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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference:
TEINC.O. 882
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
4PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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18. If, as he states in his letter of the 6th of July, Dr. Ayres has noticed in all flogging of Chinese by the cat that they suffer, besides the external injury to the skin, more or less from congestion of the lungs, and if, as you report in the Despatch, he has invariably observed by the breathing and the pulse and frequently by the stethoscope the presence of congestion of the lungs in Chinese, I should wish to be informed whether he has ever during his previous years of service brought these facts to the notice of the Government, and if not you will desire him to explain why he has not I should wish also to be furnished with copies of some of the notices, if there are any, in the case book or other hospital book in which his observations are recorded. In the absence of such information his statement requires corroboration.
done so.
19. I request you to have the prisoners Yeung a Man, who on the 27th of November 1876, received a third flogging of 25 lashes within six months, and Leong a Loi who underwent a similar punishment upon the 13th March 1877, to be examined by the two most competent medical men obtainable unconnected with the Colonial Service, and that you will forward to me their report without delay. I should be glad if one of these gentlemen could be the Chief Surgeon of one of Her Majesty's ships or the head of the Naval Hospital or the Principal Medical Officer of the garrison.
20. I further wish to be informed whether there is any other medical man in the Colony who has at any time acted as Colonial Surgeon, and if so, whether he concurs in Dr. Ayre's opinion. It is I confess surprising to me that if the effect of the cat upon Chinese is such as is stated it should have escaped the notice of previous Colonial Surgeons, and I regret that you have not obtained other medical testimony to throw light upon so startling a disclosure. I feel satisfied that every medical man in Her Majesty's service or practising in the Colony would have been ready at your request to assist in establishing the truth or otherwise of a theory which is of extreme importance, whether regarded from the point of view of ordinary humanity, of medical science, or of penal discipline.
21. In pursuance of this view and in order that the question may be thoroughly examined, I request you to obtain for me the report of a Board as to the prevalence of otherwise of pulmonary complaints among the prisoners generally, and upon the physical effect of a flogging with a cat upon Chinese offenders in good health, and it will be satisfactory if you can obtain the aid of any medical officer of rank in Her Majesty's Naval or Military Service in the prosecution of such inquiry.
22. I was able to submit Dr. Ayres' letter of the 6th of July and your Despatch enclosing it to the Indian Medical Board under the Presidency of Sir Joseph Fayrer, K.C.S.I., and I requested them to favour me with their opinion as to the probable predisposition of Chinese to affections of the lungs if flogged on the back with the cat, and in reply was informed that the Board are unanimously of opinion that "there is nothing, so far as they know, in the physique of the bealthy Chinese which "should predispose them to affections of the lungs after flogging with the cat more than Europeans or men of other nationalities; and speaking from probability they consider "such a state of things very unlikely.”
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23. Having been thus advised, it is necessary that I should reserve my opinion until I have received the proofs I have requested and the report of the Board, of which it will be, as well that Dr. Ayres should not be a member, as he will be one of the principal witnesses before it.
24. I have now to refer to the case of Wong a Kwai, which in the table of contents to the printed correspondence on prison discipline inclosed in your Despatch, No. 122, of the 22nd of September,* you describe as a case of incurable lung disease produced
by flogging."
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25. I learn from the Despatch that on one of your visits to the gaol Dr. Ayres reported verbally to you that the prisoner was labouring under an incurable pulmonary disease; that he frequently suffered from hemorrhage of the lungs, and that this was owing to the way in which he had been flogged. You naturally called for a written report on the case, and in this written report, dated the 6th of July, Dr. Ayres states that as far as he can ascertain this man had no phthisical history, and that his personal physique does not at all correspond with that of a man suffering from hereditary phthisis; besides that it is generally admitted by officers of the gaol who knew him when he first entered that he was then of very powerful build for his size, and that his present broken-down state of health is entirely owing to the punishments he received years
ago.
26. I do not perceive any statement of the prisoner's age or of his occupation before he came into the gaol in 1862, but the prison record in your Despatch 64 of the 18th Julyt shows him to have committed numerous crimes of violence, two escapes, and
† No. 5,
• No. 10.
a foul offence, so that it is not surprising that he should have been an inmate of the good almost incessantly since 1862, or that his list of punishments for prison offences should be a long one.
27. His criminal sentences of penal servitude seem not to have comprised flogging, The punishments for the prison offences appear or anything out of the ordinary course.
to have been double irons or three days rice and water, this last on twelve occasions in twelve years between 4th January 1865 and 11th April 1877, the intervals varying considerably, and only once, in 1868, being less than three months, except that in 1868 a fourth day was added for a fresh offence; it also appears that on three occasions he It is not suggested that his illness was sentenced to three days solitary confinement.
was caused by a certain caning he received with a rattan for a foul offence in 1876, and there is apparently nothing to connect his illness with the two floggings administered with the cat, 24 lashes on the 14th January 1867 and 30 lashes on the 29th July 1874.
28. I presume that the Gaol Regulations enclosed in your Despatch, No. 65, of the 6th of July, with reference to medical examination, were duly carried out by the proper officers (Dr. Ayres himself I conclude on the second occasion), and that they did not report as fit for corporal punishment a man who was known to be suffering from lung disease. If the prisoner was examined and found free from disease in July 1874 ft should have been explained at what date it first appeared and when it became incurable.
29. It would appear, however, that Wong-a-Kwai's phthisis had not been detected by medical examination in any of its earlier stages, and if such be the case, he must, it would seem, either have been examined before his floggings, and have been passed as medically fit for the punishment, or have not been examined, and in that case there is nothing to show when, how, or from what causes the disease originated.
30. The number of floggings for 1876-7, as reported in your Despatch 64, of the 18th of July,† appear to be exceedingly high, but you give me no information as to how many were inflicted with the cat, and of those how many in public, nor as to the nunsber I observe, however, that, of juvenile offenders included in the Magistrates' sentences. except in two cases of 20 strokes, two of 18, and two of 15, the Magistrates' sentences were ordinarily for not more than 10 or 12 strokes, frequently for less, so that the punishments seem not to have been severe, and as your Despatch contains no report or explanation from the Magistrates as to the necessity for the infection of such frequent corporal punishment, I am not in a position to express any opinion upon this subject, and I wait to hear the opinions I have asked for as to the results that will have followed on the discontinuance of all public flogging.
31. With reference to the question of deportation, I see no reason at present for any alteration of the law, especially as regards the expatriation of mendicants. It is impossible that the Colony should be allowed to become a vast almshouse for the Kwang Tung Province, and the best method of disposing of the hundreds of mendicants who appear to come over every year is to send them back to the mainland from which they come. I am, however, afraid that your complaints of the method in which the law has been administered are, in some instances, well founded, and I shall be glad to learn that you have devised some means of dealing with these cases which, without weakening the force of these necessary enactments, will be free from all similar objections in future.
32. As regards Ordinance No. 4 of 1872, under which, as you will remember, a brand can be put upon such convicts as may voluntarily petition the Governor to be released upon that condition, and on a promise to leave the Colony, undertaking if they return to submit to be punished as the law directs, I shall be prepared, on bearing that you have consulted your Council upon the subject and have found a remedy which can be recommended, to consider the advisability of its adoption.
33. There remains the question of dealing with old offenders, and it seems to me, upon the materials before me, that the gaol has not been made sufficiently deterrent to But there has not yet been time for me to learn the effect of your directions to the Magistrates to send cases of larceny to the Supreme Court if the offender had been previously convicted.
them.
This practice will cause much additional labour for the Supreme Court in cases of simple farceny, and, I fear, may greatly inconvenience the jurors, and I shall wait to learn how far it has produced the results you anticipate before I express an approval of your action. I am disposed, indeed, to doubt whether this course will be altogether successful. It is, I am inclined to think, inside the gaol walls that an amendment should be sought.
34. I must now say in conclusion that it is with regret that I have felt obliged in this Dispatch to qualify the approval which I should have been glad to convey to you
† No. 6.
• No. 2.
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