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nior officials at the Colonial Office, including the Permanent Under-Secretary, favoured a return to the old system of control.20 But because of the pressure of public opinion in Britain and the attitude of the House of Commons the Secretary of State, Joseph Chamberlain, decided that it was politically impossible to sanction the re-enactment of the contagious diseases legislation in any form. He was, however, prepared to allow the introduction of amending legislation which would make it an offence for the keeper of a brothel to permit any woman suffering from venereal disease to remain on the premises; and also an amendment empowering a magistrate to close down any brothel if an application was made by the Captain Superintendent of Police or the Registrar General.21 This change was designed to meet the complaints voiced by the Chinese unofficials about the number of brothels being opened in hitherto respectable areas of the city. The minutes written on the Colonial Office file make it clear that it was foreseen in London that this discretionary power to close down any brothel would in effect allow the Hong Kong government to reintroduce the zoning of certain parts of the city as areas where brothels were tolerated, but this implication was not spelled out in the despatch since it was later to be published in a paper laid before the House of Commons.22
The Governor accepted these proposals with alacrity and informed the Colonial Office that they ought to give the government complete power to deal with the question. This was a remarkable statement in view of the Governor's previous contention that a full return to regulation and compulsory inspection was necessary. Even more surprisingly the subject of brothels and venereal disease then disappeared completely from the correspondence between Hong Kong and London for the next twenty years. The Colonial Office made no attempt to enquire exactly what the Hong Kong government was doing; ministers and officials were evidently only too glad that this politically embarrassing issue had disappeared from view and had also ceased to be raised in the House of Commons. But someone in the Hong Kong administration had realised that the discretionary power at the disposal of the government to order the closure of a brothel or to tolerate its continued existence could be used to reintroduce extra-legally the whole system of statutory control which had been dismantled by