🚀 go-pugleaf

_ of Government." It has been
claimed again and again by officials at Hong Kong and Singapore that
protection is in large part the object and aim of the Ordinance. For
instance: In 1877, Administrator W.H. Marsh, of Hong Kong, learning
that there was a likelihood of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance being
disallowed by the Home Government, wrote to the Secretary of State for
the Colonies:

    "It is the unanimous opinion of the Executive Council that the
    laws now in existence have had, when they have been properly
    worked, a most beneficial effect in this Colony ... in putting the
    only practical check on a system of brothel slavery, under which
    children were either sold by their parents, or more frequently
    were kidnaped and sold to the proprietors of brothels. These
    unfortunate girls were so fully convinced that they were the goods
    and chattels of their purchasers, or were so terrified by
    threats, that they rarely if ever made any complaints even when
    interrogated. It was very seldom that sufficient evidence could be
    obtained to punish such nefarious traffickers."

A document enclosed in this letter to the Colonial Secretary at
London, signed by the Acting Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong, the
Colonial Surgeon, and the Registrar General, states: "Perhaps the
strongest argument in favor of the Ordinances is the means they place
in the hands of the Government for coping with _brothel slavery_."
From the moment Mr. Labouchere put this false claim to the front
it has been the chief argument advanced by officials eager for the
Contagious Diseases Ordinance as a method of providing "clean women,"
in order to win to their side the benevolent-minded.

On this point the Commission reported: "In regard to the only result
worthy of a moment's consideration, viz., that referred to by Mr.
Labouchere's dispatch, of putting down the