FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52  
53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   >>   >|  
nment surveillance. "It might be enacted," says the "Protector," that such a brothel-keeper should be "liable to a fine!" But why, in the face of such frank acknowledgement of the existence of slavery, were not the Queen's proclamation against slavery, and the many other enactments of the same sort, enforced? Listen, and we will tell why. These officials believed _vice was necessary_, and as there was no class of "fallen women," in our understanding of the term, the Oriental prostitute being a literal slave, then _slavery was necessary_ when it ministered to the vices of men. Hence the Government-registered brothels were filled with women slaves. As to the unregistered brothels, the "protected woman" protected that, and also the nursery of purchased and stolen children being brought up and trained for the slave market, excepting those children which, as we have seen, were being trained in the registered houses. If an officer attempted to enter the house of a "protected woman," he was told: "This is not a brothel. This is the private family residence of Mr. So and So," mentioning the name of some foreigner. Thus the foreigners who kept Chinese mistresses furnished, in effect, that protection to slavery that led the Chinese to go forward so boldly in their business of buying and kidnaping children. Even when women were brought into court for keeping unregistered brothels, and although they were keeping them, yet if they could show that they were "protected women," they had a fair show of being acquitted. Legislative enactments directed to the object of making the practice of vice healthy for men are called, in popular language, "Contagious Diseases Acts," because that was the first name given them. But of late years all such laws have met with such bitter opposition, that, like an old criminal, the measures seek to hide themselves under all sorts of _aliases_. Mrs. Josephine Butler describes such legislation in general in the following simple, lucid manner: "By this law, policemen,--not the local police, but special Government police, in plain clothes,--are employed to look after all the poor women and girls in a town and its neighborhood. These police spies have power to take up any woman they please, on _suspicion_ that she is not a moral woman, and to register her name on a shameful register as a prostitute. She is then forced to submit to the horrible ordeal of a personal examination of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52  
53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
slavery
 

protected

 

children

 

brothels

 

police

 

unregistered

 
prostitute
 
registered
 

Government

 
brothel

register

 

brought

 
trained
 

keeping

 

enactments

 

Chinese

 

opposition

 

criminal

 
measures
 
bitter

popular

 

language

 
Contagious
 
Diseases
 

called

 

healthy

 

directed

 
Legislative
 

making

 

practice


object

 

acquitted

 

simple

 

neighborhood

 
suspicion
 

horrible

 
ordeal
 

personal

 
examination
 

submit


forced

 

shameful

 

legislation

 
general
 

describes

 

Butler

 

aliases

 

Josephine

 

manner

 
special