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You will therefore see that when I called on the official informant of my predecessor, to explain to me how it came to pass that he misled Sir Arthur Kennedy, and caused him to mislead Her Majesty's Government, his official explanation was-that some terrible mistake had been made." Those are his words; and he says he cannot explain how he misled the Governor into thinking that no case of syphilis had been contracted in Hong Kong in 1874.
That despatch was written in January, 1875, but in the year 1874 there camo before the Governor certain reports from the same Colonial Surgeon upon the state of the licensed brothels: on that report Sir Arthur Kennedy himself, on the 22nd January, 1874, wrote this minute: "This is a horrible revelation, and I feel under an obligation to the Coloria Surgeon for the pains he has taken in bringing this to my notice." And the Major-General wrote this minute: "In the first place I should cancel all licences to keep brothels. I cannot think how these establishments are more necessary here than in any other colony, and I have never known of them except at Hong Kong and Singapore.'
Now, I do not mention this to enquire whether Major-General Whitteld is right or wrong, but simply to show that ho recommended the abolition of these licensed houses in 1874; and yet a despatch was sent to Lord Carnarvon, telling the Secretary of State that no syphilis was present in either the army or navy and that no complaints had been made. You see the extraordinary difficulty her Majesty's Government bas to get at the truth.
Your address referred to the fact that I was a member of the Selest Committee in 1864, appointed by the Touse of Commons at that time to decide upon the provisions of the Contagious Diseases Prevention Bill. That was the first Bill in this country, and it is true that I endeavoured to mitigate the severe penalties it proposed to inflict on the women, to such an extent that the Chairman requested me to report the Bill at the Bar of the House, which I did, and that Bill became the first of these Acts. Now that you have come to me to-day, and I see before me members of the House of Commons, and leading public men, I must say that having had any hand or part whatever in that original When that measure was measure is to me a subject of regret. before the Select Committee an honourable friend of mine, the Secretary to the Admiralty, told the members of the Committee that it wa essential to pass it for the navy and the army; and he pointed to the Colonies of Hong Kong and Malts as the two places where the experiment had been tried with immense success, and had almost eradicated venereal disease. I believed his statement; and he himself believed it, no doubt. He acted on official reports. That was in 1864, and believing those reports I voted for the Bill. Now that I am the Governor of the Colony of Hong Kong, I have had the means of examining in the archives of the Colony the accuracy or otherwise of the reports which so influenced my vote as a member of Parliament, and I now see that those reports, as put before me, were not trustworthy.
In 1864, when I gave that vote, the statement made to me and to other members of the Committee on the first Contagious Diseases Bill in
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England, was that the first Ordinance of the kind passed in Hong Kong in 1857, had worked so well that no amendment of the law there was required, and that venereal disease had been stamped out by the working In the Archives of Hong Kong, among of the Ordinance of 1857. many Reports, is the following one, dated 19th April, 1867. It was not intended for publication; it was a Report of the then Colonial Surgeon, Dr. Murray, to the Governor; but it has the following sentence, that Venereal disease has been on the increase in spite of all that has been done to check it, is no new discovery; that has already been brought before the notice of his Excellency the Governor and is a powerful argu- ment in favour" (you would say in favour of abolishing the existing Act)" of additional legislation."
Now Dr, Murray in 1867, although the Act of 1857 had been ten years in operation makes the confession that disease was increasing, and therefore it was necessary to have, as he says, "additional legislation.” The additional legislation was passed, and the Act of 1967 in Hong Kong came into operation. Under that Act and nuder the previous Act, extraordinary abuses occurred to which I have called the attention of the Secretary of State. I had discovered that the allegations on which I was induced as a Member of Parliament to vote for the English system were inaccurate. 1 was deluded by incorrect reports, and I saw in the Colony abuses existing, which have effect far beyond the range of Hong Kong. Let me instance one or two only. We get from Great Britain some Furopean police. They are men selected with care for good conduct, and they are sometimes married men; their passages, and their wives' passages, have been paid to Hong Kong, where married- police quarters are provided. But what transpired when that Com- mission of mine was held? The Registrar-General had recorded in his book, morning after morning, the evidence of informers selected from that police force, whom he had employed to commit adultery with unlicensed Chinese women; and some of these men were married police, whose wives were brought to Hong Kong; so that, in point of fact, he was not only encouraging adultery but paying for it with the money of the State. Well, I stopped that, of conree. There was another witness examined by the Registrar-General, and what was his evidence? He said, "I am a sailor on board one of her Majesty's ships, and I was asked by the inspector of brothels to act as informer. I got some marked dollars, and tried to enter a Chinese house, but I was repulsed and driven back. At length I got into a house, and I produced my dollars, and I consorted with a Chinese woman.” He said that this occurred some days ago, and be had given her name, and he had heard that she was to be tried by the Registrar-General, and he added, "Unfortu nately I have got venereal disease, and I am inclined to think I got it from that girl I was paid to go with." That is recorded, and the girl was sont to prison. And what occurred then? Three days afterwards the very same man was again employed in the same department, on the same duty, and he brought up two other women; and it is recorded that he consorted with these women on the night before. And all this was done with Government money.
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