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Considerable attention was given in the report to the presence of
prostitutes and other European women. It was stated of the women that
'each one lives ostensibly with a Chinese storekeeper, or one in well-to-do
circumstances; they dress expensively in velvets and silks, jewellery in
abundance, have plenty, and when in the streets conduct themselves for
the most part with propriety; their appearance under such circumstances
could not fail to create at favourable impression upon strangers...•
Of the 37 European women said to be married to Chinese at the five
camps inspected I some of these women (appeared) respectable, to study
the interests of their husbands and children, and to keep aloof altogether
from the bad characters, who make the camps hideous by their vile
conduct; there residences too are clean and comfortable and display the
combined tastes of the Chinese and the European. Others of them make
the lives of their unfortunate Chinese husbands miserable; they conduct
themselves regardless of consequences, and set their husbands at
defiance as far as conducting themselves improperly with Europeans is
concerned. When not at war with their husbands, they fight with each
other, seek redress in the Police courts, and the Chinese husbands have
to pay the penalties incurred by their European wives, and consider
themselves fortunate that they too have not been included in the litigation;
most of these women have been prostitutes for years before they get
married to the Chinese... I
As to the prostitutes themselves, the report commented as follows. I
...There were 37 prostitutes residing in the five camps, when inspected,
whose ages all were between 19 and 30 but on some occasions the camps
contain double that number. It is those females and most of the married
women already alluded to who are the principal cause of all the
disturbances, robberies and crimes, which have transformed the Chinese
camps into dens of immorality. The Chinese themselves are comparatively
powerless and many of them have at times sought the assistance of the
police to compel these females to leave their camps and to protect them
from their violence, yet the Chinese are charged with being the instigators
of keeping them in the camps. The assertion too frequently made use of by
persons not accurately informed on the subject of the Chinese is that the
Chinese have seduced the females or 'girls' as they are called and that
they have been the fountain and source of all the obliquities of character
which distinguish those frequenters of Chinese camps is a fallacy, and has
nothing in truth to support it as I have not yet been able to visit one camp
during the enquiry or in my Chinese experience of 24 years where a female
resorting in Chinese camps owed her seduction to a Chinaman. All of
these females themselves deny the allegation emphatically and smile at
the credulity of any person believing such; some of these women living
with Chinese at the camps are married women who have left their
husbands on account of some alleged cruelty which mayor may not be
true; others have been prostitutes for years in Victoria, and many of them
find pleasure in recounting a history of criminal experience and of their
youthful precociousness, which reach the nee plus ultra of female