CO129-514-2 Mui Tsai system- suggested regulations and possible abolition 9-1-1929 - 16-5-1929 — Page 77

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requires the consent of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, and his consent would, of course, not be given without

adequate reason. Anyone who kidnaps a mui-tsai in order to sell her, perhaps for prostitution, is liable to be arrested and charged, and rightly so; but not a person who harbours a runaway mui-tsai from motives of benevolence. Anyone who sold a mui-tsai to a brothel would be prosecuted under the

Protection of Women and Girls Ordinance of 1897, if there

were any evidence at all. Again, assuming the guess of the Anti Mui-tsai Society as to the number of mui-tsai in Hong Kong to be correct, the newspaper article does not contain the vaguest suggestion as to what could be done with the alleged ten thousand young girls if they could be discovered and could be proved to be mui-tsai and were taken away from

their employers.

12.

This brings me to the question of the number of mui-tsai supposed to be in Hong Kong and to your enquiry whether "in the unlikely event of mui-tsai leaving their houses as a result of any measures taken", it is quite impossible to supplement the accommodation in the Po Leung Kuk by temporary arrangements. In the first place I may explain that, if drastic action were taken by the Hong Kong Government with respect to registration of mui-tsai, and it did in fact lead to a large number of mui-tsai leaving their homes it would be completely impossible for the Po Leung Kuk to accommodate them. I inspected this institution on the 8th May, and found that, although on occasion as many as one hundred girls have been accommodated there, this was only possible by very great overcrowding, and that normally even with a complement of fifty girls the institution is undesirably full. I know of no temporary arrangements which could be made for accommodating a large number of young girls

in