Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers

CHAPTER 15.

“PRO­TEC­TION” AT SIN­GA­PORE.

“Ladies, I wish to in­tro­duce to you Mr. ---- He is ea­ger to meet you, and I am sure you will be glad to meet him. You are work­ing along much the same lines. Mr. ---- I as­sure you, is, in fact, in­ter­est­ed in ev­ery good thing that is done in this City, and in ev­ery good thing that comes this way. We all count on his sym­pa­thies. I am glad to have the priv­ilege of bring­ing you to­geth­er.” With this our friend of many years, the good Doc­tor, with­drew to speak to an­oth­er group, and we en­tered in­to a short con­ver­sa­tion with the white-​head­ed old man to whom we had been in­tro­duced. He was pro­fuse in his ex­pres­sions of sym­pa­thy for our pu­ri­ty work, but some­how, we could hard­ly have de­fined why, we were not in­ter­est­ed in him, and soon turned away. The oc­ca­sion that gave the op­por­tu­ni­ty for his in­tro­duc­tion, was a mis­sion­ary con­fer­ence at Sin­ga­pore. The man in ques­tion had ex­plained to us that he was not of the same de­nom­ina­tion as the church that had called to­geth­er the re­cep­tion of that evening, but that he sel­dom failed to at­tend all such gath­er­ings, no mat­ter of what de­nom­ina­tion, be­cause of his in­ter­est in ev­ery part of the “Fa­ther's King­dom”.

Al­though we were very weary, and the air was in­tense­ly close, Sin­ga­pore be­ing on­ly about sev­en­ty-​five miles from the Equa­tor, we spent most of that night and of sev­er­al oth­ers in com­pa­ny with a Chris­tian friend and in­ter­preter, in the worst parts of the city; and this, with vis­its to var­ious re­gions dur­ing the day, gave us a pret­ty clear un­der­stand­ing of the sit­ua­tion as to the mat­ter of en­force­ment or non-​en­force­ment of the Pro­tec­tive Or­di­nance.

"On the night of Febru­ary 1st, 1894, we went to Tringanu street, and as­cend­ed to the third sto­ry of a large build­ing. The front win­dows of this up­per floor were gai­ly light­ed up by many col­ored lamps, and could be seen far down the street. There was a small opi­um den at the foot of the stair­way, on the ground floor. On reach­ing the head of the stairs, and turn­ing, we en­tered a large front room. There were bed­rooms at the back of the house, to be let to pa­trons of the es­tab­lish­ment. At the op­po­site end of the front room from the win­dows was the ev­er-​present idol­atrous shrine. On ei­ther side of the room were el­egant­ly-​carved ebony chairs, with mar­ble or agate pan­els. Rich Chi­nese pic­tures dec­orat­ed the walls. To­ward the back of the room hung the sign, '283 Li­censed Eat­ing House.' There was a large ta­ble in the cen­tre of the room. To­ward the front, on ei­ther side, in al­coves, par­ti­tioned off in part from the re­main­der of the room, were opi­um couch­es, with pipes and lamps ready for use. We give this de­scrip­tion in full, as it ap­plies, al­most with­out vari­ation, to all the oth­ers which we vis­it­ed in the im­me­di­ate neigh­bor­hood. Food was fur­nished on or­der, in­tox­icat­ing drinks, and opi­um. At the sec­ond place, on the op­po­site cor­ner of the same block, the men told us that the place was used for the same pur­pos­es. We asked where the wom­en were, and they an­swered that it was too late to see them, but if we would come ear­li­er we would find them. When asked where the wom­en came from, they point­ed down to the street be­low, to the open broth­els, and said there were a great num­ber of de­grad­ed wom­en who lived close by; said the broth­el-​keep­ers sent them. They said that white men as well as Chi­nese came to their place. Af­ter this we walked the length of the sev­er­al streets and side-​streets, in the near vicin­ity, and proved the truth of what the men had told us as to the swarm­ing num­bers of de­grad­ed girls and wom­en.

"The next night we went to the same neigh­bor­hood, and re­vis­it­ed the two places al­ready men­tioned, and oth­ers al­so. As we reached the top of the stair­way and passed in­to the front room of the place where they had in­vit­ed us to re­turn, there was quite a flut­ter of ex­cite­ment, and we in­stant­ly saw that there was a num­ber of girls present, all very young, and sev­er­al mere chil­dren. On our left a fat, mid­dle-​aged Chi­nese man sat, with two or three lit­tle girls, one in his lap and one on ei­ther side of him, in his arms; two more were throw­ing some­thing that re­sem­bled dice on a ta­ble with­in the front al­cove, and the rest were sit­ting on the opi­um couch­es. There were ten girls in all; the two youngest could not pos­si­bly have been more than eight years old; on­ly one, out of the ten, claimed to be over six­teen; we all doubt­ed her claim, be­cause of her ex­treme im­ma­tu­ri­ty of ap­pear­ance. The two youngest chil­dren were im­me­di­ate­ly sent away by or­der of the fat man, who was ev­ident­ly in au­thor­ity. The men ex­plained that these girls be­longed to dif­fer­ent wom­en who were not their own moth­ers; that they came to sing and dance, and pour wine for the pa­trons who came to the place. They al­so ex­plained that all these girls were brought from the broth­els, and were ei­ther al­ready liv­ing a bad life or were be­ing trained up for pros­ti­tu­tion. They were pow­dered heav­ily, had flow­ers and or­na­ments in their hair, the up­per part of the fore­head made bare, and the hair dressed elab­orate­ly, like mar­ried wom­en (even the very youngest chil­dren); of course they were not mar­ried, for they were de­clared to be the prop­er­ty of the broth­el-​keep­ers, and this man­ner of dress must, there­fore, have been an ad­ver­tise­ment of their shame.

"A cu­ri­ous mu­si­cal in­stru­ment was brought--some­what like a dul­cimer--on which two of the girls played in suc­ces­sion, singing in a high, monotonous way.

"From here we went to the first place vis­it­ed the night pre­vi­ous, on the op­po­site cor­ner of the same block. There was quite an ex­cite­ment here when we came in. Two men and two girls were play­ing on na­tive in­stru­ments--one of the men on a sort of fid­dle, and the oth­er on a rude gui­tar; the girls, one strik­ing, in sharp stac­ca­to fash­ion, a wood­en per­fo­rat­ed bowl in­vert­ed on a stan­dard or post, and the oth­er a kind of cym­bal; they were singing in the same shrill, monotonous way we had heard be­fore. We count­ed eight girls here. There was a piece of un­paint­ed tin or zinc, about eight by twelve inch­es, set up­on the ta­ble to­ward one end, with a list of fifty names on it, and a Chi­nese man, who talked fair En­glish, ex­plained it thus: 'These are the names of singing and danc­ing girls who come here; a man looks over the list and calls for a girl to sing or dance; then he choos­es his girl.'

“We then went to a third place on the same side of the street. Here there was a wild con­fu­sion as we reached the top of the sec­ond flight of stairs and en­tered the front room, and sev­er­al young girls were hus­tled out through the oth­er door and in­to the lit­tle back rooms, and the list of girls' names was hur­ried out of sight. The Chi­nese men were ev­ident­ly much fright­ened. A bold lit­tle girl, very smart­ly dressed, was put for­ward, who an­swered our ques­tions in a loud, brazen man­ner. One of our par­ty ask­ing her if she could sing, she thought the state­ment was made that she was not 'six­teen' (the age un­der which girls are sup­posed to be 'pro­tect­ed' from go­ing in­to pros­ti­tu­tion by British rule), and shout­ed, 'I am _sev­en­teen_.' We stayed on­ly a few min­utes, but were in­formed that they pro­vid­ed opi­um and in­tox­icat­ing liquors here.”

We told our host­ess one day that we de­sired jin­rik­shas that we might be con­veyed to the Pro­tec­torate to in­ter­view the Chief In­spec­tor, hav­ing heard that he de­sired an in­ter­view. As we were leav­ing the house she de­tained us a mo­ment to say, timid­ly: “Ladies, do par­don me, but I feel I must cau­tion you that that man has a very vi­olent tem­per, and it will not do in case you see any­thing, to crit­icise,--no mat­ter what you think. I don't wish to seem to in­trude, but I know the man's rep­uta­tion as to tem­per, and I can­not bear to think of his hav­ing a chance to treat you rude­ly.” We thanked her hearti­ly, and promised to be dou­bly care­ful.

We knew the place. A very im­pos­ing Gov­ern­ment build­ing stand­ing apart by it­self, up­on which much mon­ey had been ex­pend­ed to give it a fine ap­pear­ance. We were soon ush­ered in­to the pres­ence of the man who held the same re­la­tion to the work at Sin­ga­pore that John Lee holds, or at least held the last we knew, at Hong Kong. Will you be­lieve us, when we tell you that to our amaze­ment it was that same white-​haired old man to whom we had been in­tro­duced at the church gath­er­ing as such an ac­tive Chris­tian, “work­ing along much the same lines as our­selves, and at the head and front of ev­ery good work in the Colony?” To be sure we had heard the name of this In­spec­tor, but we had nev­er in our re­motest con­cep­tion con­nect­ed it with the man the Doc­tor had in­tro­duced to us. Con­ceal­ing our sur­prise we sat down for a few mo­ment's in­ter­view. The man knew his les­son “like a book.” We could have prompt­ed him, had he made a mis­take in recit­ing it, from the State doc­uments which we had with us,--the same from which we have com­piled the chap­ters of this lit­tle book. “The work of the Pro­tec­torate is re­al­ly res­cue work, _and that on­ly_.” He had lived in Sin­ga­pore near­ly thir­ty years. He said he had dis­ap­proved of the Con­ta­gious Dis­eases Or­di­nance, when it was in ex­is­tence, but a good thing had grown out of it in the mat­ter of pro­vi­sions for the “pro­tec­tion”, of wom­en. We asked, in ref­er­ence to his re­mark that the Pro­tec­torate was a Res­cue So­ci­ety, if it did not look af­ter men, too. He replied, “Oh yes, the coolies; all are brought here, but the men go to the oth­er side of the build­ing; the wom­en come here.” We asked if all the wom­en came be­fore him; he said, “Be­fore the Pro­tec­tor; but in his ab­sence be­fore me.” We pon­dered on the thought of this “res­cue work” car­ried on by this par­tic­ular Pro­tec­tor of whom we had heard that he had been al­most un­speak­ably vile from boy­hood up. He showed us a book which con­tained a list of all deck-​pas­sen­gers com­ing to Sin­ga­pore, who had been passed un­der re­view at the Pro­tec­torate; they were list­ed by fam­ilies. He then showed us a sep­arate list of wom­en and girls who came alone, with­out fam­ilies. He had un­der­scored with red ink the names of those in the list who had gone in­to broth­els. He said that sus­pi­cious cas­es ei­ther went to the Pro­tec­torate Refuge, or those un­der whose charge they went to live were obliged to give bonds or se­cu­ri­ties, 500 Mex­ican dol­lars was the usu­al amount of the se­cu­ri­ty in the cas­es record­ed. He al­so showed us the form of these bonds, both blank forms and some that had been made out; these bonds re­quired that the girls named there­in should not be re­moved from Sin­ga­pore, and that the girls should be pro­duced from time to time at the Pro­tec­torate, up­on de­mand of the Pro­tec­tor, and with­in twen­ty-​four hours. The bond was good for a spec­ified time named there­on. Then he showed us a book con­tain­ing “_War­rants of Re­moval and De­ten­tion to the Chi­nese Refuge_” for girls un­der six­teen years of age. He al­so showed us lit­tle tick­ets (we had al­ready seen them in a broth­el) and said these con­tained the num­ber and ad­dress of the girls, and if one of these tick­ets was sent back by a girl to the Pro­tec­torate, by any hand or in any man­ner, the Pro­tec­torate would im­me­di­ate­ly send for the girl and lis­ten to her com­plaint. He showed us a book of cas­es, and read us the sto­ry of one girl in par­tic­ular, Ah Moi, and con­grat­ulat­ed him­self on the Pro­tec­torate be­ing at hand to res­cue this girl. We will give this case in full fur­ther on. He re­peat­ed his as­ser­tion that he abom­inat­ed the C.D. Or­di­nance, and said that there were now no com­pul­so­ry ex­am­ina­tions, and no Lock Hos­pi­tal, and that the Gov­ern­ment had noth­ing to do with ex­am­ina­tions in any form. But we replied that we had al­ready vis­it­ed the Lock Hos­pi­tal, and that there were about fif­teen pa­tients there, and asked him how they came to be there. He said any­one could go there; that it was a gen­er­al hos­pi­tal for wom­en, and that all dis­eases would be treat­ed there; that the pa­tients could go away at any time they wished; the Colo­nial Sur­geon was in charge of it. But we asked him how it hap­pened that the de­grad­ed wom­en knew enough to go there in such num­bers; he said they might be ill, and any doc­tor in a pri­vate ca­pac­ity would send them. He had sent them, and would like to send a good many more, when they were very ill. He told us of go­ing over the records, for years back, and of find­ing that the av­er­age of time spent in the broth­el by these girls was three years and a half, while, if they stayed in Can­ton, they would be life-​long pros­ti­tutes. He made much of this point, and ar­gued that it was bet­ter for them to come to Sin­ga­pore in or­der to be set free by the Pro­tec­torate, but ac­knowl­edged that many of them be­came con­cu­bines (in “fol­low­ing a man,” as the Chi­nese ex­press it). He spoke of do­mes­tic slav­ery in Sin­ga­pore, but de­clared it was slav­ery of a very mild sort. We asked who came with the Chi­nese girls when they came to the Pro­tec­torate. He an­swered, “Oh, a friend--the wom­an or 'moth­er' who owns them.” We asked if noth­ing could be done against these traf­fick­ers in girls; he said they could not of­ten get suf­fi­cient proof against them. We saw in one of the records some­thing about “wom­en traf­fick­ers,” and pressed him to know why these could not be caught and ban­ished by means of paid de­tec­tives watch­ing the in­com­ing boats. He replied that it was very hard to get ev­idence; the girls' own state­ments were not enough; the Pro­tec­torate need­ed more pow­er. When asked what pow­ers were fur­ther nec­es­sary, he sug­gest­ed the pow­er to pun­ish the traf­fick­ers of girls by sim­ply the state­ment of the girls who were brought to Sin­ga­pore through fraud, or who were kid­naped. He then spoke of a drug which was used by the wom­en traf­fick­ers to de­stroy the girls' wits; he be­lieved in its ex­is­tence and its use. He said of these cas­es of fraud and kid­nap­ing, “We can usu­al­ly do noth­ing.” We asked if a wom­an was found bring­ing girls over and over again whether she could not be pros­ecut­ed: he an­swered that she might be. We then asked if the Pro­tec­torate had ev­er pros­ecut­ed: he replied, “Oh yes, a few times.” But he grew un­easy un­der these ques­tions; said no one could know or ap­pre­ci­ate the present sit­ua­tion who did not know the con­di­tions of the things in the past, but now he thought they had the best ar­range­ment pos­si­ble for pro­tect­ing the wom­en and girls, and ex­claimed, “But if this or­di­nance were abol­ished I do not know what would be­come of them.” He con­fessed at the close of our talk that he would like to speak freely to us about cer­tain things con­nect­ed with the work which could not be men­tioned pub­licly, and said there were “per­plex­ities--great per­plex­ities.” Yet at the be­gin­ning of the con­ver­sa­tion, when speak­ing of the crit­icism passed up­on the Pro­tec­torate's work, he had said, “Why do they not come here for in­for­ma­tion in­stead of go­ing about crit­icis­ing? our books are all open to pub­lic in­spec­tion.” But we had no­ticed that through­out the in­ter­view he kept the books in his own hands, and on­ly al­lowed us to see what he him­self turned up for our in­spec­tion.

Now as to some of this of­fi­cial's state­ments--we deal with them, not with the ob­ject of crit­icis­ing his _per­son­al_ opin­ions and views and state­ments, but as an _of­fi­cial_ rep­re­sen­ta­tion to us of a Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion.

To be­gin with, he had told us two ab­so­lute false­hoods, at least. One was that there was no Lock Hos­pi­tal at Sin­ga­pore, where­as we had vis­it­ed this Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion and by care­ful in­spec­tion found it was used for _the one pur­pose on­ly_, hav­ing no equip­ment for any oth­er us­es, and there were fif­teen pros­ti­tutes there. When con­front­ed with this knowl­edge, which, re­mem­ber­ing our host­ess' cau­tion as to his tem­per, we ex­pressed as gen­tly as pos­si­ble, he then de­clared it was a gen­er­al hos­pi­tal, which it was not. He de­clared there were no com­pul­so­ry ex­am­ina­tions, and that the Gov­ern­ment had noth­ing to do with ex­am­ina­tions in any form. We thought it wis­est not to give him the in­for­ma­tion that we held at that time, and hold to the present day,--dozens of pa­pers of com­mitt­ment to the Lock Hos­pi­tal for com­pul­so­ry ex­am­ina­tions both in his own hand­writ­ing and in that of the Pro­tec­tor. And some of these cas­es, as the records we have copied show, were those of per­fect­ly in­no­cent girls, ac­knowl­edged to be vir­gins, un­til as­sault­ed by these abom­inable med­ical of­fi­cials and robbed of the fresh bloom of maid­en­ly chasti­ty.

The of­fi­cial spoke of the work of the Pro­tec­torate as “Res­cue work, and that on­ly,” in so far as it dealt with wom­en. But it must be borne in mind that the “Pro­tec­tor” of wom­en and girls was like­wise the Reg­is­trar of broth­els; and that the rules and reg­ula­tions un­der the Wom­en and Girls' Pro­tec­tion Or­di­nance pro­vid­ed, in both Sin­ga­pore and Hong Kong, for ev­ery de­tail in the man­age­ment of broth­els, even to the grant­ing of a per­mit to keep a broth­el, and the de­scrip­tion of the “du­ties” of broth­el-​keep­ers. Sure­ly this part of the Pro­tec­tor's work can­not be called “Res­cue work,” as we are ac­cus­tomed to use the phrase.

Ac­cord­ing to the An­nu­al Re­port of the Pro­tec­torate for 1893, 1,183 wom­en and girls en­tered broth­els with the sanc­tion of the Pro­tec­tor; and quite apart from any dis­cus­sion of whether this sanc­tion should have been giv­en or not, it is quite ap­par­ent that this al­so was not “Res­cue work.”

Dur­ing the same year 1,034 wom­en and girls left the broth­els of Sin­ga­pore, and it is ap­par­ent that we must look among these main­ly for res­cued cas­es. Of this 1,034 the fol­low­ing ac­count is giv­en:

Ab­scond­ed 63 Died 21 Gone to “Pri­vate Hous­es” 346 Mar­ried 69 To be ac­count­ed for 451

We have an ex­pla­na­tion in the Pro­tec­tor's own words of what is meant by a girl who has “ab­scond­ed.” “It is com­mon now, when an own­er no­tices one of her girls con­tract­ing a con­tin­ued in­ti­ma­cy with a male vis­itor (and there­fore to be sus­pect­ed of an in­ten­tion to ap­ply to our of­fice for re­lease), for the own­er to sell the girl away to an­oth­er coun­try. When this has been ac­com­plished, the broth­el keep­er re­ports the pros­ti­tute has ab­scond­ed, and, if we can­not prove the con­trary, we are obliged to ac­cept the sto­ry and strike the name off our books.” What would we think in Amer­ica of a “Res­cue work, and that on­ly,” with all the ad­van­tages of Gov­ern­ment back­ing; un­der con­stant surveil­lance; ev­ery girl reg­is­tered; that per­mit­ted 63 girls in a year to be de­feat­ed in their de­sire to mar­ry by be­ing sold as slaves in­to for­eign parts; that al­lowed 346 of the girls to “go to pri­vate hous­es,” as do­mes­tic slaves or con­cu­bines; that did not ac­count at all for 451 girls; and saw on­ly 69 mar­ried; and all this out of 1,034 cas­es it had ab­so­lute­ly with­in its con­trol?

The In­spec­tor spoke of the _per­son­al tick­ets_ giv­en in­to the hands of each girl, which if sent to the Pro­tec­torate at any time, would se­cure a hear­ing for her be­fore the Pro­tec­torate. It is al­so de­clared that no­tice is post­ed up in ev­ery broth­el in a con­spic­uous place, that no girl can be de­tained against her will. We vis­it­ed a place on Fras­er Street the night of Febru­ary 2nd; quot­ing from our jour­nal:

“There was a mid­dle-​aged wom­an in charge, with a ba­by be­side her on the couch where she was sit­ting. There were six girls present, the old­est bare­ly six­teen years old in ap­pear­ance, and one be­tween four­teen and fif­teen--a thin, im­ma­ture lit­tle crea­ture. We asked about this young girl, and one of our in­ter­preters over­heard the keep­er in­struct her to say she had been in the house two years. Then we asked the girl her name, and the keep­er told her to tell us a dif­fer­ent name from the one she first gave us. We saw hang­ing on the wall, a black bag, which we were al­lowed to take down and ex­am­ine. It con­tained a board eight by ten inch­es square, on which was past­ed a pa­per bear­ing a list of the in­mates. The list was head­ed by the keep­er's name, Moo Lee, in writ­ing. Then was print­ed across the top in Chi­nese char­ac­ters a state­ment that in­mates could not be con­fined against their will. (The ques­tion was whether, in our ab­sence, the girls would be al­lowed to take this bag down, open it, and read the sen­tence of lib­er­ty in­side.) We showed this to the girls, and asked them if they could read the Chi­nese writ­ten there­on, and they all, even to the broth­el-​keep­er, said they could not. We then asked them what was the _mean­ing_ of the words, and none of them could tell. One girl said, 'We can­not read them, but the great man at the Pro­tec­torate can read them.' We asked them if they had tick­ets, and they showed us lit­tle square pieces of pa­per ex­act­ly sim­ilar to one which we hold in our pos­ses­sion. The tick­ets were all so blurred that the ed­ucat­ed Chi­nese gen­tle­man who ac­com­pa­nied us tried in vain to make out its full mean­ing. It is by means of these things, put in the hands of Chi­nese wom­en who are ut­ter­ly un­able to read a word of Chi­nese, that their lib­er­ty is pro­fess­ed­ly giv­en them.”

Now as to the case of Ah Moi, of whom the In­spec­tor spoke as il­lus­trat­ing the benef­icent work of the Pro­tec­torate. He had lit­tle idea how much we knew of the case or he would nev­er have brought it up. There is at Sin­ga­pore a Refuge for girls, man­aged by the Chi­nese So­ci­ety, the Po Le­ung Kuk, or­ga­nized orig­inal­ly at Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore to put down kid­nap­ing. The In­spec­tor one day, Jan­uary 4th, 1894, sent a girl of fif­teen over to the Refuge with a note to the Ma­tron, and on the fol­low­ing morn­ing, or­dered her sent to the Lock Hos­pi­tal for ex­am­ina­tion. We saw the record­ed re­sult of that ex­am­ina­tion in the hand­writ­ing of the doc­tor at the hos­pi­tal, and it was to the ef­fect that the girl was suf­fer­ing from dis­ease due to vice. Af­ter that the Ma­tron got a note from the In­spec­tor say­ing: “Ah Moi can be writ­ten off your books, as she has been sent to hos­pi­tal, and af­ter she leaves hos­pi­tal she in­tends go­ing to a house of ill-​fame.”

Now the rules for­bade all re­li­gious in­struc­tion, or any sort of in­struc­tion in this Refuge, since the Chi­nese men who con­tribut­ed to its sup­port were op­posed to wom­en be­ing taught any­thing. But the Ma­tron had threat­ened to leave if she could not teach and train the girls. So she was al­lowed, out of her own slen­der salary, to hire a teach­er on her own ac­count, and this she did. The good Chris­tian man whom she had hired came and told her he had learned that Ah Moi was a good girl, and was from a Mis­sion School in Can­ton, and fi­nal­ly he brought the girl's own moth­er, who tes­ti­fied that this was true. We have not space to go in­to this sto­ry in de­tail, but we lat­er vis­it­ed the school at Can­ton from which the girl had been brought, talked with the teach­ers who had had her un­der their care for years, and it was lit­er­al­ly true,--that she was a per­fect­ly pure girl (and how could she have been suf­fer­ing from such a dis­ease?), who had been en­trapped for such a dread­ful fate. She would have been put in­to a life of shame by the In­spec­tor, nev­er to have es­caped her ter­ri­ble servi­tude, prob­ably, but for the en­er­get­ic ef­forts of this Chi­nese Chris­tian man and the Refuge Ma­tron, who res­cued her from the Pro­tec­torate and its wicked busi­ness of as­sign­ing girls to broth­els. And here sat the In­spec­tor, telling us this sto­ry, of which we knew so much, (and learned more at Can­ton lat­er), as an in­stance of the “res­cue work” of his of­fice!

Al­most the last day of our painful work at Sin­ga­pore had come. We had gath­ered much ev­idence, and had good hope that some­thing could be done with it in Lon­don. “This is my birth-​day,” one of us said to the oth­er, as we spun along in our jin­rik­shas to­ward the Refuge. “I think we ought to have some un­usu­al good for­tune in gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion to­day. At least we can get some of these lit­tle chil­dren tak­en out of their ter­ri­ble per­il in the broth­els. The Ma­tron of the Refuge says she _knows_ the of­fi­cials are ig­no­rant of their pres­ence there. They have so of­ten talked of their ex­treme care at that point. Will it not be good to see some­thing ac­tu­al­ly done and at once about that mat­ter? She was to in­ter­view the In­spec­tor yes­ter­day, and will re­port to us to­day.” And so we chat­ted on, We had been hor­ri­fied to en­counter in a sin­gle night's work some thir­ty lit­tle girls play­ing about the rooms of broth­els. That at least would nev­er be al­lowed. We were so glad the law was so very strict, and we had been as­sured strict­ly en­forced at that point. It read: “Any per­son who re­ceives a girl un­der the age of six­teen in­to a broth­el, or har­bors any such girl in a broth­el, shall (un­til the con­trary be proved) be deemed to have ob­tained pos­ses­sion of such girl with the in­tent or knowl­edge in clause one of sub-​sec­tion one men­tioned.” This clause reads: “with the in­tent that such girl shall be used for the pur­pose of pros­ti­tu­tion,” and the penal­ty, “li­abil­ity to im­pris­on­ment for a term not ex­ceed­ing one year, or to a fine not ex­ceed­ing $500, or to both.” If that law failed be­cause of what would pass as proof to the con­trary, at any rate there was the fur­ther pro­vi­sion that the chil­dren could be re­moved to places of safe­ty, at least to the Refuge. “A girl found liv­ing in or fre­quent­ing a broth­el shall be deemed to be a girl who is be­ing trained for im­moral pur­pos­es.” And “The Pro­tec­tor, if on due in­quiry he is sat­is­fied that any girl is be­ing ... trained for such pur­pos­es, and that such girl is un­der the age of six­teen years, may ... or­der such girl to be re­moved to a place of safe­ty,” etc., etc. The way seemed per­fect­ly clear un­der such laws, to se­cure the safe­ty of the chil­dren.

At the door of the Refuge we were glad to es­cape from our jin­rik­shas in­to the cool shade of the house. The Ma­tron seemed much trou­bled, and spoke of things that she had not un­der­stood pre­vi­ous­ly, but now that she had learned many things from our in­ves­ti­ga­tions and from her own ques­tion­ing of the girls, they had tak­en on a painful mean­ing to her.

Our hearts grew heav­ier and heav­ier as we talked to­geth­er. The Ma­tron, said: “Why, I thought when I came here it was to do a reg­ular Chris­tian work for these girls. That was my pur­pose, but the more I in­quire in­to the mat­ter, and study over the things I am ex­pect­ed to do and ask no ques­tions, such as send­ing girls over to the Lock Hos­pi­tal at the Chief In­spec­tor's re­quest, the more I feel that I am be­ing worked for pur­pos­es of which I can­not ap­prove. I can­not stay here.”

At last we got to ask her about her talk with the In­spec­tor. “What did he say when you told him what we dis­cov­ered the oth­er night--that lit­tle girls go freely to the Li­censed Eat­ing Hous­es, and live in the broth­els?” “Is it re­al­ly true that the au­thor­ities have been de­ceived, and did not know of this fla­grant vi­ola­tion of the Or­di­nance to pro­tect wom­en and girls?”

The Ma­tron's face was sad­ly trou­bled. She gazed at us a mo­ment qui­et­ly, and then said:

“He told me, Why, of course he knew about those chil­dren. There were scores of them.”

“But will he do noth­ing about the mat­ter?” we ex­claimed.

She replied: “He said: 'What can I do? I caught a whole hand­ful of them once and sent them to the Lock Hos­pi­tal, and had them all ex­am­ined. The doc­tor pro­nounced them all vir­gins, so I could do noth­ing as yet, and I let them all go back.'”

We ut­tered ex­cla­ma­tions of hor­ror.

“A hand­ful!”--did he think no more of them than of so many min­nows!

And they had gone through the hor­ri­ble or­deal at the Lock Hos­pi­tal!

And he must leave them in the broth­els yet for awhile,--un­til when?--un­til, Oh piti­ful God!--un­til they were all “de­flow­ered ac­cord­ing to bar­gain.” And then he might con­sid­er the ad­vis­abil­ity of do­ing some­thing.

The head reeled. We felt stilled. We must get out in the fresh morn­ing breeze. Some­thing broke some­where about the heart. We went out and got in­to our jin­rik­shas, and went away home as in mid­night dark­ness, call­ing up­on the name of our God all the way. Life on this hell-​scorched earth has nev­er held the same hap­py delu­sions for us since, but there is a city out of sight “whose Builder and Mak­er is God.” That we will seek.