same disinterested manner in which Sir John Smale had wrought so effectually. The new law was, however, put in each case under the administration of the "Protector" and his staff of officials, and the result has been, and could but be unsatisfactory, to the present day. For instance, in 1893, Mr. H.E. Wodehouse, Police Magistrate at Hong Kong, in reporting on a case of suicide of a slave girl to the Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong, to be transmitted for the information of Lord Ripon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had asked for the information, goes quite fully into a description of conditions at this time, three years after the passage of the Protective Ordinance. He says: "The name of the deceased was Chan Ngan-Kin.... She was registered as a prostitute in this brothel on the 23rd of December, 1890. When registering her name she said she had no pocket-mother, that her parents were both dead, and that she became a prostitute of her own free will. The inspector said that that was the description of themselves that nearly all prostitutes give, and that it was very rarely that it was true. The further evidence went to prove that she and a young man were mutually attached to each other, and he was anxious to redeem her, and that she was desirous of being redeemed, but that the price asked, two thousand three hundred dollars, was more than he was willing to give, though he was willing to give two thousand dollars.... There is little doubt that his inability to redeem her caused her to commit suicide.... The pocket-mother was not produced [at the inquest], and there was a general disposition on the part of the Chinese witnesses to withhold information." Lord Ripon said in his letter of inquiry: "If the facts were as stated in the above-mentioned paper, it would seem to prove that it is not generally understood in the Colony that a brothel keeper has no legal right to demand any redemption money for the release of one of the inmates." To this the Magistrate replies, in explanation: