[ { "id": 210200, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "150 \n\nR.J. MINERS \n\ned to attend for a hospital examination; if found to be diseased her card was taken from her and her record was removed from the house book until she had received hospital treatment and was considered to be cured. There was never any difficulty in compelling the girl to receive treatment since the mistress of the brothel knew that her house would be liable to closure if she was found to be employing a girl without a card and she was also herself liable to be fined if she allowed a diseased prostitute to work in the premises under her control.\n\nStricter controls were enforced by the police on prostitutes catering for Europeans. Their brothels were confined to a particular area in the east end of the city and the girls were expected to attend for a weekly examination by a firm of private medical practitioners in the area. In addition to the sanctions imposed by the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, brothels could be put out of bounds to servicemen by the naval and military authorities if a soldier or sailor suffering from venereal disease identified the girl he had patronised; each girl was required to keep a book in which every client was supposed to enter his name and address and the time of his visit, and these books were open to inspection by the police and military authorities whenever a complaint was made.\n\nThis system was generally approved by the Chinese and European unofficial members, and also by the military authorities. The government claimed that as a result the streets of Hong Kong were kept free of streetwalkers who might pester passers-by, and the navy and army garrison were kept free of disease. In 1922 only 7 per cent of the soldiers were under treatment for venereal disease, which was only slightly higher than the proportion infected in Britain. The system was much less effective in controlling the spread of venereal disease in the Chinese population. On the basis of examinations of patients admitted to the government hospital for other complaints it was estimated that at least 27 per cent of the Chinese male population were infected with syphilis, and possibly, if doubtful cases were included, the rate of infection could be as high as 40 per cent. It was believed that the registered brothels used by Chinese in the West Point area were often the source of infection since their inmates were not subjected to periodic examination as were those catering for the European population. The\n\n26", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210204, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "154\n\nR.J. MINERS\n\ninstructions were sent to Hong Kong so long as the Conservatives remained in power. However, as soon as the minority Labour government of 1929 came into office, various pressure groups, such as the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene and the National Council of Women of Great Britain, set to work, writing to the Prime Minister and the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Passfield (formerly the Fabian Society reformer Sidney Webb), demanding that Hong Kong should follow Singapore's example and suppress all its brothels. There were also more parliamentary questions from Lady Astor and other sympathetic M.P.s.32 In 1930, there was a change of Governor in Hong Kong: Sir Cecil Clementi left to govern the Straits Settlements, and Sir William Peel from the Federated Malay States was promoted to Hong Kong. Clementi had never shown himself very receptive to policy suggestions from London, and his transfer gave the Colonial Office an opportunity to initiate a change of policy. Before taking up his appointment, Peel saw Lord Passfield in London and was informed that it was the policy of the Labour government that all brothels should be suppressed, but that he should first look into the question and submit a report to London.\n\nPeel sent his views to the Colonial Office in August 1930, three months after his arrival.34 He stressed that the abolition of licensed prostitution and tolerated houses was opposed by the military and naval authorities, senior government officials, and the leading members of the Chinese community who sat on the District Watch Committee. Abolition would probably lead to an increase in the number of sly brothels and streetwalkers, and a greater incidence of venereal disease. It would also make it impossible to deal effectively with the international traffic in women: in Singapore, some measure of control could be exercised at the point of entry where immigrants arrived in a few large vessels, but this was out of the question in Hong Kong, where thousands arrived daily in river steamers, junks, and by land; so the licensing and interrogation of intending prostitutes at the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs was the only way of checking that they were entering the profession of their own free will. The Governor finally suggested that if the Secretary of State was determined upon the suppression of brothels, a start could be made by refusing to register any new prostitutes; but he would prefer to await full details of the results", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211992, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 407, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "382\n\nRobert Hart, Bart., GCMG Inspector General of Customs and Post, Peking [set in hard bound volume] + photograph and clippings re Congress (CARTON 1)\n\nWedding picture of European couple with Chinese mandarin guests (CARTON 2)\n\nConferences (CARTON 2)\n\nInteriors (CARTONS 1 and 2)\n\n1 red invitation in English to Hart from Viceroy of Chihli to dinner at the \"Naval Secretariate” (sic) 23 Feb 1894 (CARTON 3)\n\nList of mourners (CARTON 3)\n\nNOTES\n\nE. SINN\n\n1\n\n2\n\nThese notes are partially based on notes previously prepared by the Rev. Carl Smith.\n\nRobert Hart was Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1863-1907. See Juliet Bredon, Sir Robert Hart: The Romance of a Great Career (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1909); Stanley Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast: Wm. Mullen & Sons, 1950); John King Fairbank et al., eds. The I.G. in Peking: Letters of Robert Hart, Chinese Maritime Customs, 1868-1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press at the Harvard University Press, 1975); Katherine F. Bruner et al., eds. Entering China's Service. Robert Hart's Journals, 1854-1863 (Cambridge, Mass. & London, Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1986).\n\n3\n\nHere, Hart refers to Sir Robert Hart; Robert refers to his grandson.\n\nA SONG FROM SHA TAU KOK ON THE 1911 REVOLUTION\n\nVery few documents remain from the New Territories which refer to the 1911 Revolution, or which display any interest in the political disputes which lead up to it. One revolutionary document, a ferocious anti-Manchu and anti-Kang Yu-wei pamphlet, survives among the Yung Sze-chiu papers from North Sai Kung,1 and must represent a type of revolutionary ephemera to be found in the area at that date but no longer remembered - Yung Sze-chiu presumably picked it up in his local market town of Sai Kung about 1908. In general, however, local sources, both written and oral, pay little attention to the Revolution.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "99\n\n1941 there were thirteen operational batteries (complete with underground ammunition magazines, living quarters and access roads) on the Island, the earliest emplacements for these being built around 1895, an underground battle headquarters off Queen's Road near the naval dockyard (completed in 1940) and scores of reinforced-concrete structures comprising pill-boxes, observation posts, searchlight positions, anti-aircraft sites, bunkers, shelters, ammunition and stores dumps, tunnels and water tanks. On Stonecutters' Island the Royal Navy built between the World Wars a huge ammunition depot which included eleven large underground magazines; earlier the first land-based explosives' depot was completed here in 1876 from where it was transferred to Green Island in 1906. Of the original six battery emplacements designed and constructed on Stonecutters' Island during the period 1880-1905, only one remained commissioned at the outbreak of hostilities.\n\nThe two battery positions on Devil's Peak in Kowloon overlooking Lai Yue Mun gap were constructed soon after the New Territories' lease was signed in 1898 and a redoubt on top of the hill was completed by the Royal Engineers in 1914. The guns however were removed in 1936 and transferred to the Island. Subsequently the 18km-long Gin Drinkers' defence line was constructed during the mid-1930s across the hills to the north of the Kowloon peninsula and comprised a series of pill-boxes, trenches, bunkers and tunnels, the key feature being the underground Shing Mun Redoubt covering some five hectares on the northern flank of Smugglers' Ridge.\n\nThe decision to construct air raid shelters so that the whole urban population could be protected was not taken until 1940. In the space of about a year some 22 kilometres of 2.5m-size tunnels (of which about 80% still exist) were constructed on the Island and in Kowloon, including one adjacent to the Secretariat in Lower Albert Road which extended to Government House causing structural damage. In view of the urgent need for these tunnels, the project was arranged on a cost-plus basis and gave rise to rampant corruption, one architect involved even committing suicide to avoid giving evidence. The sub-standard pre-cast concrete breeze blocks made by the Director of Air Raid Precaution's girlfriend's firm are still (or at least until recently) known in the trade as Mimi blocks. Unfortunately the report on the Commission of Enquiry was never made public; it was taken into the Stanley internment", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 } ]