THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 17TH NOVEMBER, 1877.
495
to lead to serious consequences." Well, the solemn, protest of that professional gentleman, and one too with thirty-six years' experience of the Chinese, was disregarded. You know the result. With reference to a number of the men who murdered Mr. DENT in the prison, the Judge reported that the prisoners pleaded guilty, they wanted to be hanged,-anything sooner than life in that prison; they were prepared to do anything. They were hanged, for they had committed murder. But it was impossible for the Government to lose sight of the fact that the recommendations of the medical officer had been set at nought. It is not merely that the physical constitution of a prisoner is affected by his treatment in prison; his mind as well as his body is affected: he may be physically altered by prison treatment; so too he may be rendered a fierce, desperate, irreclaimable man. make a greater mistake in than in assuming medical knowledge they cannot be expected to have. There is nothing an Executive can The Colonial Surgeon of Hongkong has had experience in other parts of the East, and in his first conversation with me he told me in connection with his Indian experience that there was not a doctor in India who would for a moment countenance the flogging of Orientals on the back with the cat as they were flogged in this Colony. I cannot pretend to know what the physiological reason is, but the highest authorities tell us that in this respect Orientals differ from Europeans; we know a slight blow will sometimes kill an Oriental when it might not injure a European.
Dr. AYRES made a report of great gravity to me with respect to flogging the Chinese on the back in this Colony. In the gaol hospital I saw one man, an old man, who had been a long time in prison. This man was pointed out to me by Dr. AYRES as being in hospital for incurable lung disease. He had been a tall, strong man when he came into prison, now he is on the edge of the grave. been punished twenty-three times, including three floggings. The Colonial Surgeon assured me that He had the incurable hæmorrhage of the lungs from which this prisoner suffers is entirely due to those floggings. We have returns here of persons who have been recommended to the Governor for clemency by the medical officer on the ground that they had not much longer to live. Dr. AYRES gave it as his professional opinion that in every case where a Chinaman is flogged on the back with the cat symptoms of congestion of the lungs follow, and he says he is never surprised when that congestion passes away and the man is apparently cured at the time from effects of the flogging that the same man in a few months comes back to the hospital spitting blood. He drew my attention also to the fact of the scars remaining on their backs for the remainder of their lives, so that when liberated from prison and working on a day like this, their backs are seen, and they are branded amongst whatever honest men they may be among. The prisoner carries such punishment with him to the end of his life. The law never intended that.
Dr. AYRES having made that report, I felt bound to communicate with the Chief Justice, and after I had considered His Honour's observations, I felt it my duty to point out that I could not allow any man to be flogged on the back in the manner Dr. AYRES mentioned; and I said the only corporal punishment I would permit was that sanctioned by the Colonial Surgeon. Government of this Colony, the Visiting Justices have sometimes sentenced prisoners to be flogged for Since I assumed the prison offences, in every case I have approved that flogging, and upon the whole I have approved, I say it with regret, of something over twenty floggings since my arrival; I say it with regret, because, having administered Governments in other parts of the world, I can recollect the fact that during the four years I had to deal with the worst classes of Singapore and Hongkong convicts at Labuan, not a single lash was applied, and crime declined in that Colony. sent from Hongkong to Labuan, and the hundred Chinese convicts I got from the Straits Settlements, The sixty Chinese convicts that were enabled me to study for four years the mode of treating Chinese prisoners. I visited the prison every week. I substituted Chinese Turnkeys for Malay Warders. I made your very worst Hongkong criminals amenable to strict discipline. I found that Chinamen could be made to conduct themselves in prison, and that it was not hopeless to attempt to improve their moral condition. By the aid of your convicts, I made the Labuan prison pay all its expenses; and with this, as I have just said, there was no flogging and crime declined in the Colony.
Within the last few months, I have received some printed despatches in which reference is made incidentally to the gaol system in the Bahamas. The previous Governor differed with me and thought that the negroes could only be influenced by the lash. He said Europeans, Chinese, or Hindoos you might deal with in another way, but not negroes. When I went there Lord KIMBERLEY said to me, I am giving you a troublesome post; owing perhaps to wrecking, crime is excessive." I endeavoured to see what could be done, and while I applied with strict severity the laws for the protection of life and property, I endeavoured to rectify the prison discipline. I endeavoured to give the prisoners some useful labour and had them informed that the only way in which they could regain their liberty before their full sentence expired was by steady good conduct and hard work. That system was carried out, and what was the result? Not a single lash was applied in the Bahamas from that time, and now Governor ROBINSON writes: "I am happy to inform your Lordship crime declines," and he adds, "I am very happy to say that I have not allowed a single case of flogging.' out, not my system, but the system of the British Government, the system laid down by the Secretary That able Governor has carried of State, that you must combine the two things, severe punishment with reformatory training. The best attempt at reformation is to keep the prisoners employed at useful labour and let them understand that any remission of imprisonment will depend upon that labour and on steady good conduct. Unfortunately the opposite experiment was tried here; the gentlemen who framed the Cool Report not
"