CO129-299 - Administrator Major Gen Gascoigne - 1900 [5-6] — Page 277

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5. Such women abound in China. The fate of their helpless poverty striken victims is graphically described by an eye witness:-"Every one of these girls is put under the control and management of au aged fury and anything sadder or more deplorable than the situation of the girls cannot be imagined,

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instrument of self-distruction. When their training which consists in learning by rote a certain number of songs is complete. They are sent out to earn money, the amount to be brought home daily being fixed by the keeper. The ills from which these girls suffer, be summed up in one sentence. Sin is forced them. They must sell themselves soul and body. is theirs to drain the cup of misery to the dregs. 7. The limits of this report will not permit us to note at greater length. The above brief extracts will suffice to show how great is the need for Chris-

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Far different is their lot from that of the ordinary slave girl. Once I saw one of these old witches knock a slave girl down and beat her with a large piece of wood,

Another blind girl was pushed into the water by her tormentor and was only saved from drowning by my timely appearance on the spot. Atian effort to rescue blind girls in China. third girl who was in the habit of coming to a Chris tian school was cruelly beaten and burned in several parts of the body by her mistress. The teacher of the school sought to buy the girl in order to set her free, but the price asked was higher than the teacher could pay.

6. Further testimony on this point may be quoted from a pamphlet written by a Chinese Christian mi nister Mr. WoNG and entitled, "A Cry for help." Referring to the hopless fate of this class of hig country-women Mr. Wong says:-I believe that not where else in the wide world do the blind live such miserable lives; and of all blind people in China none are more wretched than blind girls. Trained early in life to an immoral career, they have to ac- quire the art of singing lewd songs, and they are treated with such barbarous cruelty by their manager and keepers that the girls are often driven to seek a resource in suicide. Every precaution has to be taken to remove from the bedrooms of the girls, knives, cords the ties with which their clothes are fastened and everything which might possibly be used as an

8.-It was the realization of this need which led a number of German ladies to found the German mis- sion for blind girls in China, Miss CooPER, a former missionary of the German Foundling-House, Hong- kong, had evoked by her accounts of the sufferings endured by poor blind women in China, the strong interest of this Christian ladies in the home country. 9.-To this circumstances the branch of mission work under report owes its existence.

10.--The undertaking was crowned with the divine blessing and in the year 1897, the Hildesheim-mission was in a position to initiate its activities with a school for Chinese blind girls; which was accordingly opened Hongkong and placed under the care of Miss M.

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11.-At the outset four pupils only were received as inmates. In course of time the number increased and has now reached twenty-one. These pupils are of different ages; from the infant of a year old, to the grown up young women of twenty-one.