CO129-514-3 Mui Tsai system- correspondence 27-8-1929 - 21-11-1929 — Page 50

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protecting her. It may be added that the regulations

which have been drafted require that any intended removal

of a mui tsai from the Colony, whether temporarily or

permanently, must be reported.

4.

Section 3 of this Ordinance repeals sections 7 and 8

of the principal Ordinance. Section 7 was inserted in the

principal Ordinance in its passage through the Legislative

Council. It provided that in every prosecution for

over-work or ill-treatment of a mui tsai medical evidence

shall be given as to the injuries received by the mui tsai,

that the magistrate must find whether such ill-treatment

amounted to gross cruelty, and that if the magistrate

found gross cruelty the offender must be sentenced to

imprisonment without the option of a fine. The object was

the laudable one that cases of gross cruelty should be

adequately punished. There were, however, two dangers.

One was that even gross cruelty may leave no indications

to which a medical witness can point, especially after the

lapse of days, and the medical evidence in such a case

might even have the effect of weakening the evidence of

A more serious danger was that inadvertent

gross cruelty.

failure to call

medical evidence on a charge under

section 6 of the principal Ordinance might have led to

the quashing of a conviction.

It was even possible

that if the charge were one of common assault, and

medical evidence were not called, the conviction might

have been attacked on the ground that section 7 of

the principal Ordinance would apply to a charge of common

assault on a mui tsai as well as to a charge expressly laid

under section 6.

Section 7 is therefore repealed.

Some of its provisions are reproduced in the new section

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