keeping an open house of prostitution anyway, and the Government
benefited in cash by just so much more.

"It may be mentioned here," says the report of the Commission, from
which we cull these cases, "that from this date (July 6th, 1868) the
practice has apparently prevailed of apprehending all the women found
in unlicensed brothels" (in more correct language, those houses
penetrated into by informers and reported to the Registrar as
brothels). These accusations were not always true, by any means. Seven
women were apprehended at one time during this year, on the charge of
a watchman, that they kept and were inmates of an unlicensed brothel,
"the chief witness being a child 10 years old ... five of the women
were married, and two, children of 13 and 14 years old, are described
as unmarried." They were all, even the children, convicted, and
sent to the Lock Hospital for the indecent examination, in order to
determine if they were in proper health to practice vice. Afterwards
the Registrar concluded that the case had been got up by the watchman
to extort money from the women. But the establishment of their
innocence did not put them right again. Think of the horrible ordeal
and the dirty court details through which these young girls had been
put, on the testimony of a child of ten, and of a watchman determined
that they should learn to give him money when he demanded it, or he
would drive them into prostitution. One wonders how many hundreds of
respectable families were thus bled of their small incomes by the vile
informers who were being rewarded by Government for their extortion.
Imagine the terror that respectable Chinese women suffered, knowing
that any man might denounce them, out of malice, and thereby reduce
them to the very worst conceivable form of slavery! Within a few
years, nearly all the respectable Chinese women had disappeared from
Hong Kong. Chief Inspector Whitehead testified before the Commission: