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,
and from the notes of cases taken by the Registrar-General
himself. It will also be seen that where the persons guilty of
such offences were sometimes punished, it was generally for some
minor offence, such as not keeping a correct list of inmates, or
for an assault."

Doubtless slavery would spring into prominence in almost any land
when once it became known that in places actually licensed by
Government, such as were the houses of ill-fame at Hong Kong,
where the inspectors made almost daily visits, slaves could be
held with impunity, and that when slave girls made a complaint,
and their cases were actually brought into court, charging the
buying and selling of human beings, the officers of the law would
ignore the complaints.

CHAPTER 7.

OTHER DERELICT OFFICIALS.

The Registrar General was not the only official at Hong Kong who did
not believe in the extermination of slavery, as we shall proceed
to show, although the Governor had strong sympathy from the Chief
Justice.

On May 30th, 1879, Sir John Smale, Chief Justice of the Colony of Hong
Kong, wrote a