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In most of the regular houses, the inmates are more or less in debt to the keepers, and though such debts are not legally enforceable, a custom stronger than law forbids the woman to leave the brothel until her debts are liquidated, and it is only in rare cases that she does so." "As to the brothel-keepers, there is nothing known against them, and they are supported by capitalists. Mr.
So the little fellow was sold for about forty dollars, and she went away sixty dollars in debt, probably to the brothel-keepers, who would never let her out of their sight until, through the debt and the interest thereon, they would in time be enabled to seize her as their slave.
The girls in question are stated to be 'bought when young, and 'believe themselves bound body and soul to the brothel-keepers. Nine hundred and sixty-eight Chinese women, presumably of this kind, are reported at Penang, and 62 Japanese women.
But it must be borne in mind that the "Protector" of women and girls was likewise the Registrar of brothels; and that the rules and regulations under the Women and Girls' Protection Ordinance provided, in both Singapore and Hong Kong, for every detail in the management of brothels, even to the granting of a permit to keep a brothel, and the description of the "duties" of brothel-keepers.
We asked where the women were, and they answered that it was too late to see them, but if we would come earlier we would find them. When asked where the women came from, they pointed down to the street below, to the open brothels, and said there were a great number of degraded women who lived close by; said the brothel-keepers sent them.
The great majority of them are owned by professional brothel-keepers or traders in women in Canton or Macao, have been brought up for the profession, and trained in various accomplishments suited to brothel life.... They frequently know neither father nor mother, except what they call a 'pocket-mother, that is, the woman who bought them from others.... They feel of course that they are the bought property of their pocket-mother or keeper, but they know also that this is the feeling of almost every other woman in China, liable as each is to be sold, by her own parents or relatives, to be the wife or concubine of a man she never sets eyes on before the wedding day, 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.
The Report of the Commission answers the question: 'The great majority of them are owned by professional brothel-keepers or traders in women in Canton or Macao; they have been brought up for the profession, and trained in various accomplishments suited to their life ... They frequently know neither father nor mother, except what they call a pocket-mother, that is, the woman who bought them from others ... They are owned in Macao and Canton.
The liquor-dealers and the brothel-keepers, the panders and the pimps, the crap-shooters and the petty thieves all these were paying the policeman and the politician for a chance to prey upon my boys; and when the boys got into trouble, as they were continually doing, it was the clergyman who consoled them in prison but it was the Tammany leader who saw the judge and got them out.
In order to explain the manner in which this large number of girls and young women are obtained each year, it must be stated that all the affairs connected with the inmates of houses of ill-fame in the Straits Settlements are in the hands of the brothel-keepers.
When certain Chinese girls appeared before a committee appointed to investigate conditions at San Francisco, the members of the committee were put under promise not to divulge their names or stories, as "their lives would not be safe for five years to come," if the brothel-keepers and their former owners knew that they had informed against them.
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