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tutes in Hong Kong suffered from disease. The committee considered that an ‘admirable arrangement' would be the restoration of the old system of tolerated brothels confined to servicemen and subject to medical inspection, but they recognised that this was out of the question. So a variety of palliative measures were proposed such as a wide definition of the offence of soliciting in the street, more police, greater use by government of the power of deportation to rid the colony of known prostitutes, increased provision of treatment facilities and free hostel accommodation to encourage infected women to persevere to the end of their treatment. There is no information on how far these measures were implemented in wartime Hong Kong, or how successful they were.
After the occupation in 1941 the Japanese authorities reinstated a system of controlled and medically inspected houses in Wanchai for the use of their own troops. These were once more closed down as soon as British rule was restored.
The system of licensed prostitution in Hong Kong originally had two purposes: the control of the spread of venereal disease, particularly among the soldiers and sailors of the garrison, and the prevention of the exploitation of Chinese prostitutes in conditions which often amounted to virtual servitude. In practice the first aim always had priority, and while the system of licensed prostitution was in operation, legally from 1857 to 1894, extra-legally from 1900 to 1932, it seems to have been largely achieved. But control over Chinese prostitutes catering for Chinese clients was always less comprehensive and less strictly enforced. It served to curb the environmental pollution of brothels operating in respectable residential neighbourhoods, (apparently the main concern of the Chinese elite), and it may have reduced somewhat the incidence of venereal disease, but it probably failed in its ostensible purpose of preventing brothel slavery. Practically all prostitutes appearing before the Secretary for Chinese Affairs in order to be registered were brought by their brothel mistresses and had been coached in the replies they should make to the stereotyped questions asked: 99 per cent claimed to be between 21 and 24 years old and to have entered the colony only a few days previously. Few if any attempted to avail themselves of the help of the secretariat to escape from their profession.