31
prisoner, whose name was Sam Ahing, wanting to see me, to do some thing for him,
I did not see him again, to the best of my remembrance, till after he was convicted on the 21st of February. I had no sympathy for him nor for any of the Mah-chow Wong people, and did not seek to see him. The mornings were cold about that time, and I seldom quitted my cell till after the convicts had left the go to work on the roads, so that when I next saw him, the second time in my life, was after his return on the first day of his going out, on the 23d of February. On that day I wrote in my diary thus "Shum Abing the Mah-chow Wong **partner, was convicted of slave dealing and kidnapping, and has four years penal servitude Le. subject to transportation. Ile cries agou *** deal at having to go out in the Chain gang, and says two weeks of ** it will kill him. Asow (the barber) declares him a victim of the gung." The third time of my speaking to him was again during the short interval that elupsed between the return of the Chain gang and tho general lock up. I conclude this by finding my entry on the 25th, of what he had told me of the rights of his case.
"
Dr. Murray's record of the sick will show, I think, that the man broke down within a week of being in gaol, and that he sent him to the hospital-a place I could not enter.
The next I saw of him was through the gratings of the door of the solitary cell before spoken of, on the 12th of March. He had complained of diarrhoea in the hospital, and the object of his being sent to the soll- tary cell, (a very common occurrence) was to test the evidences, if any, of the disease. The report being that he had no such sickness, he was ordered to be flogged for shaming-and thrice, within nine days from that date, he was lushed up to the triangles in the yard and his flesh torn from him.
On the 21st of March, I left the Criminal Gaol, so that for this warm intimacy of mine with Shum Aling to have taken place, it must have been within the eight or nine days in question, and when the poor creature's back will have been like a piece of raw beef. I believe
during that period, when he was breaking stones in the yard, being too much cut up to go out to work, I spoke to him at the same time that I spoke to his brother, who had been sentenced to ten days in- prisonment for giving him opium in the road, and for which he, Sham flogged again, and I told him to send this brother to me when.
his case.
I was out of the gaol, and I would do what I could in investigating. After I left the Criminal Gaol the brother called on me twice, and then he was warned by the gung that if he visited me again he would get into trouble. Sham Aling's faurily since they were spirited out of the Colony,
I have never seen him, or any member of Almost all the information I got of Shui Ahing's case in the Criminal
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<Gaol was from the prisoner who shaved me, and who asserted from the fest that he, Shim Ahing, was the vietin of a couspiracy of the Mah- chow Wong gang--and that he was not the first of the kind in that prison.
As to being found with my arm around Shun Ahing's neck —Gaol Gon- ernor Scott's assertion and that he had separated us several times — [ should foel insulten! if any one asked me if there were an approach to truth in it. A more clumsy, ridiculous falsehood I cannot conceive; and my first impression was that it was only thrown in the concoction intended for a defence, for the purpose of aiding my enemies in the Governgent Service in adding another g to the many I have been made to endure for doing what I conscientiously meant for the public good.
Subsequent circumst mees lead me to feel certain that these men, Scott and Caldwell-if such rascals may be called men-had a graver object; and what that object was --point 6 of my abstract of disproofs-is so clear to any comprehension that I have deemed it right to ask the Attorney General to institute criminal proceedings against the parties on a charge of conspiracy.
A copy of my letter to the Attorney General, Fuclosure K, * I beg to ap- pend, with that officer's reply, Puclosure L. † regarding which I have lo say that so long as the Hongkong Government have an officer styled Pro- tector of the Chinese--and a part of his business is the going to Macao to release, ut the public expense, men supposed to have been kidnapped I hold it to be no part of a private individual's duty to
public prosecutor. enter the lists as
In search of the information which I now lay before His Excellency, I have already, in voyaging twice to Macro, and the like to Hongkong, expended a good deal of time, and certainly in money not less than a hundred dollars--Should I, however, be successful in obtaining the release of a man who I verily believe to be innocent of the charge for which he is undergoing penal servitude, with the occasional inhuman tor- ture of Victoria Gaol, and who would undoubtedly have remaine i in his Jiving tomb, without the possibility of his claim to justite being known but for my providential presence there at the same time,-ny reward will be ample in an approving conscience,
Shui Aking, I need not tell his Excellency, is a man well in years, and in his statement to me he speaks of having dependent on him a family young children, besides an aged father and mother, to whom his restor- ation, after upwards of two years separation-upwards of two years of undeserved penal servitude,--would be a great boon.
I have &c.,
of
See page 1 ante.--
↑ See page 9 ante.——
W. TARRANT.
Engnice
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