🚀 go-pugleaf

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 an informer humbled "against her will,"
which led to his being rewarded and her being fined $100, to pay which
she sold her little boy. This seems to have been the only way open for
her to escape a life of prostitution. To make this point clear, we
will here insert the explanation of conditions given by Dr. Eitel in
a communication for the information of Governor Hennessy at a little
later period than the incident we are about to relate. He speaks of
Chinese women who secretly practiced prostitution [but, as we have
shown, many respectable Chinese women suffered also], as

    "preyed upon by informers paid with Government money, who would
    first debauch such women and then turn against them, charging them
    before the magistrate under the Ordinance 10, 1867, before the
    Registrar General as keepers of unlicensed brothels in which case
    a heavy fine would be inflicted, to pay which these women used to
    sell their children, or sell themselves into bondage worse than
    ordinary slavery, to the keepers of brothels licensed by the
    Government. Whenever a so-called sly brothel was broken up these
    keepers would crowd the shroff's office [money exchanger's office]
    of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock
    Hospital to drive their heartless bargains, _which were
    invariably enforced with the weighty support of the inspectors of
    brothels_,[A] appointed by Government under the Contagious
    Diseases Ordinance. T