🚀 go-pugleaf

'
    signs a promissory note for the amount, with heavy interest; the
    former owner returns to China, and the victim is bound to serve
    the Straits mistress; at the same time, the girl is comparatively
    (!) fortunate in that, coming here under the protection we can
    give through the Contagious Diseases Ordinances, she has some
    chance of becoming a free woman."

Now listen, reader, to the wonderful chances of becoming a free woman
under the British flag, this "Protector" holds out to the slave girls
who are placed in his officially managed brothels:

    "The girls with their promissory notes are passed from hand to
    hand in sale, or as pledges for loans; and in one brothel I found
    two girls, who had, on arrival in Singapore from China some six
    years previous, signed a note for $300 each, of which every cent
    had been received and taken back to China by the person who had
    disposed of them. During the six years they had been the property
    of two or three successive owners, and when I found them in Penang
    they were still being detained with the original promissory note
    hanging over them, though the sum had been paid over and over
    again. On my insisting on accounts being produced by the
    brothel-keeper, I discovered that for three years the girls had
    been earning from 20 to 30 dollars each per month, all of which
    went to the master, who was surprised when the girls were released
    and himself threatened with the law." (!)

From this we discover that Mr. Pickering intends that we shall think
that the reason why he has a salary from the British Government,
is, among other things, to see that slave girls only need to redeem
themselves by hard earned mo