CO129-401 - Governor Sir May - 1913 [5-6] — Page 371

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CONFIDENTIAL.

C.O

23187

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REC! 7 JUL 13

363

GOVERNMENT HOUSE,

HONGKONG. 16th. June, 1913.

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Sir,

40785

With further reference to the 7th. paragraph of

my Confidential Despatch of the 22nd. of November last, I have the

honour to inform you that as the result of further investigation I

am now satisfied that the long hours and monotony of the duties of the Warders in Victoria Gaol militates against the efficiency of their service and renders it unpopular.

At the present time these Warders have every

other Sunday and every other Saturday afternoon free. But as in the

case of the Saturdays they perform 6 or 7 hours of duty before they

are released the majority of them are too tired to avail themselves

of the so-called half holiday for purposes of healthful recreation

and change of scene.

I desire therefore to increase the Staff so as

to enable each mauber to have one holiday in every seven days. This

means that on the holiday a Warder would be free of duty from 6 a.

m, to 10.30 p.m. by which hour Warders have to be in their quarters.

This change necessitates the addition of 3

Warders to the Staff and I have to ask your sanction to provide

accordingly in the Estimates for 1914. It is also necessary to pro- -vide 2 more Warders for a proposed extension of the Gaol which I

propose to make in 1914. On this subject I shall address you later.

Of the 5 new Warders I propose that 2 should be

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

LEWIS HARCOURT, M.P..

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