(14)
In dealing with the boys from the Gaol. The boys sent there were upwards of the age prescribed, and too far advanced in the art of pilfering as pickpockets.
It appears that having made stricter Regulations, the inmates of the Gaol have diminished, and that there is no boy under sixteen at present. The Reformatory is going on steadily in its usual way; the Chinese boys numbering 72, and the non-Chinese 27 kept quite apart from the former. The boys look very happy, and the Directors are satisfied with their behaviour; the place is very healthy. During twenty-five years, in an average of sixty boys, only two have died, one from sunstroke, and the other through phthisis, contracted before he entered the Reformatory. The garden is in a flourishing condition, and is the admiration of everyone who visits it—in a word, we are a little proud of the whole, and feel a certain attachment to the place where we spent twenty-five years starting, increasing the building, embellishing the place, and turning youths, once quite obnoxious to Society, into honest, useful members of it. We were just near saying "Now we shall rest," when a report came that the same place of our Reformatory was to be appropriated by the Government as the ground was wanted to replenish the new Praya for the Tramway operations. We felt it and we feel it—our thousands of dollars sunk in the garden gone, we have to leave a place to which we feel attached, we have to separate ourselves from a dear old friend—but, we do not lose courage; we trust in the justice and generosity of the Government who will no doubt compensate our expenses and troubles by granting a new fine site, and by letting us have a larger, better building than the present for the convenience of the boys and the benefit of the Colony.
JOHN T. RAIMONDI, Bishop, Vicar-Apostolic,
Hongkong, December, 1889.
DRAFT.
Long Tre 84
Ear
7008. Akary
We Robison Kbely.
MINUTE.
Mr. Wilson 9 May M. Lucas 9
Mr. Fairfield.
Mr. Wingfield.
Mr. Bramston.
Mr. Meude.
Mr. Buxton.
912
Marquess of Ripon.
aus
1252
fir
527
12 May 1693
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch 1272 of the 27th of March last reporting upon the questions raised in my despatches of the 20th of January and of the 4th of February last respecting Excavation in the Colony