The colonial authorities of nineteenth century Hong Kong believed that the vast majority of the Chinese women residing in the colony were prostitutes.  For example, in 1878 Charles May, a member of the colonial government, testified to an inquiry into the regulation of prostitution that: ‘I should say that only about 1/6^th of the Chinese women in the Colony live with one man either in marriage or in concubinage and all the rest come under the denomination of prostitutes to whom money being offered they would consent to sexual intercourse.’  May’s view was given additional credence (at least in the eyes of the members of the inquiry) by the evidence of a Chinese Doctor, Pang –Ui –Shang who estimated that ‘the respectable women of Hong Kong at 25% of the female population’ and also claimed that ‘as regards prostitution this Colony has an especially bad reputation.’  [1]

If one applies May and Dr Pang’s estimates to the population figures for 1878, this would suggest that some 20,000 women were working as prostitutes and also that the ratio of prostitutes to the total male population was in the range of 1: 7, or 1: 5 for the Chinese population.  To me this seems very high but as an historian interested in women’s history what really bothers me is that there has been no detailed study on whether this is a fair representation of the female population of nineteenth century Hong Kong.  In part this is because most of available sources only refer to women when they represent a problem and prostitution was considered a problem.  However, even if the only available sources are the official documents generated by the colonial government, such as legislation, correspondence with the Colonial Office in London, census returns, school inspections, court records etc., it does not take much effort to find references to women who were not prostitutes and who were not a problem in any other way (e.g. as criminals, paupers etc) and one can use these to construct a more representative picture.

Here are a few examples of some of the evidence that I have found to date.  Court records, even though they focus on women who have committed or are accused of a crime, and so may not be representative of the female population as a whole, can be used to demonstrate the variety of occupations that women undertook.  For example in 1847 an extensive, illegal lumber industry was discovered by police.  The employees were male but it was run by a Chinese woman.  Clearly women could and did run their own businesses, even if, as in this case, it was illegal.  Court cases also illustrate that many brothel keepers were women.  What is particularly interesting is that many of the brothel keepers were not former prostitutes but saw it as legitimate business enterprise, often a joint enterprise with their husbands.  Some of the brothels were quite large – for example one brothel keeper is described as employing over a 100 people consisting of 50 male staff, 22 female servers and nearly 30 prostitutes.  The Colonial authorities generally regarded all female inhabitants of a brothel as prostitutes, but as can be seen in one sad case where two women jumped to their deaths to avoid being caught by the police; this was not always the case.  The Coroner’s Inquest into their deaths suggests they worked as servants in a brothel.

Other evidence from government sources can be equally illuminating.  For example the land registry gives several examples of women who owned property, bought and sold property and rented it out. The women tended to be Hakka women rather than Han Chinese (the predominant ethnic group) or ‘kept’ women that is the mistresses of Europeans who were given property to secure their future (and presumably that of their children) once the affair was over or the man returned home.  The annual report on government schools by the school inspectors is another good source of information. The reports tell us that the girls were taught needlework and domestic skills by a Chinese school mistress, usually the wife of the school master.  They were not taught English, as according to the Inspector of Schools this would make them dissatisfied with their humble station in life!  Boys, of course, were taught English so they could eventually get a job with the colonial government or one of the many European mercantile houses.  Apart from illustrating the government’s unenlightened attitude to female education, the school reports give an indication of the number of families in Hong Kong, although we cannot tell the occupation of the children’s parents.  The census records do, however, list all the occupations of the Chinese inhabitants, though it does not split them by gender.  The 1877 census, for example, states that there were 109 brothel keepers, some of whom would have been female.   It also lists102 play actors; again we know that some of these actors could have been female because the leading members of the Chinese community petitioned the Governor requesting that he forbade female actresses from performing in Hong Kong because of their lewd behaviour.  The Governor agreed to the request and published a notice to this effect in The Hong Kong Government Gazette, the official publication of colonial government in which all official notices, pronouncements etc were published and again another very useful source.

So, as I have attempted to demonstrate here, whilst it may feel like one is searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, it is possible to use the official sources to begin to construct a more rounded picture of women’s lives in nineteenth century Hong Kong, and such a picture , is I would argue, long overdue.

Jane Berney works on the implementation of the Contagious Diseases Ordinances in Colonial Hong Kong at the Open University. She is also a committee member for the Women’s History Network.