grandfather to pay her debt. A-Ho left on the "26th of the 8th
moon" for Singapore. On the evening of "the fourth day of the 10th
moon" he received a letter from A-Ho to the effect that she had
been sold for $250, to another party. When the grandfather went
to Su-a-Kiu and asked her why she had sold his granddaughter, she
cajoled him by promising to take him to Singapore to see A-Ho.
Later, the man who lived with Su-a-Kiu, came and threatened to
accuse him of extortion, acknowledging of himself that he "lived
by selling women into brothels of Singapore." The grandfather
reported the case to the Registrar-General. The woman
Su-a-Kiu stated: "I took A-Ho to Singapore. I took her to the
"Sai-Shing-Tong Brothel" in Macao Street. She is still in that
brothel." The Registrar-General ordered her to find security in
the sum of $100 to appear to answer any charge within the next
three months. The grandfather was also ordered to find similar
security in the sum of $70.

The girl A-Ho, in seeking to pay her debt contracted through
sickness, by servitude for eight months, was entrapped and sold as
a slave for life, and the Registrar-General, when acquainted
with the facts, seems to have taken no steps to punish this
slave-trader. Governor Hennessey, in calling the attention of the
Home Government to these, 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,