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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference:
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C.O. 882
4PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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unreservedly. I fully recognize the zeal with which you have applied yourself to a very any important class of subjects, but I should find myself better able to support you
upon which you specific measures of reform if I could feel satisfied that the information desire me to take action had been fully weighed and tested by you in conjunction with the Executive and Legislative Councils, whose local knowledge and experience are no less necessary to a Secretary of State when he is called upon to consider the expediency of important changes, than that zeal and ability for which I am now, as previously, very
I have, &c. ready to give you credit.
(Signed) CARNARVON.
No. 16.
The EARL OF CARNARVON to GOVERNOR HENNESSY, C.M.G.
(No. 4.) SIR,
January 3, 1878.
I HAVE the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No. 148 of the 31st of October,* relating to the case of Mok-a-Kwai, a prisoner, who died of phthisis in jail.
2. Referring you to my despatch 3 of this day's date, I request that you will bring this case to the notice of the medical board which I have therein desired you to appoint to consider the effects of the use of the cat upon Chinese criminals.
3. With regard to the illegality pointed out in paragraph 8 of your despatch and adverted upon by the Attorney General, viz., that the prisoner in question was flogged though he was not a felon, I have the honour to inform you that a similar provision existed recently in another Colony, and led, as in the case in point, to the improper applica- tion of corporal punishment.
4. In that case I consented to an amendment extending the power of flogging to prisoners other than felons; and similarly in the present case, in view of the manifest inconvenience of such differences within the gaol in the treatment of prisoners, and con- sidering that Chinese prisoners must be incapable of distinguishing between felons and misdemeanants, or of understanding the reason why such a distinction should be made between two prisoners in respect of punishment for the same offence against gaol disci- pline, I am prepared to approve of such an amendment as will extend the regulations in question to all prisoners should such an extension appear to be advisable.
5. In the meantime, until some such change is made, the legal punishment only is to be inflicted in each and every case,
Governor Hennessy, C.M.G.
&c.
&c.
&c,
No. 17.
(Signed)
CARNARVON.
The EARL OF CARNARVON to GOVERNOR HENNESSY, C.M.G. (No. 7.) SIR,
Downing Street, January 9, 1878.
I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your Despatch, No. 159, of the 14th November,† reporting the release of the prisoner Wong a Kwai, who was suffering from phthisis.
2. Under the circumstances, and whatever be the causes from which the disense originated, I approve of the action which you have taken in directing his release.
I have, &c. (Signed)
No. 18.
CARNARVON.
GOVERNOR HENNESSY, C.M.G., to the RT. HON. SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH, BART. (Received November 18, 1878.)
(No. 95.)
SIR,
Government House, Hong Kong, 28th September 1878. On receipt of the Earl of Carnarvon's Despatch, No. 3 of January 1878,1 conveyed his Lordship's views respecting the practice of public flogging to the Judges
† No. 14.
‡ No. 15.
• No. 12.
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and Police Magistrates of Hong Kong, and, as his Lordship anticipated, that expression of opinion was quite sufficient to induce those gentlemen to refrain from sentencing offenders to be publicly whipped pending the consideration of the subject by the Secretary of State.
2. I also invited the Judges, the Police Magistrates, and the Head of the Police to favour me with any reports or observations they might be able to make on the subject. ·
3. The question was also submitted by me, without delay, to the Executive Council, by whom it was carefully considered before they finally gave me their advice.
4. I have now the honour to lay before you copies of the communications that I caused to be addressed to the officials in question, together with copies of their replies. I also enclose for your information extracts from the minutes of the meetings of the Executive Council when the question was considered.
5. Some delay occurred in the completion of those replies owing to the very proper anxiety of the Acting Chief Justice, Mr. Snowden, to investigate the subject thoroughly, and to do so with the aid of all the statistics relating to public flogging since June 1872. In his reply of the 3rd ultimo he deals with a special question I had invited him to consider, namely, whether the discontinuance of public flogging had been followed by any increase of the crimes for which it was formerly inflicted; and he also expresses a clear opinion on the general question as to whether any harm would result from its entire discontinuance. In discussing those questions the Acting Chief Justice refers to the increase in crimes of violence for the past three or four years in this Colony. He says "I had asked for these returns in a letter of the 12th of June for the purpose of preparing a report as to whether the discontinuance of public flogging had been followed by any increase of the crimes for which it was formerly inflicted, as requested by his Excellency in your letter dated April 30th ultimo, No. 827.
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"I have caused a return to be made of the number of persons sentenced to be publicly flogged by the Supreme Court and their offences, which I now append. By this return "the first public flogging during the period referred to seems to have taken place in February 1873. These two returns show that in the period between the 1st of June "1872 and the 31st May 1877 there were flogged publicly,
"By sentence of the Supreme Court
Police Magistrates
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Total
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29 26
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"I have no returns of the number of persons publicly and privately flogged between “June 1st, 1872, and May 31st, 1877. His Excellency in his speech, however, gives the "returns for 5 years from April 1871 to July 1876 as amounting to 1,149. It may be
presumed that the numbers vary very little.
*
“I was not at all prepared to find that out of these floggings so small a percentage “had been administered in public. Indeed I was under the impression that a public
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flogging was a very frequent exhibition. The returns furnished by his Excellency in
"his speech, published the Hong Kong Gazette of September 22nd, 1877, show an
"increase of crimes of violence from 1875, and the recent report of Mr. Creagh, when
富露
Acting Captain Superintendent of Police, shows that the advance of crimes of the same kind had not as yet been checked.
"The causes, some of which are indicated in Mr. Creagh's report, must be sought for “ elsewhere, and cannot fairly be attributed to the discontinuance of public flogging, as "the effect of a form of punishment so rarely administered (speaking relatively to the " large criminal class in Hong Kong) can scarcely be appreciable as a deterrent from "crime.
"The objection I entertain to the public exhibition of painful punishments I had the "honour of expressing a letter published I think in the Gazette of September 1877
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in a separate publication with "Sir John Smale's letter and other official documents . on the same subject.
"The conclusion I have come to is that no harm can result from the entire discon- "tinuance of public flogging."
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6. Mr. May, the senior Magistrate, concludes his report thus:-
“A statistical return has been prepared from the records of the department which
" exhibits very clearly the decadence in the necessity of enforcing the law in these particular points by public flogging, and in my opinion the total cessation of public flogging in the preceding six months ending the 30th June has in no degree increased
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"crime."
Mr. Creagh, who is acting as second Police Magistrate, after quoting the records of the police court says:
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