"It is not quite correct to speak of the brothel-keeper as demanding redemption money. The person whose property the prostitute is is the pocket-mother, that is to say, the purchaser of the girl. Nearly every prostitute has her own pocket-mother, and she it is who has sole control over the prostitute's movements. All the earnings go to her, and the redemption money when redemption takes place. The 'brothel-keeper' is a creation of the Government, and the term has, I think, led to some misappreciation of the actual state of things. It is true that, being registered by the Government, she becomes in a manner responsible for the proper conduct of the establishment, but the property in the girl does not rest in her, except in the case of the two or three girls to whom she may herself be pocket-mother, that is to say, whom she may herself have purchased. The pocket-mothers are the real proprietresses of their purchases, and a brothel-keeper would not regard herself as in any way connected with such girls, beyond the obligation devolving upon her of registering the inmates of the house of which she, as tenant or owner, was the proprietress. A Chinese brothel is in fact merely a collection under one roof of several different establishments, consisting of the pocket-mothers and their purchases, the pocket-mothers for the most part being the body-servants of their charges, and administering to their daily wants, though in reality their mistresses and their absolute owners." The document scarcely needs comment. It illustrates the fact that one may have most ideal laws, but laws never operate automatically, and in the absence of any desire to "let the oppressed go free," but rather an eager desire to hold them in subjection to the base propensities of profligate men, as all the State documents representing the situation tend to show, there is small proof that the "Women and Girls' Protective Ordinance of 1889" has had any appreciable effect in altering the slave conditions at Hong Kong. The same old notorious inspector, John Lee, who, Governor Hennessy thought, ought to have been prosecuted for manslaughter, after he hounded those native women to their death, was Chief Inspector of Brothels at Hong Kong in 1894, when we made investigations in that Colony, and personally interviewed many of these slave girls, and heard their stories. The most recent official documents relating to the matter have been commented upon in _The Shield_ (organ of the British Committee of the International Purity Federation), in its issue dated London, June, 1906, as follows: