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'THE HỌNGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 4TM FEBRUARY, 1880.
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rally, in Australia and California. The average price paid in those places for a good-looking woman, 16 to 18 years old is, as far as my information goes, $350. Another source causing a demand occasionally supplied by kidnapping is the system of adoption and the system of domestic servitude, but as generally only young
children are thus bought, the average price is, I am told, only $40, yet the demand being large and the age of the children required low, there is evidently, in spite of the low price, strong cause to suppose that the abuses naturally connected with these systems of adoption and domestic servitude tend to encourage kidnapping. As to the system of concubinage practised by Chinese, the average price a Chinaman here pays for a concubine is, I am told, about $100. But this demand is generally supplied by an arrangement of mutual consent with the woman concerned and her parents, or by an equally voluntary bargain with the woman and her so-called pocket-mother (often a brothel keeper), yet it may occasionally be supplied by kidnapping, though rarely. Brothels also form source, creating a demand supplied by kidnapping, but I believe, Hongkong brothels dare not, unless in very peculiar cases, purchase kidnapped girls because the girls form so many acquaintances ready to betray the facts of the case to the friends of kidnapped girls. Besides these brothels have their own sources of supply. As to Chinese women kept by foreigners, the practice formerly obtained largely to buy a girl out and out, or in other words, redeeming her and giving her back her freedom by paying from $300 to $600 to her pocket-mother or owner. During the last 10 years this practice hus very much decreased and may be said to be almost extinct in Hongkong whilst it lingers yet to a small extent among foreign residents at the Treaty Ports. The prevailing practice is now merely to pay a kept woman a fixed sum from $10 to $50 per mensem, whether she be her own mistress or owned by a so-called pocket-mother. The system of monthly payment has, I aun confident, no connection whatever with kidnapping. To a certain extent, however, though small, the practice of buying a girl out and out still exists. The prices paid in buying a girl out and out are, as far as my information from $200 to $500 in the case of a Chinese girl, and from $400 to $1,200 in the case of a half-cast girl. In all these cases buying a girl is virtually giving her back her freedom, the money being paid, on a deed made out in Chinese, to the pocket-mother, and the girl afterwards receives from $10 to $50 per mensem from the foreigner who keeps her. The buying of half-cast girls, high as the prices are, has, I am sure, no connection with und no influence whatever on kidnapping. The buying of Chinese girls, at prices ($200 to $500) higher than those paid by Chinese for their wives and concubines, may have an influence encouraging kidnapping, but it can only be indirectly. A kidnapped girl sold to a foreigner would be sure to get her kidnappers into trouble. I am therefore inclined to think that the high prices paid by foreigners for kept women have no appreciable influence in the way of increasing the demand supplied by kidnapping. In short I believe that kidnapping is caused almost entirely by the demand for Chinese girls outside the Colony of Hongkong and is fostered by that defect of the law which allows a ship to take 20 female passengers without their coming at all under the cognizance of the Emigration Ollicer, as I pointed out in an opinion I gave on C. S. O. 2616 of 1879.
goes,
2. What becomes of these women and their children ?
The women kept by foreigners in Hongkong are, as a rule, rather raised in their own esteem by the connection, of the immorality of which they have no idea; they are also, as a rule, better off than the concubines of Chinese well-to-do merchants; they are generally provided for, by the foreigners who kept them, when the connection is severed, and at any rate these women are as a rule thrifty, and always manage to save money which they invest in Bank deposits, also in house property, but principally in buying female infants whom they rear for sale to or concubinage with foreigners, by which they generally, gain a competency in about 10 years.
The children of these women are invariably sent to school. In fact these women understand the value of education and prize it far more than respectable Chinese women do. The boys are invariably sent to the Government Central School where they generally distinguish themselves, and as a rule these boys obtain good situations in Hongkong, in the open ports and abroad. The girls crowd into the schools kept by Missionary Societies. These children are generally provided with a stnall patrimony by their putative fathers. They dress almost invariably in Chinese costume and adopt Chinese customs, unless they are taken up by ill-advised agents of foreign charity. I am quite positive, as far as my ex- 'perience and the information I received from many gentlemen in the best position to judge goes, that they do not in any way resemble the mean whites in the Southern States of Amerien.'
I regret I have to contradict so flatly on this point the statement of His Lordship the Chief Justice which is in my opinion based on insuflicient information, but justice and truth demand it.
3. Are the placards referring to run-away feinale servants obnoxious?
I am quite sure that the Chief Justice's opinion regarding these placards has been formed on the basis of a bad translation. Besides these placards are issued on account of the responsibility the owners of a servant girl incur vis-à-vis the parents of the girl, if she cannot be found.
For the parents are by Chinese law and custom entitled to prosecute the owners for damages if the latter cannot prove that they have used reasonable diligence to find the run-away girl again.
1st November, 1879.
E. J. EITEL.
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