CO129-522-3 Social hygiene- including trafficking in women & children- brothels- etc. 27-2-1930 - 13-4-1931 — Page 46

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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