1841-1886
HER MAJESTY'S COLONIAL POSSESSIONS.
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bad effect of flogging on the back. This was an extract from a Chinese work known as the "Imperial Revision of T'ai-p'ing."
66. In this ancient work, which was personally revised by the Emperor T'ai-tsung in A.D. 983, it is stated that an Emperor of the Tang dynasty reading a medical book on the relation between "the five viscera and the back" said, “Our modern law books on flogging with the bamboo say if the flogging is distributed over "the hip and upper part of the back death may unexpectedly result therefrom, and naturally it must be so if people are flogged on the upper part of the back; now flogging with the bamboo is "the lightest of the five punishments, whilst a question of life "and death is the most serious thing for man; how then can it be permitted in the case of the lightest punishment to incur the "risk of causing death by flogging? From of old the Emperors "and Kings have never thought of this; is this not deplorable?” Thereupon he (T'ai-tsung of the Tang dynasty) immediately issued an Ordinance forbidding to flog criminals on the upper part of the back."
67. Though the "modern" law books to which the Emperor alluded had been compiled more than 1,000 years ago, yet I was not disposed to despise them on that account, more especially as the danger to life of flogging criminals on the back has been recognized by the practice of the Chinese Government for many centuries.
68. The papers relating to flogging in Hong Kong that were laid before Parliament in 1879* give such full statistics and information that I need only add on the subject of flogging that I stopped all public flogging and branding in 1877, and put a stop to flogging on the back pending the decision of Her Majesty's Government. Year by year I was able to reduce the number of floggings, and it is now more than 12 months since any sentence of flogging has been carried out in Hong Kong.
69. Whilst the powers conferred on me by Her Majesty's Commission enabled me to do this, I did not feel justified in recommending at once a revision of the statute book of Hong Kong.
70. A few years' experience of the provisional measures I had adopted having shown that crime could be controlled and diminished without barbarous and unnecessary punishments, by simply adhering to the well understood principles of prison discipline and of police administration, I ventured last year to submit my final recommendations on these questions to Her Majesty's Government. In doing so I transmitted various returns and reports respecting the diminution of crime for the last three or four years. Amongst those returns were the following:
Number of Admissions to the Hong Kong Gaol.
1877 - 3,946
1878 - 3,803
1879 - 3,669
* [C.-2438] August 1879.
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