Newsgroup: it.scienza.ambiente
Titolo: Re: longest day today!

report of the Commission was published, certain
Chinese merchants had petitioned the Governor to be allowed to form
themselves into a society for suppressing kidnaping and trafficking
in human beings. This petition states that the worst kidnapers are
"go-betweens and old women who have houses for the detention of
kidnaped people." They declare that these
    "inveigle virtuous women or girls to come to Hong Kong, at first
    deceiving them by the promise of finding them employment (as
    domestic servants), and then proceeding to compel them by force
    to become prostitutes, or exporting them to a foreign port, or
    distribute them by sale over the different ports of China, boys
    being sold to become adopted children, girls being sold to be
    trained for prostitution." "Your petitioners are of opinion
    that such wicked people are to be found belonging to any of the
    [neighboring] districts, but in our district of Tung Kun such
    cases of kidnaping are comparatively frequent, and all the
    merchants of Hong Kong, without exception, are expressing their
    annoyance."
Accompanying the petition was a statement of the situation:
    "Hong Kong is the emporium and thoroughfare of all the neighboring
    ports. Therefore these kidnapers frequent Hong Kong much, it being
    a place where it is easy to buy and to sell, and where effective
    means are at hand to make good a speedy escape. Now, the laws
    of Hong K

the other a kind of cymbal; they were singing in the
    same shrill, monotonous way we had heard before. We counted eight
    girls here. There was a piece of unpainted tin or zinc, about
    eight by twelve inches, set upon the table toward one end, with
    a list of fifty names on it, and a Chinese man, who talked fair
    English, explained it thus: 'These are the names of singing and
    dancing girls who come here; a man looks over the list and calls
    for a girl to sing or dance; then he chooses his girl.'
    "We then went to a third place on the same side of the street.
    Here there was a wild confusion as we reached the top of the
    second flight of stairs and entered the front room, and several
    young girls were hustled out through the other door and into the
    little back rooms, and the list of girls' names was hurried out
    of sight. The Chinese men were evidently much frightened. A bold
    little girl, very smartly dressed, was put forward, who answered
    our questions in a loud, brazen manner. One of our party asking
    her if she could sing, she thought the statement was made that she
    was not 'sixteen' (the age under which girls are 

hundreds more
of such cases of cruel wrong on record, and God alone knows how many
thousands of cases there are that have never been put on record. We
only aim to give a case here and there in illustration of the many
forms of cruelty practiced upon innocent women in order to force them
into prostitution, and to demonstrate that brothel slavery at Hong
Kong cannot truthfully be represented as the outcome of Chinese
customs which foreign officials have found difficulty in altering.
But why should Americans be called upon to acquaint themselves with
such loathsome details? In order that Americans may have some just
conception of their duty toward the large number of these poor,
unhappy slaves who have been brought from Hong Kong to their own
country.
CHAPTER 5.
HOUNDED TO DEATH.
Sir John Pope Hennessy went to Hong Kong as Governor of the Colony in
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 c

The women are fearful of the unknown; of what should
    happen to them if they should disobey their pocket-mothers, and
    are terribly ignorant of everything connected with the Government
    under which they nominally live. It is out of the question to
    educate them up to the English standard of liberty of the subject.
    They stay but a few short years in an English Colony, seeing
    nothing but the worst phases of a life of vice and immorality, and
    only know of the officers of Government as 'foreign devils' or
    'barbarians'."
This is all only too true as regards California also, excepting that
the experiment of educating them by just treatment in the "English
standard of the liberty of the subject," has certainly never been
tried either in Singapore or America. The brothel keepers, however,
have learned to understand that matter of "liberty of the subject"
only too well, and take advantage of the habeas corpus act at every
turn to capture a slave who is trying to escape their clutches.
These words of Governor Smith should be borne in mind and brought to
attention every time our law officers in California put brot

sold her to Sz-Shan, fifth defendant, for $81, who
    brought her from Tamshui by steamer to Hong Kong, and took her to
    A-Neung's house, where she was being held for sale. She finished
    her testimony thus: "Several men have been up to the house to see
    me. They were going to buy me if they liked me." A letter was
    produced by the Inspector, which he found in A-Neung's house, from
    Canton to the writer's sister-in-law in Hong Kong, urging that as
    the owner had lost money on the "present cargoes," a higher price
    must be set on them and the sale hastened, as soon as the letter
    should arrive, and word returned that they had been disposed of;
    also directing that "after the transaction, one cue-tassel and one
    shirting trouser" were to be taken back and sent to Canton by the
    hand of a friend at first opportunity. (This as a pledge of good
    faith.)
    A-Neung, first defendant, declared that she was "a widow,
    supported by her son-in-law now in California. Mine is a family
    house. The girls are visitors at my house