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the deflowering of a virgin of 15, "in
the interests of justice," with the owner of the slave child. The
child as well as the owner were then taken to the Lock Hospital, where
the latter was proved to be a virgin. A Chinese informer consorted
with a girl named Tai-Yau "against her will, which led to his being
rewarded, and to her being fined one hundred dollars." She was unable
to pay the fine, and sold her little boy in part payment for it, in
order to escape a life of prostitution.

But need we go into further painful details? There are hundreds more
of such cases of cruel wrong on record, and God alone knows how many
thousands of cases there are that have never been put on record. We
only aim to give a case here and there in illustration of the many
forms of cruelty practiced upon innocent women in order to force them
into prostitution, and to demonstrate that brothel slavery at Hong
Kong cannot truthfully be represented as the outcome of Chinese
customs which foreign officials have found difficulty in altering.

But why should Americans be called upon to acquaint themselves with
such loathsome details? In order that Americans may have some just
conception of their duty toward the large number of these poor,
unhappy slaves who have been brought from Hong Kong to their own
country.




CHAPTER 5.

HOUNDED TO DEATH.


Sir John Pope Hennessy went to Hong Kong as Governor of the Colony in
the early Spring of 1877. In the following October a tragedy occurred,
which drew his attention to the administration of the Registrar
General, and he set himself to the task of trying to right some of the
wrongs of the Chinese women.

The case last mentioned in the previous chapter related to a woman
by the name of Tai-Yau, whom a