R.J. MINERS
wider powers to investigate and break into any house suspected of being a brothel without a warrant and to arrest any inmate or any suspected prostitute on the streets.
The legal system of control in operation from 1857 to 1889 placed the licensing of brothels under the control of the Registrar General. Brothels were confined to certain designated localities with separate districts for those catering for European and those catering for Chinese clients, and penalties were imposed for keeping a brothel outside these areas or an unlicensed brothel within them. Brothel-keepers had to supply the Registrar General with up-to-date lists of their prostitutes and these lists also had to be on display in every brothel. Brothels were subject to inspection by the police and medical authorities at any time. All new prostitutes were brought by their brothel-keepers before the Registrar General who questioned them to ensure that they were entering the profession of their own free will and had not been kidnapped or otherwise forced into servitude. All prostitutes were required to attend for a weekly inspection at the Lock Hospital and were then issued with a certificate of good health which could be shown to their clients, and those found to be diseased were detained at the hospital until cured. This was the system as imposed by law; the practice was rather different.
Chinese prostitutes catering for Chinese clients had always objected vigorously to being examined internally by a European doctor and would prefer to suffer any punishment rather than submit to such an indignity.' So compulsory medical inspections were imposed only on the inmates of brothels catering for the European population, principally servicemen and seamen. The Registrar General had the legal power to compel other prostitutes to be medically examined, but if they became diseased they normally made their own arrangements with Chinese doctors or herbalists or were sent back to Canton by the brothel-keepers.
Regulations made by the Governor segregated the licensed brothels catering for Europeans to the east end of the city and those for Chinese to the west end, and brothel-keepers were required to ensure that their houses were not visited by clients from the other community. This regulation, together with the police campaigns to close down unlicensed houses (the so-called 'sly brothels') made it less likely that servicemen would come into contact with prostitutes who had not been medically examined and certified to be
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