relating to Measures
Adopted for Checking the Spread of Venereal Disease' (Cd. 2903),
and relates to enactments in the Straits Settlements, Hong Kong,
and Gibraltar, during the period in which the Rt. Hon. Joseph
Chamberlain was at the head of the Colonial office.
"The correspondence in question further reveals the existence and
extent of a 'Yellow Slave Trade' in the East of large dimensions.
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. There were
176 admissions of Japanese women, and 141 admissions of Chinese
women in 1899 to the public hospital at Singapore, besides numbers
of other cases to private hospitals maintained by the keepers of
the houses of ill-fame.
"Many passages in the correspondence give evidence of a continual
import traffic going on, which the head of the Regulation
Department, the 'Protector of Chinese,' at Singapore, seems to
have made some effort to cou