Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers by Andrew, Elizabeth Wheeler, Bushnell, Katharine Caroline - CHAPTER 14.

Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

CHAPTER 14.

PROTECTIVE ORDINANCES.

After eighteen years' hard struggle, the British Abolitionists succeeded in getting Parliament to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts in force in certain military stations in England, and in force in other parts of the British Empire. It now became the duty of the Secretary of State for the Colonies to see that all the Crown Colonies, such as Hong Kong and Singapore followed suit. This was in 1886, and the Contagious Diseases Ordinances for these two places were not replaced by other legislation until 1888 at Singapore, and 1890 at Hong Kong. From what we have seen of the spirit of these officials in general it seems needless to say that the old Contagious Diseases Ordinances were repealed amid a storm of protests. One of the Municipal Commissioners of Singapore “said that the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance was the most cruel and merciless act which had ever been done.” A statement from the unofficial members of the Legislative Council at Hong Kong declared: “In England abuses might have arisen under the recent law, but here it is impossible,” and very much more of the same false nature. The new Ordinances are excellent reading, and in the hands of the right sort of officials would do incalculable good. _But laws were not needed in the Colonies to put down slavery._ Mr. Francis' Memorandum, and Sir John Smale's pronouncements have clearly demonstrated that fact, but the right sort of men were needed to enforce the laws already in existence, in the same disinterested manner in which Sir John Smale had wrought so effectually. The new law was, however, put in each case under the administration of the “Protector” and his staff of officials, and the result has been, and could but be unsatisfactory, to the present day.

For instance, in 1893, Mr. H.E. Wodehouse, Police Magistrate at Hong Kong, in reporting on a case of suicide of a slave girl to the Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong, to be transmitted for the information of Lord Ripon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had asked for the information, goes quite fully into a description of conditions at this time, three years after the passage of the Protective Ordinance. He says:

“The name of the deceased was Chan Ngan-Kin.... She was registered as a prostitute in this brothel on the 23rd of December, 1890. When registering her name she said she had no pocket-mother, that her parents were both dead, and that she became a prostitute of her own free will. The inspector said that that was the description of themselves that nearly all prostitutes give, and that it was very rarely that it was true. The further evidence went to prove that she and a young man were mutually attached to each other, and he was anxious to redeem her, and that she was desirous of being redeemed, but that the price asked, two thousand three hundred dollars, was more than he was willing to give, though he was willing to give two thousand dollars.... There is little doubt that his inability to redeem her caused her to commit suicide.... The pocket-mother was not produced [at the inquest], and there was a general disposition on the part of the Chinese witnesses to withhold information.”

Lord Ripon said in his letter of inquiry: “If the facts were as stated in the above-mentioned paper, it would seem to prove that it is not generally understood in the Colony that a brothel keeper has no legal right to demand any redemption money for the release of one of the inmates.” To this the Magistrate replies, in explanation:

“It is not quite correct to speak of the brothel-keeper as demanding redemption money. The person whose property the prostitute is is the pocket-mother, that is to say, the purchaser of the girl. Nearly every prostitute has her own pocket-mother, and she it is who has sole control over the prostitute's movements. All the earnings go to her, and the redemption money when redemption takes place. The 'brothel-keeper' is a creation of the Government, and the term has, I think, led to some misappreciation of the actual state of things. It is true that, being registered by the Government, she becomes in a manner responsible for the proper conduct of the establishment, but the property in the girl does not rest in her, except in the case of the two or three girls to whom she may herself be pocket-mother, that is to say, whom she may herself have purchased. The pocket-mothers are the real proprietresses of their purchases, and a brothel-keeper would not regard herself as in any way connected with such girls, beyond the obligation devolving upon her of registering the inmates of the house of which she, as tenant or owner, was the proprietress. A Chinese brothel is in fact merely a collection under one roof of several different establishments, consisting of the pocket-mothers and their purchases, the pocket-mothers for the most part being the body-servants of their charges, and administering to their daily wants, though in reality their mistresses and their absolute owners.”

The document scarcely needs comment. It illustrates the fact that one may have most ideal laws, but laws never operate automatically, and in the absence of any desire to “let the oppressed go free,” but rather an eager desire to hold them in subjection to the base propensities of profligate men, as all the State documents representing the situation tend to show, there is small proof that the “Women and Girls' Protective Ordinance of 1889” has had any appreciable effect in altering the slave conditions at Hong Kong. The same old notorious inspector, John Lee, who, Governor Hennessy thought, ought to have been prosecuted for manslaughter, after he hounded those native women to their death, was Chief Inspector of Brothels at Hong Kong in 1894, when we made investigations in that Colony, and personally interviewed many of these slave girls, and heard their stories.

The most recent official documents relating to the matter have been commented upon in _The Shield_ (organ of the British Committee of the International Purity Federation), in its issue dated London, June, 1906, as follows:

"One of the most important parliamentary papers of recent years on our question has just been issued in response to questions put in the House of Commons by Mr. Henry J. Wilson, M.P., on March 8th last. The title is, 'Further Correspondence relating to Measures Adopted for Checking the Spread of Venereal Disease' (Cd. 2903), and relates to enactments in the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, and Gibraltar, during the period in which the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain was at the head of the Colonial office.

"The correspondence in question further reveals the existence and extent of a 'Yellow Slave Trade' in the East of large dimensions. The girls in question are stated to be 'bought when young,' and 'believe themselves bound body and soul to the brothel-keepers.' Nine hundred and sixty-eight Chinese women, presumably of this kind, are reported at Penang, and 62 Japanese women. There were 176 admissions of Japanese women, and 141 admissions of Chinese women in 1899 to the public hospital at Singapore, besides numbers of other cases to private hospitals maintained by the keepers of the houses of ill-fame.

"Many passages in the correspondence give evidence of a continual import traffic going on, which the head of the Regulation Department, the 'Protector of Chinese,' at Singapore, seems to have made some effort to counteract. He speaks of ten girls between 9 and 15 that he attempted to rescue from sale to a traveling dealer, but who were returned to their former surroundings on a writ of _habeas corpus_ by the Supreme Court; but upon information in regard to this case reaching the Colonial office in London, correspondence ensued which resulted in Mr. Chamberlain directing an alteration of the law to meet the case of the prosecution which had so lamentably failed.

"The Protector of Chinese also tells of 'girls under ten years of age who are bought and sold in the colony,' 'brought from China for purposes of sale,' 'generally sold to inmates of brothels,' and of women who are 'in the habit of arriving from China with relays of babies' for the same purpose. The Straits Settlements Government thus attempts to cut off a twig here and there of the tree of this evil traffic, whilst leaving untouched the root and trunk of the tree itself, the State protection of vice, by which it is made practicable safely to invest large capital in this most nefarious but lucrative traffic.

"Page 4 of this Correspondence shows that an ordinance was passed in 1899, imposing very heavy fines and imprisonment on any keeper of a brothel who allowed any of the inmates suffering from contagious disease to remain in the house. This has led to a system of private arrangements with medical men for the periodical sanitary inspection and treatment of the inmates.

"At page 19 the Acting Colonial Surgeon says: 'A large number of Japanese houses had some time before made private arrangements with my partner, Dr. Mugliston and myself, for medical attendance, and the rumor regarding the intended legislation induced most of the remainder to follow their example during the month of September. The increase of Japanese inmates (of the hospital) for this month, therefore, was caused by our sending in those cases of disease then found among these fresh houses.' Paragraph 4, the same page, says: 'With regard to the Chinese women we already had long had a number of Chinese brothels to attend professionally; during September of 1899 a large proportion of the remainder made similar arrangements with us.'

"It is difficult to say positively what the precise nature of these transactions is, but it is only too evident that the acting Colonial surgeon, with his professional partner, was most improperly mixed up with the business arrangements of the brothel-keepers. These people, indeed, figure so that they must have constituted a very good, and perhaps the most lucrative portion of the practice of these doctors.

"To cope with the extra business brought in by these arrangements, section 2 of paragraph 4, page 19, says: 'In September, 1899, four private lock hospitals were organized, one in each of the four main sections of brothels, by the keepers under our direction.' Paragraph 6 says: 'We make frequent periodic inspections of the Chinese brothels, seeing each inmate, and visit our private hospitals daily.' Here, again, it may be asked what are the precise relations of the acting Colonial surgeon to 'our private hospitals?' It is satisfactory to know that inquiries are being made by our Parliamentary friends in regard to this peculiar, if not suspicious, circumstance.

"Mr. Chamberlain, with all the foregoing facts before his eyes, says on page 21: 'I am glad to find that the Protector of Chinese and the acting Colonial surgeon have, so far, been able to give such a satisfactory report of the working of the ordinance.'

"At Hong Kong, 'the keepers of Chinese and Japanese brothels frequented by Europeans have retained private practitioners as their medical advisers, and a small private lock-hospital has been instituted for Japanese women.' This followed on 33 prosecutions instituted by the police in respect of 89 complaints made by soldiers and sailors of the British forces. Page 35 and elsewhere show that prosecutions have taken place of 'sly brothels,' competing with the 'regular professed brothels.'

“It is to be hoped that this Blue-book will, with facts now being published in various parts of Europe and in America, draw attention to the necessity of a new movement (supplementary to the great movement now on foot for the suppression of the 'White Slave Trade'), for the suppression of the 'Yellow Slave Trade,' which is becoming almost world-wide in character.”

As the supply of girls both in Singapore and Hong Kong comes very largely from Canton, let us first describe the conditions we found there. Our Journal of February 14th, 1894, reads as follows:

"We went in company with a missionary and a native, both of whom could talk both English and Chinese, and visited some 'flower-boats' on the river. Many of these boats are quite pretentious, with their rich wood-carving, fine furniture, and gaudy display of tinsel. There were whole streets of them,--floating houses moored together; we walked along the length of the street on one side, stepping from the bow of one boat to the next, the bows of the boats constituting front verandahs. We called at almost every place, but a description of one will do for all. First, as we entered, was a couch for opium smoking; just beyond this a reception room, very gaudy, with dozens of hanging lamps, and at one end a shrine for the gods, and offerings before it. In a room back of the reception room, and also upstairs, there were girls in large numbers. A hard-featured old woman came forward from the back room, who, our interpreter said, was as good a specimen as we could possibly have seen of an old brothel-keeper of Canton, one who had been in the business for many years of buying or otherwise obtaining babies and girls, and training them for prostitution. The girls came crowding to the door of the back room, and looked in upon us with eager curiosity. Our interpreter called our attention to the manner of dressing the hair,--like married women,--as indicating their bad life. The interpreter said they were inducted usually at about thirteen years of age. They were all dressed very showily, and heavily powdered and painted, excepting some mere babies who were plainly dressed. Troops of little girls, from four to five years of age, swarmed out of the neighboring 'flower-boats' and gathered around us, screaming and scrambling, falling, laughing, and following us the full length of the street, which was made up of about twenty such boats on either side. And none of these innocent little things at all realized the fate in store for them. In one place we saw two very old women in the front room. In another, a woman knelt before the idolatrous shrine engaged in her devotions. At one point there was a very large boat brilliantly fitted up for music, dancing, smoking opium, and feasting. At the far end of the street was a 'kitchen-boat,' from which supplies of food, ready cooked, could be bought. All the way along we saw little girls with the unmistakable signs of their destiny upon them. Our interpreter said the girls were usually made to stay upstairs during the day time, but at night the whole place was illuminated and alive; then they were brought down and to the front. Occasionally we would see one of these huge house boats full of painted girls, floating down the middle of the stream, for they move about from place to place at will.

"At Canton, February 18th, 1894, we met and conversed with a missionary lady who had just come from a station in the interior. She had travelled from her station on a Chinese boat, which had been chartered by her adopted son for his use going up, and for hers coming down the river. When she was about to embark, she required that the men should search the boat, and down below, in the very bottom, were a lot of little girls--_child slaves_--being smuggled to Canton for the trade of a vile life. She made the men take the children off the boat, but with great difficulty. They resisted, but she stood courageously, and saw her commands executed. After she had accomplished this, and started down the river, all alone, so far as any English-speaking person was concerned, the men, who were still deeply enraged at being defeated in their plans, greatly annoyed her by intruding on her constantly, and finally they threatened to kill her; but she presented as brave a front as possible, and at last took hold of one man who was especially insolent, by the shoulder, in an authoritative manner, bidding him to go out of her presence. He went away cowed, and they all said, as was reported to her by one of her attendants, 'She is not afraid'; they then became very superstitious at the idea of a woman taking hold of them, and troubled her no more.

“The five or six Christian friends where we were staying in Canton all agreed that it was the most common occurrence for little girls to be bought and sold for immoral purposes. One of the group has often heard the wretched blind girls singing just under her window, on the river bank, and under conduct of the old brothel-keeper, their owner, thus attracting custom. The proportion of blind people in Oriental countries is much greater, owing to the prevalence of eye diseases and the poverty and ignorance of the people in coping with these, than in the West; and as blind girls do not bring much money when disposed of as wives, so they are sold in large numbers into a life of shame. Poor little slaves! Because they are deprived of the natural light of day, so they are destined never to see a ray of moral light enter their miserable existence! We saw three or four little blind girls who had been rescued, by these Christian workers, from their terrible fate; but these are only a few rare exceptions out of the thousands that are borne on into the tide of shame and anguish continually.”

Of the many girls we interviewed at Hong Kong the story of the following seems typical of her class, so we extract it from our journal:

"At the first place we called there were six inmates--four of whom were present at the interview. The keeper went out of the room as we entered, and did not return. The girls were very friendly, and one of them talked a little English. This one told us that she came from Canton, and, in broken English, said that she had 'no father, no mother, no brother; a poor man took her when a _very_ little child and raised her to sell. By and by a woman came and offered to buy poor man's little girl, and as he had but little food, he asks, 'How much?' then she buys the little girl and brings her to Hong Kong. Then woman take her to Englishman and say, 'She first-class girl,' and he say, 'I make her my wife,' but he not good; he no husband; he go away to his house--England.' Thus she described in a few simple words the tragedy of her life with tears in her eyes; her training for vice; her sale; her hopes of marriage; her desertion; the outcome, her consignment to a Government-licensed brothel. She was but one of the tens of thousands at Hong Kong. We asked, 'How would a girl have to do in order to live in this house?' They said, 'She must be registered at the Lock. Hospital, and would have to go to the Court and Mr. Lockhart (the Registrar-General) would ask her questions; whether she had a father and mother; how old she was; _where the money went to that was paid for her_; and whether she wanted to be a prostitute or not.' We asked, 'If a girl should say that she _did not_ want to be a prostitute what would be done?' They answered, 'No girl would _dare_ to say this _when she had been bought_.' We asked the girl who talked English over again about this, and she said the same.

“All the places of infamy reserved for the use of Europeans which we visited in Hong Kong, were within three minutes' walk of Victoria Hotel, in the very busiest part of the city. Close by our hotel were such world-famed shops as 'Watson and Co.,' 'Kelly and Walsh,' etc.; a short distance down the street were the Postoffice and the Supreme Court buildings. The respectable English residents of Hong Kong cannot go about the streets of the city without seeing these places; there are draper-shops and other places visited daily and hourly by respectable foreigners and natives, occupying the ground floor of these brothels. The fine new building of the Girls' High School, under the management of the Government, is within five minutes' walk; yet all these brothels are glaringly numbered, as registered by the city, in huge figures eight or ten inches high, of red on a white background, painted on the doors of the stairways leading to the second story of the buildings occupied by these shops. The school children cannot pass by without noting these officially numbered houses, and seeing the girls sitting at all hours of the day and into the night conspicuously in the balconies over the shops of drapers, grocers, tailors, silk-merchants, shoe-dealers, &c., &c., and often hearing them calling to each other from house to house, and to the men in the public streets below. Mrs. Andrew, when in the street, March 2nd, saw a group of these slave-women calling down to three policemen, who were looking up and laughing at them. These are daily sights.”

The unblushing parade of forms of vice, which have been manufactured in the Orient especially to meet the demands of renegade members of Christian civilization, can be seen in a peculiarly painful and brazen form in the city of Hong Kong.

While we were at Hong Kong, there occured a great celebration in honor of the repair and rededication of an important Buddhist temple. There was a grand procession, and many thousands of Chinese from the mainland came over to witness the celebration. The parade formed in the early morning and went at once to the residence of the Governor to do him honor, after which it marched through the principal streets of the city. It was a curious, interesting, and withal a painful sight, in some regards not unlike industrial parades in our own country. At night we saw something totally unique and difficult to describe to those who have not witnessed the same in China. Men bore aloft great dragons and fishes innumerable, of all sizes and shapes, (but very true to life), given a natural color and lighted up within, like Chinese lanterns. These were held aloft on the ends of long poles, and as the men who carried them were invisible, because of the darkness, and trod noiselessly because of bare, or merely sandaled feet, the impression was of an immense train of these creatures floating or swimming silently through the air.

The procession was made up of men of all sorts and kinds. Great fat men with enormous fans panted along, and little boys ran by their side with stools upon which they gravely seated themselves whenever the line of march was halted for a moment. Little boys progressed painfully along with the rest, walking on their hands, with their feet thrown up into the air, or spinning along on all fours like wheels, or going through various other antics. And, contrary to anything that could have happened away from the open ports of China, there were many women in the parade, and girls too. They were on horseback, in sedan chairs, borne on wheeled platforms, like our “Goddess of Liberty” representations on the Fourth of July; walking, and sometimes riding on bullocks. We counted 150 women in all. These were dressed and painted up in such a style that a single glance showed they belonged to the disreputable class, and their old “pocket-mothers,” were to be seen walking along close to them and keeping a sharp lookout over their gaudily dressed slaves. Yet more painful was the sight of the little girls, bound to heavy wires and placed in all manner of contortions. Here was a girl about sixteen, standing cross-legged on a moving platform, holding a spear in each hand, the spears crossed in front of her breast, and a little girl dangling from each spear-point. So it appeared, but in fact all were well wired into the distressing shape they occupied, and it was said that none of them could have endured the position for a moment but for plentiful doses of opium. Next passed a girl standing on the moving platform, holding a spear at arm's length, and a three-year-old girl standing on its point. Then a little boy holding a long rod from which was suspended a tiny child. A girl passed sitting on a stool and holding a sword by its point with a child of four suspended from its handle, and next a girl holding a sword by its handle, and the child suspended from its point. One girl sat playing a flute held up high in the air, and a girl of six appeared to be suspended from it. One poor little thing was borne high up in the air, astride a turning-pole, with legs well crossed beneath the pole. And then there came along a little girl swaying about on the end of a long pole carried by men in the procession. We were on the second floor of a great verandah of the hotel, and the child swung so close to us, that we started forward toward her with a cry of pity. Great tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she seemed to look straight into our eyes, and attempted a sickly smile at our expressions of pity.

Later, after the procession of fishes, we sat in company with two Chinese ministers of the Gospel who came to call upon us, and discussed in sadness the scenes of the day. They said, if we had understood the native language and joined in the procession, as they did at times, we would have heard the old “pocket-mothers” and other owners of these girls driving bargains for their sale, temporarily or permanently, with the men of the crowds. These native Christians marvelled that Englishmen and American men who called themselves “Christians” could have joined in these festivities in honor of a heathen temple, and that the Governor should have made a speech of congratulation, with no rebuke of these scenes of inhuman torture of women and child slaves, when the procession paused at his door. These parades continued two or three days, always accompanied by the great paper dragons, whether in the daytime or at night, by the noise of deafening tom-toms, and the sickening sight of tortured slave-girls.

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