18
carnally know or attempts to have carnal knowledge of any
unmarried girl being above the age of 12 years and under the age of 16 years is guilty of a misdemeanor. There
are however thre provisoes to this section (1 where both
parties are asiatics a girl shall not be deemd unmarried
if she is duly married according to the laws and customs of
the native country of the girl ( it shall be a sufficient
defence if the person charred had reasonable cause to believe
that the girl was of or above the age of 16 (3) prosecu-
tions must be commenced within three months of the offence.
These sections fix the age of consent in carnal
knowledge cases in the case of unmarried girls at 16 (see
Reg v. Beale L.R. 1 C.C.R. 10 and Beg v. Tyrrell 1394. 1
(.3. at 712) and in the case of married women at 12.
6.
Section 6 of the Ordinance is derived from section
4 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, except that (a)
carnally knows" is substituted for "unlawfully and carnally
knows" (b) the words "whether he is married to her or not"
are not in the act, and (e) the age of 12 is substitued for
the age of 13. These differences are due to the fact that
the section was also derived from Ordinance No.7 of 1892
which provided that "whosoever shall carnally know and
abuse any girl under the age of 12 years, whether he is
married to her or not shall be milty of a felony",
The following extract from the Hong Kong Hansard
of 25th April 1892, gives the explanatiɔn :-
"This Bill is introduced by direction of the Sec-
retary of State. It has for over a quarter
of a century been a very serious offence in
this Colony to have unlawful intercourse with