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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference —

TUTTICO. 882

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-

2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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bringing forward of even well founded complaints distasteful to the predominant local interest; and, secondly, they have lately occupied attention here to the entire exclusion of all other topics.

I have, &c.

(Signed)

Inclosure 1 in No. 21.

ARTHUR GORDON.

The Petition of the Old Immigrants of Mauritius. Presented on the 6th June, 1871.

To his Excellency the Honourable Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, K.C.M.G., Governor and Commander-in-chief in and over the Island of Mauritius and its Depen- dencies.

The Petition of the undersigned Indian Immigrants. Humbly Sheweth :

1

That your Petitioners suffer many and great grievances from the existing Laws by which they are deprived of that freedom which all other inhabitants of Mauritius enjoy.

1

Your Petitioners are required to have and always carry with them a ticket with their photograph and a police pass. Though these are supplied to them free of charge on the expiration of their five years' term of engaged service, yet, if they are lost, as frequently happens through being obliged always to carry them about, your Petitioners are required immediately to apply for others, for which they must pay five dollars for the ticket, and for the photograph two shillings, making together twenty-two shillings, a sum nearly equal to two months' wages on an estate. To procure one of these papers some of your Petitioners have had to wait many days, and to walk from a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles; when, at the Immigration office, they have made the slightest remonstrance, they have been beaten with rattans. If found without either of the above papers they are taken to the Police Station and locked up until they can be brought before the magistrate; if arrested on Friday in a district where the magistrates do not sit on Saturday, they are imprisoned until the following Monday morning. It may be that their wife or some friend brings them their papers which they had forgotten at home, but this will not procure their release until Monday.

Your Petitioners cannot read their papers, which are written in English, and it often happens that on account of some error which they cannot verify they are lodged in prison just the same as if they had neglected to have their papers changed in time, or had the misfortune to lose them. Some of your Petitioners who had their papers in order for the district in which they resided, have been committed to prison with hard labour, because the police were mistaken as to the boundaries of the district in which they really lived, and supposed them to be living in another; others have been taken to prison because the estate on which they were tenants had changed hands, and a discrepancy had thus arisen in their police passes.

If one of your Petitioners loses his papers and has not sufficient money (twenty- two shillings) to pay for others, he gets a pass from the Immigration Office authorizing him to remain absent eight days; but he may not work as a day labourer, for which he would have to obtain a license costing five dollars, he must find some one who will employ him continuously; if unsuccessful at the expiration of the eight days, his

pass may perhaps be extended, or he may be sent to work at the Vagrant Depôt until an engagement is found for him; there he dare not venture to refuse to engage for whatever period and on whatever terms are proposed to him.

If one of your Petitioners leaves his employ, he must present himself at the Central Police Station of his district within eight days to have his pass put in order; he may be obliged to come two or three days in succession, and in the meantime, the eight days may be exceeded and he be afterwards arrested and sentenced to hard labour na a vagabond. A man has been lying sick with fever, and has therefore been unable to go for his pass, and in spite of evidence to this effect, when on recovery he went for

pass, has been condemned to imprisonment with hard labour as a vagabond.

When one of your Petitioners wishes to go into any other district than the one for which he has a police pass, he must get his pass endorsed, which can be done only by the Inspector of Police, who is at the Station only a small part of the day; your Petitioners have friends and relatives in the Island, and it may be that one of them hears that a brother, sister, or son is dangerously ill, and has sent for him, yet, if he'

his

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goes into any other district without having his pass endorsed, he will probably be arrested and sentenced to hard labour as a vagabond.

Many of your Petitioners are sellers of vegetables and carry baskets of produce to the market every morning; they have their passes endorsed for the district of Port Louis for three months. They seldom get to town without being stopped by a police- man and having their passes examined, perhaps on an average, three times during the double journey; they must wait until the policeman chooses to give them back their passes, and frequently lose their market in consequence.

Your Petitioners are thus at the mercy of the police, and the most industrious and An old best-conducted man amongst them cannot stir but by their sufferance. immigrant may be honestly maintaining his wife and family, sending his children to school, be possessed of some little property, and carefully endeavour to observe all the laws and ordinances, yet, if by some mischance he loses his papers, he may be, and often is, condemned indiscriminately with a number of others, all charged on the same sheet, to imprisonment with hard labour as a vagabond.__

The police can always arrest them; they do so by fifties at a time, and if it should prove to have been without any reason, they have no redress. They humbly beg your Excellency to consider what use a policeman, who was unscrupulous, would make of this power over them which the law gives him.

Your Petitioners beg to append in illustration of the above annexed cases, numbered

1 to 18; which have been selected from many thousands.

Your Petitioners implore your Excellency's humane protection, and humbly beg your Excellency to cause the laws which oppress them to be repealed; and this they ask with greater confidence, since it is shown by the instructions accompanying your Excellency's Commission, that Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, whose subjects they are, is unwilling that assent should be given in her name to "any Ordinance whereby persons not of European birth or descent may be subjected or made liable to any disabilities or restrictions to which persons of European birth or descent are not also subjected or made liable."

And your Petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray.

Here follow nine thousand four hundred and one signatures,

1. Dilloo, Old Immigrant, No. 82,500, gardener.-About the month of July 1868, I was living at the Nouvelle Découverte. On a certain morning four policemen came, and without a warrant, entered my premises and asked for our papers; I was able to show the papers for myself and wife, but, through my house having been burned down a short time previously, I could not show the police the acts of birth of my children born at Mauritius, as they had perished in the flames, and as I had no copies of them; but I explained this to the police: my children being respectively 9, 12, and 13 years of age, notwithstanding this (and the affair occurred on a Wednesday morning at 5 o'clock), the police arrested my three children as vagabonds. They were taken to the Moka Police Station, a distance of seven miles, and were locked up there till the following Friday, when they were discharged at noon, the evidence of a gentleman residing at the Nouvelle Découverte having proved to the satisfaction of the magistrate that they were not vagabonds.

2ndly. About the month of September, 1869, my son Seewagalam (the second son in the previous plaint) went to Flacq to visit a relative. My son, although a Creole of the Colony, was arrested by the police in the Flacq district on his return, sent to Pamplemousses, and sentenced by the Magistrate there to ten days' imprisonment with hard labour as a vagabond.

(Here follows the signature.)

2. Sumasse, Old Immigrant, No. 80,576, gardener on Mr. Boulle's property at Nouvelle Découverte.

About three months ago (deposition taken 16th April, 1871) I was going from my residence to obtain a new pass, having lost my old one, when I had proceeded one mile and a half I was arested by a sergeant of police, and, after having been taken to Court, was condemed to five days' stone breaking.

(Here follows the signature.)