🚀 go-pugleaf

indubitable fact that the custom
    is widely prevalent, and that Hong Kong is a market for the buying
    and selling of women which the Government is powerless to touch.
    Exeter Hall in possession of these facts would indeed have a theme
    for pious lucubrations."

Commenting upon the same case the _Singapore Free Press_ says:

    "A recent investigation into a case of suicide in Hong Kong brings
    into strong prominence what is really a system of slavery of the
    worst kind, and which is not unknown in Singapore."

    Such testimony is valuable from papers which have consistently
    supported the Contagious Diseases Ordinances and vilified the
    opponents of the State regulation of vice. There can be little
    doubt that a large proportion of the girls and young women who are
    brought to the Straits Settlements for immoral purposes have been
    sold in China to the brothel-keepers' confederates. In many cases
    girls are thus sold by their parents for the payment of gambling
    and other debts, and sometimes, alas, to provide money for the
    purchase of opium. Surely it is a burning shame that British
    Colonies should have become the market for the sale of Chinese
    women into this diabolical form of slavery.

    This article cannot be closed without a brief reference to another
    and more subtle form of slavery which is well known to exist in
    the Straits. The last Report of the Chinese Protectorate reveals
    the fact that during last year (1892) in Singapore alone 426
    prostitutes left brothels and went into private houses, and in
    the same period 148 left private houses and entered brothels. The
    wealthy Chinese in the Straits Settlements keep up very large
    establishments, and the uninitiated visitor cannot fail to be
    surprised at the number of young women in the qua