the early Spring of 1877. In the following October a tragedy occurred,
which drew his 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. The more this Ordinance was enforced, the more