# 23
具禀人代闔港華紳商民
槊安
馮明珊
馮登
陳灼之
黃筠堂
招雨田
彭逸圃
崔瑞生
胡浩泉
等爲乞
郭松
黃棠
梁變坡
馮衍庭
郭南屏
恩變通例意分別辦理以順輿情而恤民事本港地近省城各處貧民多有賣女鬻男以求生活因華官向無例禁故歴久相安近因有等貪利匪徒假託買婢爲名轉外洋爲被砍亂玉硃堪痛恨去歲曾禀請憲台求設保長公會以期杜絕此風董等嫉惡如仇已可槪見至於買子承嗣買女爲婢者則與此等大相懸殊買子者因後嗣乏人欲藉螟蛉之繼
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 a 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 has 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 am 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 goes, 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 and 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 Officer, as I pointed out in an opinion I gave on C.S.O. 2616 of 1879.
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 small 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 experience 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 America.
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 insufficient information, but justice and truth demand it.
3. Are the placards referring to run-away female 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.
(Translation.)
To His Excellency the Governor.
The petition of the undersigned Committee-members and merchants, acting on behalf of the Chinese Community of Hongkong, viz.:-
TIN WONG K'WAN-T'ONG, LEUNG ON, KWOK TSUNG, FUNG MING-SHAN, WONG SHU-T'ONG, FUNG TANG, LEUNG LUN-PO, CH'AN CHÉUK-CHI, FUNG YIN-TING, TSUI SUI-SUANG, PHANG YUI P'Ò, Ú HO-TS'ÜN, KWOK NAM-PING and others, praying Your Excellency to be pleased to stretch a point of law and to apply it with discrimination, so as to yield to the feelings of the people, and to extend compassionate consideration to their views.
Sheweth,--
That whereas the Colony of Hongkong is situated in the immediate neighbourhood of the Canton Province, many of the poor, from all sorts of places, sell their daughters or dispose of their sons to save their own lives (from starvation), and as the Chinese Government has never prohibited the practice, it was hitherto continued for a long time without interference,
That lately, however, there were certain avaricious rogues and vagabonds who, under the pretext of buying girls to be employed as domestic servants, sold them from hand to hand to be sent abroad for purposes of prostitution, such confusion of stones with pearls being a matter for extreme regret,
That Your Petitioners last year addressed Your Excellency by petition on this subject, praying for permission to establish a Society for the protection (of women and children), hoping thereby to stamp out such practices, whence it will be seen that the undersigned Committee-members hate such wicked practices as one hates an enemy,
That the practice of purchasing boys for purposes of adoption, and the practice of buying girls for purposes of domestic servitude, widely differ from the above-mentioned wicked practices, because the purchasing of boys has its reason in the absence of male descendants creating a desire to adopt a son as the sphex adopts the mulberry insect, whilst the buying of girls has its origin in the necessity for a division of labour caused by the multifarious character of domestic duties,
That such servant girls being young have both to be taught and to be tended, and when they have reached maturity, they have to be given in marriage (to free men), whilst all along they are allowed to take their ease and have no hard work to do,
That all former Governors of this Colony were fully aware of these social customs of the Chinese people and never insisted upon the law being set in motion against them, but treated the matter with indulgence and forbore prosecution,
That Your Petitioners find that, in the year 1841, His Excellency Governor ELLIOT issued a