4
relieves the servitude of the inmates, as to which, in reply to your Despatch of 13th November 1880*, I have called for further explanations, this would form a ground for carefully reviewing and improving the manner in which that supervision is exercised, not for withdrawing it altogether from the houses for Chinese only, which form the great majority of the brothels, and leaving the unhappy inmates to their fate without an attempt at ameliorating their condition; and I have not failed to observe that Mr. Cecil Smith, in the 17th paragraph of his letter to Sir F. Rogers, printed at page 253 of the appendix, reports "that these instances of virtual slavery exist entirely in the brothels "for Chinese, where the women are seen by their own countrymen, and not in the other "houses which are frequented by foreigners."
The report, at page 47, states the intention of the Government to have been that the Ordinance of 1857 should be worked with the aid of the whole body of police, but indicates that the then superintendent having set his face against the Ordinance, and not having (to use his own words) "permitted the police to have anything to do with the control and supervision of brothels under the Ordinance, being apart from the general objects of police duties, and from the great probability of its leading to corruption," it came about that the office of Inspector of Brothels was created, and fell into the hands of inferior men (Rep., pp. 47, 48).
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The power of visiting and inspecting registered brothels was, by section 7 of the Ordinance of 1857, vested in the Registrar-General (who had some months previously, by Ordinance 6 of 1857, been created Protector of the Chinese) and the chief officers of police; and it is evident, from the wording of the section, that these powers were distinct, and proceeded upon other grounds than the sanitary inspection of the women by the medical officers.
A similar distinction is to be found in the 10th section of the same Ordinance; and these powers of supervising registered houses were again distinct from the provisions relating to the prosecution of unregistered brothels, matters which it was obviously meant should be dealt with by the police in the same manner as other breaches of the statute law.
The attitude, however, which the police were allowed to adopt towards the Ordinance appears to me to be one of the causes which frustrated Mr. Labouchere's humane inten- tions; and as soon as the object was thus lost sight of which induced the Secretary of State to desire that these establishments should be "under the eye, and in some measure under the control, of the Government," it not unnaturally followed that the special provisions of the Ordinance came to be regarded as little more than machinery for the detection and suppression of unregistered or unlicensed brothels. And as the police, who, I presume, are acquainted with the character of the houses in their several beats, seem to have given little assistance towards the enforcement of the law in these particulars, it is not surprising that the inspectors, whose means of obtaining proofs was likely to be less complete, should have been driven to extraordinary devices for procuring evidence in the cases which in the discharge of their duties they found themselves required to bring forward. It seems, indeed, from document No. 32, printed at page 225, that there need have been no difficulty in identifying unlicensed houses, for on that occasion, in 1866, ninety-four were detected in two nights without the aid of the inspector.
The system of informers paid to obtain evidence by personal intercourse with women, which was introduced in 1860 simultaneously with the appointment of inspectors (p. 10 of Report), was a revolting abuse, which you most properly put a stop to as far back as the month of October 1877.+
The Commission is dated 12th November 1877, and the report December 1878. It was, therefore, scarcely necessary for the report to have contained so full an analysis of the cases in which this discontinued system had been employed, or the many pages of proceedings in such cases which are printed in the Appendix."
Turning to the medical side of the subject, I may observe that the report seems to me to pass over somewhat too lightly the horrible circumstances which gave rise to the discussion which led up to the Ordinance of 1957, and to attach, at least, as much weight to Mr. May's recollection of matters which occurred 20 years before as it does to the official reports written at the time, and not all printed.
At page 33 the report states that, in the absence of returns prior to 1857, the framers were not in a position to compare the state of things which existed before and subsequent
* No. 57.
† No 1.
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to 1858. That "the letters from the Naval Medical Authorities and the Colonial Surgeon "contain deplorable accounts of the health of the men under their charge. On the "other hand, Mr. May, who was then in charge of the Police Force, has told us that, "before the Ordinance of 1857, we had no great cause to complain; and that his atten- "tion was not drawn to any very special virulence in the nature of the disease either by "fact or by any person;" and the same paragraph quotes other passages from his evidence to the same purport.
The Appendix, p. 204-207, contains naval reports, all showing the frequency and aggravated nature of the disease. I notice especially Captain Hoste's letter of 18th October 1854, and its enclosure, from which it appears that in 1853 and 1854 the crew of H.M.S. "Spartan" contracted syphilis in Hong Kong in the proportion of 5 and 6 per cent. of the ship's company; while in Macao, where supervision was exer- cised over prostitution, the per-centage of cases was only 2 per cent.; and Admiral Stirling's letter of 7th March 1855, and its enclosure, reporting that one third of the These numbers do crew of H.M.S. "Winchester" was affected during the year 1854.
not cover the whole of the evil, for the tertiary affections and the aggravation of other diseases by syphilitic taint are not mentioned.
These reports do not mention the police; but the Colonial Surgeon, reporting on the 7th April 1856, states: "The police, both European and native, labour under the "disease in a most frightful form;" and in a later report, dated 28th March 1857, he states: "I beg to assure you that among the police and sailors of Hong Kong, some of "the worst forms of the venereal disease are to be seen." Neither of these reports is printed in the Appendix; the first is enclosed in Sir John Bowring's despatch of 2nd May 1856; the other in that officer's despatch of 20th March 1857.
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Among the enclosures to the despatch No. 69, is a short minute by Colonel Caine, the Lieutenant-Governor, in which he speaks of the disease" which has hitherto caused ravages too fearful to detail, not only in our naval and military forces, but also in the population generally." Also a memorandum by the Chief Justice, Mr. Hulme, in which I find him saying, "when I consider the frightful extent to which the venereal "disease is prevalent in this Colony, its virulence, and the frightful ravages it commits.” The Colonial Surgeon, Mr. Dempster, of the Army Medical Department, in his report in the same dispatch, says, "I have now the honour to state, for the information of his Excellency the Governor, that during my experience I have never before witnessed, "in any station where I have served, such ravages inflicted by the disease on persons "affected with it as in this Colony. I beg to state that almost every sailor admitted "into the Seamen's Hospital with fever, bowel affections, &c. is also affected with the ❝ venereal. In the jail many of the Chinese prisoners are affected with the disease in a "most virulent form; and, as to the European prisoners (mostly sailors), nearly all are " affected."
*
Then follows the sentence above quoted about the police, and the report proceeds: "I have had under my care female prostitutes (picked up by the police in the streets, "and evidently turned out by the brothel keepers for the purpose) suffering from the "disease in the most shocking form I ever beheld. Death at last put an end to their sufferings." Speaking of merchant ships, he says: "In one instance a captain had shipped eight seamen; he put to sea, and in a few days returned with the said crew, totally unable to work the ship, being fearfully affected with the venereal.'
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46
"
The Colonial Surgeon then proceeds to contrast this state of things with Gibraltar, where he bad ascertained "the benefit derived from sanitary rules."
These official records, none of which are printed in the appendix, show plainly the state of things which existed before 1858, and fully deserved to have received equal prominence with the opposite view which rests upon Mr. May's recollec- tion, especially as these records are further supported by a letter from Dr. Pot- tinger, R.N., dated 28th December 1870 (printed appendix, page 282), giving bis vivid remembrance of the state of Hong Kong in this respect when he served on the station in the ship "Reynard" in the years 1849-50-51, and by another letter (also appendix, page 282) from Dr. Ramsay, of the 75th Regiment, speaking of that officer's recollection of the Colony in 1857. Both of these letters contrast the very different state of affairs existing in 1870.
The correspondence connected with the passing of the Ordinance of 1867 and The only the latest records on the subject are free from such painful statements.
two European medical men examined testify to the same effect. The first, Dr. Ayres, says (answer 1,439) that the disease (syphilis) which he has seen is of a very innocent type,
A 3
t
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