor of Hong Kong, who, with the help of Sir John Smale, the Chief Justice, waged such a fearless warfare against slavery under the British flag, with such unworthy misrepresentation and opposition on the part of the other officials equally responsible with them in preserving the good name of their country, and in defending rather than trampling upon its laws. Governor Hennessy continues
“To drive Chinese girls into such brothels [i.e., those for the use of foreigners] was the object of the system of informers which Mr. C. C. Smith for so many years conducted in this Colony, and which in his evidence before the Commission on the 3rd of December, 1877, he defended on the ground of its necessity in detecting unlicensed houses, but which your Lordship [Lord Kimberley, Secretary of State for the Colonies] has now justly stigmatized as a revolting abuse. On another point the Attorney General also seems not to appreciate fully what he must have heard Sir John Smale saying from the Bench in the Supreme Court. It would be a mistake to think that the Chief Justice had not before he left the Colony, realized the public opinion of the Chinese community on the subject of kidnaping. In sentencing a prisoner for kidnaping, on the 10th of March, 1881, Sir John Smale said he was bound to declare from the Bench that, to the credit of the Chinese, a right public opinion had been growing up, and on the 25th of March, 1881, (the last occasion when Sir John Smale spoke in the Supreme Court of Hong Kong), he said, in a case in which the kidnapers had been convicted–This case presents two satisfactory facts first, that a Chinese boat woman handed one of these prisoners to the police, and that afterward an agent of the Chinese Society to suppress this class of crime caused the arrest and conviction of these prisoners. These facts are indicative of the public mind tending to treat kidnaping as a crime against society, calling for active suppression. On the same occasion, in sentencing a woman who had severely beaten an adopted child, Sir John Smale said, ‘In finally disposing of these three cases, with all their enormity, sources of satisfaction present themselves in the fact that, in each of these cases, it has been owing to the spontaneous indignation of Chinese men and women that these crimes have been brought to the knowledge of the police.’ The Governor closes his letter with the statement, ‘It is only due to Sir John Smale to add that his own action has greatly contributed to foster the “healthy” public opinion of the native community, which induced him, when quitting the Supreme Court, to take a hopeful view of the future of this important subject.'”
CHAPTER 12.
THE CHIEF JUSTICE ANSWERS HIS OPPONENTS.
The Acting Attorney General at the time of Sir John Smale’s first pronouncement against slavery had suggested to Governor Hennessy that Sir John Smale’s statements should be sent to London to the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and he and other advisers recommended that no prosecutions in connection with “adoption” and “domestic servitude” should be instituted, pending the receipt of instructions from the Home Government. The Chief Justice concurred in these views, and also suggested that the Chinese be told that no prosecutions as to the past should take place, but that in future, in every case where _buying and selling_ occurred in connection with adoption or domestic service, the Government would undoubtedly prosecute.
The replies that came from the Secretary of State indicated scant sympathy with Sir John Smale’s position. His action was likely to disturb the system of regulation of vice at Hong Kong, and these health measures were in high repute with that official at London. He could not sympathize with the Governor’s view that laws securing the freedom of the women were to be executed, whatever the result to the brothel system. He wrote in reply as though Sir John Smale had said many things that had not been put in the same light, demanded to know what law could be put into operation to improve conditions, and wished to know if Sir John Smale accepted Dr. Eitel’s views on “domestic servitude,” and later he wrote pronouncing the views expressed in the insolent attack of Mr. O’Malley upon Sir John Smale’s anti-slavery pronouncements as “well considered and convincing.” He also referred to the “humane intentions” of Mr. Labouchere in the passing of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance of Sir John Bowring’s time, which “were intended to ameliorate the condition of the women.” But it does not so much concern us what the officials in London did and said, excepting at the one point, namely, that they did not at this time back the noble efforts of the Governor and of Sir John Smale to put down slavery, and so rendered it practically impossible for them to accomplish what they wished to do. The replies from Sir John Smale are, however, of much value to us, as throwing light upon social conditions at Hong Kong. On August 26, 1880, Sir John Smale replied in a letter meant for the Secretary of State at London, but sent in due form to the Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong for forwarding: