LEGAL ASPECTS

Although it's difficult to find clear evidence of the city's legal stance on prostitution, the Canadian Criminal Code and the local police chief's report suggest that society's tolerance for it was in decline.

In a memo, Victoria Police Superintendent, C.P. Bloomfield, refers to a resolution passed by Municipal Council on 12 September 1881 to "call attention to the necessity and importance of the Police Authorities taking measures for the suppression of Houses of Ill Fame at China Town". However, it is unclear what "measures" Bloomfield would use. (LINK to the Bloomfield report.)

Legally, prostitution itself was not regarded as an offence, instead it was dealt with by means of a charge for street solicitation or the operation of a 'bawdy-house'. In effect, the test of it as an offence was the extent to which it became a "fact of public annoyance".

In his 1886 report to the Chairman of the Police Board Bloomfield wrote:

"in regard to the Houses of ill-fame in the city, I enclose a list of the Houses with the names of the owners or agents of the premises of all the Houses kept by White or Half-bread women, the names of the persons that keep Chinese Houses of ill-fame I have not got, only the names of most of the owners of the premises".

However, many of the house owners (not the renters) were considered well-respected citizens, which possibly explains why they were never prosecuted. Subsequent exorbitant rent increases suggest that the property owners knew that immoral businesses were being carried on but were willing to tolerate it for a price.

By the following year, however, federal legislation made it clear that prostitutes themselves would be subject to criminal charges. Section 8 of the 1887 Criminal Code of Canada stated:
All persons who:
(c) Openly expose or exhibit in any street, road, public place or highway, any indecent exhibition, or openly or indecently expose their persons,
(i) Are common prostitutes or night walkers, wandering in the fields, public streets or highways, lanes or places of public meeting or gathering of people and not giving a satisfactory account of themselves,
(j) Are keepers or inmates of disorderly houses, bawdy-houses or houses of ill-fame, or houses for the resort of prostitution, or persons in the habit of frequenting such houses, not giving a satisfactory account of themselves,
(k) Have no peaceable profession or calling to maintain themselves by, but who do, for the most part, support themselves by gaming or crime, or by the avails of prostitution,
...shall, upon summary conviction before two justices of the peace, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be liable to a fine not exceeding fifty dollars or to imprisonment with or without hard labour, for any term not exceeding six months, or to both.

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