4
117
1
1
93
$
work off their passage money by two years' service on the Sugar plantations of the Sandwich Islands.
5.
When this was brought to my notice by some Chinese gentlemen in 1848, I took on my responsibility of declining to issue licence for such Emigration; and, with Sir Michael Hicks Beach's approval, the system which Captain Thomsett had tolerated for some
6.
years was stopped. In the year 1878, Sir William Robinson, then Governor of Singapore, drew my attention to the fact that the Emigration Officer at Hongkong passed as "free Emigrants" certain Chinese girls, some of whom had been purchased in Hongkong and some of whom had sold themselves for considerable sums on a verbal contract to do service for two years, as prostitutes in the licensed brothels of Singapore. The United States' Consul in Hongkong represented to me also, more than once, that in endeavouring to check the traffic to California of Chinese girls who had entered into verbal contracts of brothel service, he felt compelled to rely on the assistance of the Committee of the Tung Wah Hospital, as he considered the examination of these women at the Hongkong Harbour Office