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inadvisable to send a married couple to the Island at all: and that if, after doing 30, it was found impossible for the pair to occupy the quarters it was certainly a mistake to allow them to live out: even if it was authorized by the Covernment.
The Captain BSuperintendent further alleges, in support of his view that his arrangements were know to and acquiesced in by the Government, that tho station was visited by several Governors who apparently approved of his dispositions.
Your Committee hardly thinks that this is a point which can be regarded as of Luch consequence as it does not consider that a Governor assumes the personal responsibility of the Chief of the Police on whose correct judgment and experience he is entitled to rely.
The Captain Superintendent of Police further states that the reason why married Indian Folice were stationed on the Island was because they could there obtain cheap quarters; also that they were allowed to reside out as they could not have lived in the station owing to the want of privacy.
Your Comittee considers that the error of jude- -ment is intensified here: the buildings were, it is stated, used (prior to 1899 when the Island was teken wider British Authority) as a Customs House of the Chinese Customs and were occupied per- -manently by 3 Juropean and numerous Chinese Officers; from 1899 to 1906 the European and Indian Police Officers did, it is said, actually reside on the premises.
It appears to your Committee that to abandon the
premises altogether as residential quarters was an error of judg-
-ment and dat the better and safer course would have been not to
employ married officers whose vives rendered the question of
inhabiting the station a matter of serious concern but to employ
unmarried men who could exist in the quarters and at the same
time to have urged that Govern.ent should take steps to improve
the situation by erecting a more suitable station in a more healthy spot.
The