AnnualReport-1880 — Page 8

61. That those reforms, and a few minor ones, have worked well, is mainly due, however, to the fact that Mr. Tonnochy, the Superintendent of the gaol, is a thoroughly good Officer.

62. Four years ago, I drew Lord Carnarvon's attention to the excessive number of floggings in Hongkong, and to the undue severity, in some cases leading, in the opinion of the Colonial Surgeon, to loss of life, with which the lash had been applied. In a report dated July 1877, the Colonial Surgeon said:"I have noticed that in all floggings of Chinese with the cat that they "suffer, besides the external injury of the skin, more or less from congestion of the lungs afterwards, "and in old cases where the floggings have been severe, irreparable injury has been done." In referring to some cases in a subsequent report, he said: "Mok-a-Kwai, released from gaol in a "dying condition, and Leung-a-Hoi, still in gaol suffering from Phthisis, were both when they entered "healthy, powerful, muscular men, presenting no indications whatever of hereditary disease. To what "then can the disease they were attacked with be attributed? I cannot myself regard it otherwise "than as caused by the punishment they had received; both of them were horribly marked, their backs "having sloughed from extensive bruising." Lord Carnarvon felt some difficulty in accepting the Colonial Surgeon's statements as to the injurious effect of flogging prisoners on the back, inasmuch as he was the macdical officer who had, for years, certified that such floggings might be safely administered.

63. The Secretary of State, therefore, directed an inquiry by a Medical Board, of which the Colonial Surgeon should not be a member, to examine and report as to the truth or otherwise of a theory which, His Lordship thought, was one "of extreme importance, whether regarded from the

point of view of ordinary humanity, of medical science, or of penal discipline."

64. The Medical Board, which consisted of the Principal Naval Medical Officer on the station, and a local physician, reported that, unfortunately, no record, had been kept, based on careful medical examination, of the condition of the prisoners prior to punishment, and that they could get no reliable statisties to guide them. In reply to this, the Colonial Surgeon remarked that had he known or foreseen what the effects of flogging would be, he would have taken more careful notes." The Board had, therefore, to rely mainly on what they saw themselves in the gaol in 1878.

Referring to the rattan that they saw used in the Hongkong Gaol, they said: "We consider "The rattan too heavy a weapon (it is forty-seven inches in length and two inches in circumference), "and its effects are very likely to go deep into the cellular and muscular tissues, probably producing "loss of substance by sloughing, and thus for a long time delaying the healing of the wounds." In describing the effects of some floggings they themselves witnessed in the gaol, they refer to a casa. where **

a secondary abscess formed over the hip joint," and to another in which they saw a prisoner receive 36 lashes on the 1st of March, with respect to whom they say they found, on the 14th of May, "the wounds not healed; sloughing from the evident loss of substance"; and on the last examination they made of this case, early in September, "the wounds then were not completely healed."

65. Whilst, therefore, unable to throw much light on the specific question of the physiological effect of flogging on the back, the Medical Board exposed the fact that the instrument, or, as they call it, the "weapon," generally used in the Hongkong Gaol had been too heavy and severe.

One piece of evidence, however, elicited by Lord Carnarvon's enquiry was interesting, and it explained a passage to be found in an Address to the Queen from the Chinese inhabitants of the Colony, in which they refer to the 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 the 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 a thousand 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 Hongkong 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 twelve months since any sentence of flogging has been carried out in Hongkong.

* Papers relating to the Flogging of Prisoners in Hongkong. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty," August 1879. London: Printed by Eyre & Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen.