Sessional_Paper_1896 — Page 911

[ XXXVI ]

(Despatch from the Secretary of State to the Governor.)

HONGKONG.

No. 112.

SIR,

DOWNING STREET,

30th July, 1869.

With reference to my despatch of 1st instant, No. 94, I transmit to you for your information a copy of a letter from the Social Science Association calling attention to an inquest held by the Government Coroner to enquire into the causes attending the death of two Chinese coolies in the Civil Hospital of Hongkong, together with a copy of the answer returned to the Association by my desire.

I must request to be furnished with answers to the following questions

1st. How the places referred to came to be unnoticed by the Police for so

long, as appears to have been the case.

2nd. What other places of the same kind may be in existence.

3rd. What is doing to remove the evils of these places and to pursue the

course of investigation which this discovery opens.

4th. Which is incidentally raised, whether the emigration conducted by Mr.

CALDWELL is accompanied by abuse.

Governor SIR R. G. MACDONNELL, C.B.,

&c.,

fc.,

f'c.

I have, &c.,

GRANVILLE.

(Mr. Pears to Earl Granville.)

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION

MY LORD,

FOR THE PROMOTION OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, 17th July, 1869.

I have the honour to submit to your Lordship in the name of the Standing Committee for India and the Colonies of the Social Science Association, by whose order I address you, the accompanying newspaper reports of two inquests held at Hongkong in April and May last by the Government Coroner into the causes of and circumstances attending the deaths of two Chinese coolies--one in the "I-Ts'z" or Chinese Hospital of Taipingshan and the other in the Civil Hospital of the Colony. The reports are severally taken from the Overland China Mail of the 29th April and 13th May. Of their substantial accuracy the Committee are assured.

The deceased in both cases had been inmates of the two Chinese Emigration Depôts in Taipingshan, called "Kwong Kee" and "Man Fook" houses or hovels kept solely for the reception of coolies, chiefly from the mainland, who have sold or given them- selves to the Agents of Emigration (in the present cases to Peru and Surinam).

The following are the principal facts disclosed by the body of testimony brought before the Inquest in the "I-Ts'z” case :—

1. No report whatever on the sanitary condition of these Emigration Depôts or of the "I-Ts'z" Hospital, or on the deaths of their inmates has been made by their owners or managers for many years past. But for the accidental visit of an "Inspector of Brothels" at the moment of the decease and the further accident of there being a group of eight or nine corpses laid out in front of the place when another witness, the