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Hong Kong who
    have, by the hand of their own parents or husbands, been mortgaged
    or sold into temporary servitude as prostitutes, or who of their
    own will and accord act as prostitutes under personal agreement
    with a brothel-keeper, for a definite advance of a sum of money,
    required to rescue the family, or some member of it, from some
    great calamity or permanent ruin."

    "There is, however, one class of women in Hong Kong who can
    scarcely be called prostitutes, and who have no parallel either in
    China, outside the Treaty Ports, or in Europe. They are generally
    called 'protected women.' They may originally have come forth from
    one or other of the above-mentioned classes of prostitutes, or may
    be the offspring of protected women...."

The Report describes the situation of the "protected woman" in the
following terms:

    "She resides in a house rented by her protector, who lives
    generally in another part of the town; she receives a fixed salary
    from her protector, and sublets every available room to individual
    sly prostitutes, or to women keeping a sly brothel, no visitor
    being admitted unless he have some introduction or secret
    pass-words. If an inspector of brothels attempts to enter, he
    is quietly informed that this is not a brothel, but the private
    family residence of Mr. So and So.... This system makes the
    suppression of sly brothels an impossibility.... The principal
    points of difference between the various classes of Chinese
    prostitutes of Hong Kong and the prostitutes of Europe amount
    therefore to this, that Chinese prostitution is essentially
    a bargain in money and based on a national system of female
    slavery."

    "It must not be supposed, however, from what