CO129-152 - Lieut Governor Whitfield - 1871 [9-10] — Page 347

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J. 90.

GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.

The following Report from the Captaiu Superintendent of Police for the Year 1870, is published general information.

By Command,

Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 19th June, 1871.

b. 38.

IR,

J. GARDINER AUSTIN, Colonial Secretary.

VICTORIA, HONGKONG, 30th January, 1871,

1. In accordance with your instructions conveyed to me in Despatch No. 532 of the 1st December,

870, I have the honor to lay before His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor the Annual Returns

05

Crime in this Colony during 1870, together with a Report on the Police Force.

2. I regret that the substance of both is of a most unsatisfactory nature.

CRIME,

3. From Table A it is apparent that serious crimes have increased 78.8 per cent, minor offences

per cent, and all crimes and offences 32.4 per cent, when compared with the Returns of 1869.

4. Robberies with violence, burglaries, and assaults with intent to rob, have increased nearly urfold. It would appear probable that the abolition of the system of allowing offenders voluntarily submit to certain penalties on, and in the event of their return from, deportation, in some way, counts for this extraordinary increase.

5. Three murders have been reported. One, wherein two Chinese were killed in an attack on a at off Causeway Bay, resulted in the arrest of three persons, who were sentenced to penal servitude 14 years for the unlawful possession of the property stolen, the indictment for murder being thdrawn. In the second case, the murder of a woman in Wellington Street, the supposed murderer caped to the mainland. A communication has been sent to the Cantonese Authorities. In the third a man was murdered at Lap Sap Bay on board a boat; the two supposed murderers are also on e mainland, and cannot yet be arrested.

6. Twenty-one cases of kidnapping have resulted in convictions. This is essentially a Chinese me, and I fear that until greater exertions are made by the Chinese Authorities at Tam-Shui (at ich place the children and women abducted are generally said to be sold) the severe laws in force ere will not prove altogether deterrent.

7. Cases of larceny (838) are very numerous, the number being larger than in any year since 1866.

8. Eight cases of piracy are reported against thirteen in 1869. But 13 cases of robberies in inese Waters are also recorded, six of these cases differ in no way from piracies with regard to the mament of the vessels, or the nature of the attack, but having happened within three miles of the past, these attacks are classed only as robberies in Chinese Waters. I fear, however, that piracy, ging from the number of cases in November and December, 1870, is on the increase, and that the arcity of gunboats, and the stringency of the Admiralty instructions tend to this effect. I am the tore strengthened in this view from the fact that whilst one of H. M.'s gunboats was cruising off the Jeemoon during a portion of the summer, no piracies were committed, but they recommenced directly

He was recalled.

9. I enclose a table of arrests of returned deported persons and house gamblers made through the seley of the Licensees of the Gaming Houses, and also by the Police and District Watchmen.