🚀 go-pugleaf

Chinese
    Protectorate," the "Protector of Chinese" at Singapore being also
    the Inspector of over 200 brothels, and the Registrar of about
    1,800 prostitutes. Many streets of well built three-story houses,
    chiefly in one particular quarter of the town, are devoted to this
    nefarious traffic, and are thronged every night with Chinamen who
    loaf about and gaze into the front rooms and verandahs of the
    brothels, for these front rooms open on the street and there
    the women and girls are assembled in their best attire for the
    inspection of the passers-by. Anything more ostentatiously and
    revoltingly public could hardly have been devised, and it is
    painful to reflect that the whole arrangement is the product of
    Western civilization, such scenes being utterly unknown in China
    except in the treaty ports, where public prostitution has also
    been introduced by Europeans.

    Taking Singapore as a sample of the working of this system of
    regulated vice in the Straits Settlements, we will now proceed
    to inquire into the means by which this army of prostitutes is
    recruited. Out of the total of 1,800 prostitutes in Singapore the
    Chinese women number on the average 1,600, and last year (1892) no
    less than 621 women entered brothels from China and Hong Kong, in
    spite of which the number of inmates fell from 1,657 in January
    to 1,601 in December, so that it may fairly be inferred that more
    than 650 women are required annually to fill up the vacancies
    which occur. In order to explain the manner in which this large
    number of girls and young women are obtained each year, it must be
    stated that all the affairs connected with the inmates of houses
    of ill-fame in the Straits Settlements are in the hands of
    the broth