Dr. E. I. Eitel
Continuation.
294
Dr.
Kidnapping was prevalent in the early eighties and the Governor appointed a Committee to investigate the matter. Eitel was one of the four selected to serve on this committee which finally recommended Government sanction of an Anti-Kidnapping Association, which later became known as the Po Leung Kuk.
About this time the Chief Justice Sir John Smale, alleged that Kidnapping was encouraged by the social habits of foreigners in Hongkong; that a class of mean whites was springing up in Hongkong and living in abject misery and that it was the duty of the Government to crush a system, which by debasing all moral tone, tended to crime. To rebut the arguments of Sir John Smale, Dr. Eitel published an exhaustive report on the origin and characteristics of Chinese slavery and domestic servitude in Hongkong. The matter was debated in the House of Lords and Dr. Eitel's report was praised by Lord Stanley of Alderley.
After serving on a Commission investigating Sanitation in Hongkong, Dr. Eitel went over to the Education Department, being appointed its chief in 1879.
When Dr. Eitel left Hongkong in 1896, the Hongkong Telegraph printed the following panegyric: "The Government have in Dr. Eitel, lost a valuable public servant and the Colony is intellectually the poorer for his departure. He was a zealous missionary, serving first on the mainland under the Basel Mission and later as a member of the London Mission.
He was a careful student of the Chinese, both of the language and of the people, with a competent knowledge of both the spoken and the written languages, and an especial knowledge of the Hakka dialect. He was a man of wide reading to whom nothing came amiss and whose self-possession and coolness and strong commonsense enabled him to utilize to the utmost all the powers of his mind.
He was a zealous public servant, never sparing of his time nor of his labour when there was work to be done. He knew nothing of "office hours". He did not limit his services to the period between 10 a.m., and 4 p.m. He worked early and late. He was a good friend and a competent adviser in almost all ways.
He made one mistake in his career. He believed too implicitly in the honour and good faith of the late Sir John Pope Hennessy. The gravest blot on that officer's character while in Hongkong was his abandonment of Dr. Eitel to public and official reprobation when he, Sir John Pope Hennessy, could have and ought to have exonerated the Doctor by taking on himself the responsibility for what had been said and done in obedience to his directions and at his request.
Dr. Eitel suffered severely for his mistake but he lived it down, and there is no one to-day in the Colony who will not wish him God-speed, wherever he may be. There are not many public servants left in the Colony possessed and animated by the same spirit."
Page 25
Page 26