🚀 go-pugleaf

out of many similar ones, says: "The
    accompanying extracts from the printed evidence [taken by the
    Commission] show that the Registrar-General's Department was not
    ignorant of the fact that Chinese women were purchased for Hong
    Kong brothels, and that the head of the Department thought it
    useless to try to deal with the question of the freedom of such
    women.... That the buying and selling was not confined to places
    outside the Colony is clear from the evidence of other witnesses,
    and from the notes of cases taken by the Registrar-General
    himself. It will also be seen that where the persons guilty of
    such offences were sometimes punished, it was generally for some
    minor offence, such as not keeping a correct list of inmates, or
    for an assault."

    Doubtless slavery would spring into prominence in almost any land
    when once it became known that in places actually licensed by
    Government, such as were the houses of ill-fame at Hong Kong,
    where the inspectors made almost daily visits, slaves could be
    held with impunity, and that when slave girls made a complaint,
    and their cases were actually brought into court, charging the
    buying and selling of human beings, the officers of the law would
    ignore the complaints.




CHAPTER 7.

OTHER DERELICT OFFICIALS.


The Registrar General was not the only official at Hong Kong who did
not believe in the extermination of slavery, as we shall proceed
to show, although the Governor had strong sympathy from the Chief
Justice.

On May 30th, 1879, Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of the Colony of Hong
Kong, wrote a letter for the information of the Governor, Sir John
Pope Hennessy, to the effect that he had sentenced, on the previous
day, two poor women to imprisonment with hard labor, for detaining
a boy 13 years old. The w