"When an unlicensed brothel [i.e., a native house accused of being
such] is broken up, the women have to resort to prostitution in most
cases for a living." During 1869, one poor woman signed a bond to
deport herself for five years rather than be taken to the Lock
Hospital. But the "protected women," with their nursery of children
they were raising for brothel slavery, being the mistresses of
foreigners, were not persecuted in this manner, so, by a kind of mad
infatuation the Government seemed bent on encouraging and developing
immoral women and driving decent women either into prostitution, or,
by the reign of terror, out of the Colony. In 1869, five women
were charged before the Registrar General, and three of them were
discharged as innocent. Then the Registrar General decided _to make
the punishment of the first of the remaining two depend upon the state
of health of the second_. This second was examined and found diseased,
and in consequence of that fact, the first one was fined fifty dollars
or two months' imprisonment! The Commission speaks of this as a
"somewhat curious" case. We wonder how the punished woman described
it. Afterwards, the case was reopened, and "evidence was given
calculated to throw the gravest doubts on the credibility of the
informers" against these five women. What was then done? Were the
informers punished for giving false evidence designed to work
incalculable injury to five innocent women? Not at all. A few days
later the same informers were employed again as witnesses, and secured
the conviction of three more women. In one case, in 1870, it was
proved that an informer had entered a house and made an indecent
assault upon a woman, doubtless expecting to get his reward as usual.
But he was fined ten pounds instead. But how many others may have
done the same thing under circumstances where a sufficient number of
witnesses to the assault could not be produced. And then, the man
would be rewarded and the woman forced at once to take up her