5
107 prisoners in Victoria Gaol and in Stone Cutters' Island 262 - making a total of 876.
6. Such a serious disproportion of prisoners compared with the resident population, clearly pointed to some deficiency in the administration of justice and denoted the slight deterring influence of imprisonment in a well-kept English Gaol - where there was wholesome food, good lodging, and till lately light work.
It had seemed as though, if things went on previously, the large Gaol here and the new Gaol in Stone Cutters' Island would not in a few years have held all the candidates for admission, and the funds of this Colony would have been absorbed in maintaining the scum and crime of the worst criminal population in China, that of the two Kwang Provinces.
I therefore early felt that it was no duty of this Government to construct prisons for the reformation and punishment of the criminal population from the opposite shore; and that I might use my best exertions to leave in the hands of the Vice Roy the support and punishment of the criminals really residing in his district, and Visitors here.
8. All comparison between the objects of Gaol discipline here and of similar discipline in any English County seemed deceptive and inapplicable. Here there is but a handful of Europeans.