4.6
C4
cit
C63
Hong Kong, at the time were five-sixths of all the
women, and according to a Chinese medical
practitioner, three-quarters. The total number of
women at the census of 1876 was 24,387. The
Commission's report contains first a note on the conditions of prostitution in Hong Kong. The difference between the local and the western variety is emphasized. The women are honest, orderly, not necessarily without self-respect and have a good chance of marriage.
Chinese houses, if left to
themselves, and used only by Chinese, are not
disorderly, are not diseased, are better unregulated. But where the system comes in contact with foreign people, degradation results. It is the foreign houses used by soldiers, sailors and foreign riff-raff where disease and cruelty flourish, and only the most degraded women will enter these except under
compulsion. Medical inspection was considered a terrible humiliation and had been punitively used.
The Commission condemned the laws and their
administration.
They found that convictions had
been obtained by scandalous methods, that unlicensed houses had not been suppressed, that venereal disease had not been checked, that licensed foreign brothels and not unlicensed houses were the sources of infection, that the granting of licenses in return for fees
paid was objectionable; but for the conclusions of
high naval and military medical authorities they would recommend that prostitution should be dealt
with solely as a matter of law and order; as it was
they