The Queen's Daughters in IndiaBushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
History
The Queen's Daughters in India
Bushnell, Katharine C. (Katharine Caroline)
Prostitution -- India; Women -- India -- Conduct of life; Women -- India -- Social conditions
At other times we had opportunities to revisit this large chakla.
There were about one hundred inmates, and accommodations for many
more. The building was scarcely less than a huge fortification. High
blank walls--excepting tiny well-barred windows high up, surrounded
an open space of ground, or court; and the inner side of the wall was
lined with small numbered rooms for the accommodation of the inmates.
Most of the girls, here as elsewhere, because of constant association
with British men, had learned to speak a little English, while a few
spoke quite fluently. Although we always were accompanied by a good
interpreter, yet often we were able to converse quite freely ourselves
with the girls.
Our interpreter recognised one girl on our first visit, whom we shall
call by her nickname, which was "Katy," and asked her if she was not
the girl who had run after her carriage two or three times, begging
the interpreter to take her away. Katy said she had done so, and with
streaming tears reiterated her desire to escape from a life of which
she was so ashamed, and pleaded with us to take her. When we consented
to take her that very day, she faltered, and then decided that she did
not dare try to go until after the following day, which was the day of
the bi-weekly examination, but she said that if we would give her our
address she would come herself on the day following. As we drove away
in our cab, and the girls waved farewell, poor Katy, with pitiful and
despairing countenance, burst into tears. Her face haunted us for days,
and as she did not come of her own accord to us, in a few days we went
after her again.
We learned afterwards that Katy had made ineffectual attempts to come
to us. When we returned to the chakla for her, we found her without
difficulty, and told her our errand. With glowing, happy face, she
arrayed herself in her best garments, arranged her hair neatly and with
childish simplicity, and leaving her few earthly belongings behind, got
into the cab with us. But soon her face clouded, she grew apprehensive,
and said she would have to go and get permission of the Cantonment
magistrate before she could venture to leave. Anticipating not the
slightest difficulty in this matter, when we represented the case to
the magistrate and became surety for the girl's future good conduct
and maintenance by a responsible Mission, we decided that it was best
to let her have her own way. We did not then know India as we learned
it afterwards. But the native policemen, seeing the girl with us, and
being informed or suspecting our errand, refused, on enquiry, to inform
us where the Cantonment magistrate could be found, and misled us in so
far as they gave us any information.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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