Re: Abdel Ali Al Batch should confront her before the stem
LtCmdr U. O. Edvalson
any time within twelve months." No record as to the fate of the
two girls who had sought "protection" of the authorities.
[Footnote A: The market price of a Chinese girl at the present
time (1907) in California is $3000.]
3. Two young girls were found in a licensed house of shame, whose
names were not on the list, the keeper and a woman, Ho-a-ying,
who had brought the girls from Canton to Hong Kong, were summoned
before the Registrar General. Ho-a-ying represented the girls
as sisters, and that she visited them in Canton and found their
mother dead, and that she brought them to Hong Kong because of
their appeal to her to find them work, and that she put them into
defendant's brothel. She contradicted herself in her testimony
as to the name and house of the girls' mother, and the girls
themselves declared that they were not sisters, and had never seen
each other until they met on the steamer at Canton the day before.
One of the girls declared: "I was sold by Ho-a-ying to the
mistress of the brothel. I heard them talking about it, and so I
know it. Ho-a-Ying also told me that I had been sold. I do not
know for what sum." The brothel-keeper stated that Ho-a-Ying came
and asked if she wanted two girls, as she had two who had come
from Canton. "The girls were brought, and after being in the house
a short time the Inspector came. I purposed having their names
entered on the following morning." The brothel-keeper was fined
five dollars for keeping an incorrect list of inmates. Ho-a-Ying
was convicted of giving false testimony, and fined fifty dollars;
in default, three months' imprisonment. No information as to the
disposal of the girls, and no punishment for this bargaining in
human flesh.
4. Six Chinese persons from licensed brothel No. 71, Wellington
Street,
LtCmdr U. O. Edvalson
or liable, as the case may be, to be pledged or sold, by her
parents or relatives, to serve as a domestic slave in a strange
family.... They have the chance, if they are pretty and
accomplished, of being wooed ... and they may look forward with
tolerable certainty to being made the second, or third, or fourth,
or at any rate the favorite wife of some wealthy gentleman. If
not possessed of special attractions or wealthy lovers, they look
forward to being taken out of the brothel by an honest devoted man
to share the lot of a poor man's wife. Or they may endeavor to
save money by singing, music and prostitution combined, and not
only to purchase their freedom, but to set up for themselves,
buying, rearing, and selling girls to act as servants or
concubines or prostitutes, or they may finally come to keep
brothels as managers for wealthy capitalists or speculators. There
is further a certain proportion of prostitutes in Hong Kong who
have, by the hand of their own parents or husbands, been mortgaged
or sold into temporary servitude as prostitutes, or who of their
own will and accord act as prostitutes under personal agreement
with a brothel-keeper, for a definite advance of a sum of money,
req
LtCmdr U. O. Edvalson
Our hearts grew heavier and heavier as we talked together. The
Matron, said: "Why, I thought when I came here it was to do a regular
Christian work for these girls. That was my purpose, but the more I
inquire into the matter, and study over the things I am expected to do
and ask no questions, such as sending girls over to the Lock Hospital
at the Chief Inspector's request, the more I feel that I am being
worked for purposes of which I cannot approve. I cannot stay here."
At last we got to ask her about her talk with the Inspector. "What
did he say when you told him what we discovered the other night--that
little girls go freely to the Licensed Eating Houses, and live in the
brothels?" "Is it really true that the authorities have been deceived,
and did not know of this flagrant violation of the Ordinance to
protect women and girls?"
The Matron's face was sadly troubled. She gazed at us a moment
quietly, and then said:
"He told me, Why, of course he knew about those children. There were
scores of them."
"But will he do nothing about the matter?" we exclaimed.
She replied: "He said: 'What can I do? I caught a whole handful
of them once and sent them to the Lock Hospital, and had them all
examined. The doctor pronounced them all virgins, so I could do
nothing as yet, and I let them all go back.'"
We uttered exclamations of horror.
"A handful!"--did he think no more of them than of so many minnows!
And they had gone through the horrible ordeal at the Lock Hospital!
And he must leave them in the brothels yet for awhile,--until
when?--until, Oh pitiful God!--until they were all "deflowered
according to bargain." And then he might consider the advisability of
doing something.
The head reeled. We felt stilled. We must get out in the fresh morning
breeze. Something broke somewhere about the heart. We went out and
got into our jinrikshas, and went away home as in midnight darkness,
calling
LtCmdr U. O. Edvalson
to the wicked.
Midrasch el Kohelet: "Better is a poor and wise child than an old and
foolish king who cannot foresee the future." The child is virtue, and the
king is the malignity of man. It is called king because all the members obey
it, and old because it is in the human heart from infancy to old age, and
foolish because it leads man in the way of perdition, which he does not
foresee. The same thing is in Midrasch Tillim.
Bereschist Rabba on Psalm 35:10: "Lord, all my bones shall bless Thee, which
deliverest the poor from the tyrant." And is there a greater tyrant than the
evil leaven? And on Proverbs 25:21: "If thine enemy be hungry, give him
bread to eat." That is to say, if the evil leaven hunger, give him the bread
of wisdom of which it is spoken in Proverbs 9, and if he be thirsty, give
him the water of which it is spoken in Isaiah 55.
Midrasch Tillim says the same thing, and that Scripture in that passage,
speaking of the enemy, means the evil leaven; and that, in giving him that
bread and that water, we heap coals of fire on his head.
Midrasch el Kohelet on Ecclesiastes 9:14: "A great king besieged a little
city." This great king is the evil leaven; the great bulwarks built against
it are temptations; and there has been found a poor wise man who has
delivered it--that is to say, virtue.
And on Psalm 41:1: "Blessed is he that considereth the poor."
And on Psalm 78:39: "The spirit passeth away, and cometh not again"; whence
some have erroneously argued against the immortality of the soul. But the
sense is that this spirit is the evil leaven, which accompanies man till
death and will not return at the resurrection.
And on Psalm 103 the same thing.
And on Psalm 16.
Princip