the appropriation of Government
money for the pay of informers who might induce Chinese women to
prostitute themselves, and thus bring them under the penal clauses
of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance. For many years past this
branch of the Registrar General's office has led to grave abuses.
It has been a fruitful source of extortion, but what is far worse,
a department of the State, as one of the local papers now points
out, which is supposed to be constituted for the protection of the
Chinese, has been employing a dangerously loose system, whereby
the sanctity of native households may be seriously compromised.
I had no idea that the Secret Service Fund was used for this
loathsome purpose until my attention was drawn to an inquest on
the bodies of two Chinese women who were killed by falling from
a house in which one of the informers employed by the Registrar
General was pursuing his avocations.... I am taking steps to
institute a searching inquiry into the whole subject. The European
community are ashamed at the revelations that have been made at
the inquest, and amongst the Chinese the practice that has been
brought to light is, viewed with abhorrence."
This was the incident which led to the appointment of the Commission
of Inquiry into the working of the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, the
re****t of which Commission we have already had occasion to quote from
more than once.
Later, Governor Hennessy wrote to the Colonial Office:
"Whilst the Attorney General is of opinion that, strictly
speaking, there is a _prima facie_ case of manslaughter made out
against Inspector Lee, and that possibly a conviction might be
obtained, he advises against a prosecution. I do not concur with
the Attorney General in the reasons he gives for not instituting a
prosecution in this case."
During the year previous, 1876, Ordinance No. 2 had been passed,
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