PUBLIC
RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TLC.O. 882
6 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
See report
108
2. It may well be that the most effective check on existing evils would be found, as has always been contended on the side of the Colony in renewing the repealed Ordi- nances, but I wish you to understand, and I wish you to give your officers to understand, that I have no intention of allowing the repealed Ordinances to be held out as the only remedy, or the fact that they have not been renewed to be pleaded as an excuse for not taking active measures in other directions.
3. Especially I do not admit that legal registration of brothels is the one and only preventive of brothel slavery, and the Chinese Protectorate and the police must be held responsible for dealing effectively with this abuse with such powers as are now given them or as may be given them in future.
4. If there is any weakness in the staff of the police or the Protectorate, either in regard to numbers or to the character of the men employed, or to the supervision at present exercised over them, I should gladly consider any proposals from you which would increase the efficiency of the administrations specially charged with this most important and delicate duty.
I have, &c.,
11454.
No. 30.
J. CHAMBERLAIN.
STRAITS SETTLEMENTS.
GOVERNOR SIR C. B. H. MITCHELL to MR. CHAMBERLAIN.
(No. 134.) SIR,
(Received May 8, 1899.)
[Answered by No. 34.]
Government House, Singapore, April 12, 1899. EVER since my return to this Colony I have been constantly engaged in consider- ing the subject of your despatch, No. 35, of the 18th February, 1898, viz., the preva- lence in this Colony of venereal disease of the foulest kind.
I have also had under consideration Sir A. Swettenham's despatches to you, Nos. 227 of 5th August, 1898, No. 238 of 11th August, 1898, and "Confidential" of 8th September, 1898,† as well as the suggestions made at interviews in the Colonial Office during my recent leave in England.
2. In January last, after my return, I consulted confidentially several influential Chinese residents, and I have since obtained their advice, which I enclose.
In consequence of a desire, which some of the Chinese expressed, that measures against this disease should be taken by the municipal body of Singapore, I consulted confidentially the President and Unofficial Members of the Corporation, and I enclose their opinion, which is adverse to their undertaking any responsibility in the matter.
3. Before going further, I may inform you that, though the Army returns for last year show an improvement in the health of the troops in garrison here in respect of venereal diseases, this improvement must be attributed to better discipline or to some other cause. I can indicate no improvement in the general health of the town popula- tion, for the prison returns of Singapore show that out of 4,083 prisoners admitted into gaol in 1898, no less than 2,048 had signs of suffering, or of having suffered, from venereal disease.
4. I proceed now to discuss the various proposals which have been made :-
Contagious Disease ()rdinance.
(a) The old Contagious Diseases Ordinances. The local Committee has reported enclosed in that these were, to a large extent, effectual in checking the spread of venereal disease in
the Colony.
despatch No. 227, 5th August, 1898.
It is impossible to gainsay this report, which is signed by the three medical men, who, from their position, know most about the matter, and all the evidence taken by them, both for and against the Ordinance, admits as a fact that the disease is now more virulent and widespread than before the repeal of the Ordinance.
• No. 20.
↑ Nos. 24 and 25; and 20081, not printed.
109
The Committee add that the working of the Ordinance gave rise to no administra- tive abuses, and rely, rather weakly, I think, for this conclusion on the fact that a clergyman who testified before them was not in a position to mention any.
am strongly inclined to believe that such Ordinances cannot be worked without occasional mistakes, even in a free community. But worked, as they must be here, by a police force, the lower members of which are often venal, in a community which is anything but free, there would always be a grave risk of administrative abuse.
Since the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance every year's experience has shown that gangs of lawless men have been tempted to levy blackmail on whole streets of brothels, enforcing their demands by violence. When detected, these men have usually been banished by the Executive, but the general prevalence of such a crime shows that brothels are considered peculiarly open to extortion, and I fear that if the Ordinance were passed again, the survivors of these gangs would levy an income from sly brothels under threats of denunciation to Government, while the regular brothel keepers might be persuaded to pay periodical blackmail to the detectives and lower members of the police force.
may refer in connection with this aspect of the case to the brothel keepers' request for a police force of their own, reported by my despatch, No. 69, of the 2nd March, 1895.
Anyone who has carefully read the evidence given before the Hong Kong Commis- sion, whose report was transmitted by the Governor to the Secretary of State, March 17th, 1879,† will see what administrative abuses are possible in such matters. Singapore we have a similar population to deal with, and our subordinate officers are no better as a rule than were those in Hong Kong.
In
These reasons militate strongly against the renewal of any of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances, but if the advocates for their abolition are prepared with no better scheme, I think even these should be re-enacted rather than that this awful disease should commit such havoc in a community such as this, as we know to have been the case since their repeal.
Cantonment System.
(b) The Indian Cantonment System modified as far as may be necessary to suit the circumstances of the Colony.
There is no cantonment in Singapore, and, therefore, the only way to carry out this proposal would be to draft for a large city a measure on the same lines as the Can- tonment Rules.
In the appendix I enclose such a draft.
Appendix
The Cantonment Regulations naturally apply only to the restricted cantonment 7." area. In modifying them so as to make them apply to the Colony, the question arises what area should represent the cantonment limits mentioned in Rule 11, those of the Municipality, or those of the Colony have been suggested-both are open to objection.
If municipal limits are chosen, there would be formed outside those limits a class of persons prohibited under penalty from attending a hospital or dispensary, since these are all inside limits, prohibited even from attending a Court of Justice for redress. In view of what has been written in paragraph 4 (a) this class would be victims of frequent outrages, and the maintenance of the prohibition would be intolerable. Again, as long as this class resided just outside municipal limits, they would constitute as grave a danger to public health as if they resided inside.
On the other hand, if the Colony be made the limit, the comparatively mild step of prohibiting persons from residing in a cantonment becomes the harsher one of pro- hibiting them from living in the Colony, when the nearest refuge open to them would be a considerable sea voyage, entailing a higher cost and more discomfort than even the penalty provided in the Cantonment Rules.
It is true that in your despatch under reply banishment appears contemplated as a suitable penalty; but on this point paragraph 3 (5) of the Committee's report should be consulted, and an estimate of the expense should be considered.
I
By a wholesale prohibition against residing in the Colony both morality and public health would suffer. Morality, because the demand for prostitutes being constant, other more innocent persons would be bought in China or inveigled thence into the Colony for immoral purposes, and public health, because the diseased persons returning to China would assuredly spread disease there.
• 5699 95, not printed
↑ No. 13 in [C-3093]. Aug. 1881.
Page 60Page 61
ཟ། ། ། །
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
سلسلا
Reference :-
C.O. 882
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
6 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
4th April, 1899. Bee pre-
vious
paragraph
110
But supposing these drawbacks did not exist, I am advised that the Cantonment System would be inoperative when applied to this city, for the reason that Rule 2 would not be obeyed.
The brothel keepers would disregard it, and 999 out of 1,000 persons who visit a brothel, however much disease they there contracted, would withhold information.
The only cases in which any question would be likely to arise under the rule would be when a medical practitioner had cognisance of a case, and I believe that private medical practitioners would rather run the risk of a fine of 50 dollars (a very slight risk considering the proviso) than betray their patients' confidence; patients and medical men would unite in indemnifying medical men so fined, and the scandal and odium of such prosecutions would be incalculable.
The effect of such a rule when widely known would be to deter diseased persons from consulting medical men at all, and the cause of public health would lose rather than gain. For these reasons I believe the Cantonment System would not effect our object.
Mr. Hare's Proposal.
(c) The system advocated by Mr. Hare. This has been fully described in the con- fidential despatch from this house, dated 8th September, 1898.*
If applied to the Colony it would have this drawback, that it leaves outside its scope the class of sly brothels and sly prostitutes. This drawback hardly applies to the Federated Malay States, however, as this class is almost non-existent there, and I recommend that Mr. Hare's system should be tried experimentally in the Federated Malay States.
Municipal Control.
(d) The step of handing over the control of this phase of disease to the Muni- cipality.
This step is open to the drawback, pointed out in my observations on the Canton- ment System, of driving dissentients just outside municipal limits, and co-operation by Government would be necessary to prevent such a result. But I need not discuss the proposal, as the Unofficial Members of the Municipal Commission have all expressed themselves opposed to it. I enclose their communication.
Sperial Measures making Penal the Keeping of a Brothel and Disseminating Disease.
(e.) There remains for consideration only certain measures, which have been re- commended to me in conversation, as the foundation of a scheme for dealing with these diseases.
The measures are:---
(i.) To amend Indian Act XLVIII. of 1860, Section 14, by omitting the words "to the annoyance of the respectable inhabitants of the vicinity," and the words " and is therefore a source of annoyance and offence to the neighbours." The result will be to make keeping a brothel a penal offence of a continuing nature.
(ii.) To banish from the Colony, under Ordinance IV. of 1888, or under a special law to be enacted, every brothel keeper when the public welfare demands that measure. (iii) To put in force these measures against every brothel, and possibly every inmate, which is a source of disease.
After reading the report of the Committee, it will be evident that every Chinese brothel in Singapore at the present moment, is a source of disease. I do not even except those regularly attended by Dr. Mugliston and other European doctors.
Take, for instance, the following extracts from Dr. Mugliston's evidence:-
Q. Do you treat many cases of primary syphilis?
A. Not amongst Chinese; amongst Europeans a few, and amongst Japanese. I doubt whether the Chinese generally understand the importance of the şore. I think that is the reason they do not come. They look upon it as they look upon a sore on their finger. They don't know that it will lead to constitutional trouble."
Does that sore heal of itself?
A. They either don't do anything to it, or they use Chinese medicine. They probably have a Chinese doctor, or the brothel keeper puts on a little caustic.
Q. When they get very bad, then they come to you?
A. When they begin to get sores and skin diseases, then they come to me.
• No. 25.
111
When you find a woman diseased; do you tell her or her keeper that she must not nave intercourse?
A. Yes, always; it depends on the form, of course.
Q. Have you any assurance that it is kept?
A.
None at all.
Q. In fact, you think it is not kept!
A. In many cases I have no doubt it is not kept.
*
*
*
Q. Do you think under the present system any attempt to induce these women to go to hospital would be successful?
A. Never, when they have got primary syphilis,
Q. No system you could suggest would have that effect?
A. I am sure they would never go in when they were suffering from a primary sore, and a primary sore is the infecting stage."
It is clear, therefore, that if measure (ii) were now to be put into operation, many persons would be liable to banishment for an offence of which they were not even con- sciously guilty; and this would continue to be the case unless some such system as that proposed by Mr. Hare were first introduced.
It is also clear that, as every Chinese brothel is now actually a source of disease, every keeper could be banished, and a large proportion of the inmates also.
ember, 1896.
If such a measure were brought fully into operation, I fear it would bring about consequences far worse than any traceable to the present system. It is true that one witness before the Committee (Reverend Mr. Shellabear, formerly an officer in the Royal Engineers) seemed to contemplate those consequences as a less horrible evil than 24th Nov. the present state of things, but the annexed police report seems to confirm my opinion.
Hitherto I have discussed measure (iii.) on the hypothesis that it would be brought fully into operation; it is now desirable to give some attention to the action which this measure will cause.
The local authorities are at present debarred from obtaining evidence of the internal condition of a brothel by officially visiting it, and self-respect will prevent their visiting it in any other way.
If measure (iii.) were to depend on voluntary evidence given bonă fide by visitors to the brothel, I am convinced that it would remain inoperative, from the reluctance of visitors to testify to their knowledge, and from the entire want of know- ledge of consequences mentioned in Dr. Mugliston's evidence,
My experience here convinces me, however, that evidence in abundance will be tendered mala fide. Every impecunious secret society, and every ruined Chinese bully or blackguard, turns naturally to brothel squeezing as a means of subsistence, and in past years the Government has been compelled to use freely its power of banishment to put down such practices.
At present this lawlessness is kept in check by the knowledge that brothels can and do complain freely to the police and Government.
If measure (iii.) be brought into operation, it will supply these people with exactly what they desire, viz., a colourable pretext for making a nefarious income; they will levy blackmail under threats to denounce the brothel, and they will denounce every brothel which fails to pay blackmail, while the consciousness or fear of having trans- gressed agamst (iii.) will keep the brothel keepers silent until the blackmailers become so intolerable that they are prepared to allow a proportion of their number to undergo banishment rather than endure further exactions.
And, as has happened before, these gangs of blackmailers will oppose and fight each other, and their encounters, cross-prosecutions, and counterplots will keep em- ployed a large number of the police force.
For these reasons I cannot think that scheme (e) offers a good solution of the diffi culty, though I consider that for general reasons of public decency measure No. (i.) should be taken, and I propose to pass a law to that effect, as it will possibly enable me to regulate prostitution by confining the public manifestation thereof to certain localities. 5. It is to me a matter of the deepest regret that after a careful review of the whole subject I have not been able to recommend to you some scheme likely to secure your acceptance.
I have laid before you what I consider are the drawbacks of every proposal, and I shall be prepared to carry out executively any measures which you may direct to be taken.
I have, &c.,
C. B. H. MITCHELL.