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look after their children while they worked: but it is unnecessary to emphasise the impossibility of any such suggestion, as it would mean that Colony would soon have the care of all the poor children of the place and of many others from South China as well. I may observe incidentally that cases of cruelty of parents to their own children are not unknown in Europe.
7.
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Your Lordship enquires as to the steps taken by this Goverment in regard to Mrs. Haslewood. The facts are these. My attention was drawn to the fact that Mrs. Haslewood was writing letters to the local newspapers alleging the wide-spread existence of alavery and ill-treat- ment of child slaves in Hongkong in terms which were causing much annoyance to the Chinese community. The fact that her husband was an officer employed in the Naval Yard made the matter much worse, as the Chinese still retain some respect for official position and thus her communications to the Press received greater attention than if they had been written by the wife of an ordinary resident. If no notice was taken of this conduct on the part of an officer's wife and it was well-known that her husband instead of trying to restrain her was encouraging her dangerous activities, there was considerable risk that the Chinese would acquire the impression that the Government regarded with favour these exaggerated and offensive attacks on their community and thus a state of ill-feeling towards the British Goverment would be created which would be highly undesirable especially at the present time of unsettlement in the South of China.
There was a further consideration to which I was inclined to
attach some weight. Mrs. Haslewood was well-known to be a person of unbalanced mind. As an indication of her mentality
I may quote an incident which happened in November, 1919, when
she made a formal complaint to the Police that a child was
being cruelly ill-treated in a Chinese house near her
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residence.