1939-01-17 — Page 18

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THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 1089.

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The

Hongkong Telegraph.

Wyndham St., Hongkong 'Phone 26615 January 17, 1939

The British Note

THE TONE of the British Note to Tokyo can leave no doubt but that Japan's relations with third Powers are rapidly approaching a climax,

For eighteen months, the

R

APPERSEMENT

DIFFICULT TO KEEP UP WITH

Sir Samuel Hoare's

ATHER more than a hun-

dred years a gentleman named Samuel Hoare, an- Leeater of the Home Secre-

Japanese militarists in China have ridden rough-shod over the rights of subjects of friendlytary, whose proposals for penal States, and their violation of the reform in England were reported Lenets of the Nine Power Pact recently, was urging upon prison to which their Government governors of his time the wide- spread introduction of the tread- pledged its word has been so mill into our jails. complete that the Treaty to-ny may be considered non-existent.

that

It is interesting to note the four pledges Japan made with reference

China in to Treaty,

She agreed, firstly, to respect the sovereignty, the indepen- dence and the territorial and administrative integrity of

Messrs. S. MOUTRIE & Co., Ltd. China. She has violated this

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THE QUEEN'S

clause.

She agreed to provide the fullest and most unembarrassed opportunity to China to develop and maintain for herself an effective and stable government. She has violated this clause.

She agreed to use, in con- junction with the other signa- tory Powers, her influence for the purpose of effectually es- tablishing and maintaining the. principle of equal opportunity for the commerce and industry of all nations throughout the territory of China. The violn- tion of this clause has drawn forth the British and American Notes of Protest.

She agreed to refrain from taking advantage of conditions

As Chairman of the Prison Disci- pline Society, Samuel Hoare wat in a position to talk with some authority of its "conspicuous ad- vantages with regard to the moral benefits resulting to the prisoner."

The use of the treadmill had been first suggested in the Peniten- liary Act of 1770, which directed prison governors.. to keep their charges at "labour of the hardest and most servile kind in which drudgery is chiefly required, and where the work is little liable to be spoiled by ignorance, neglect and obstinacy."

O

NLY a few years before this prisons were dens of such utter frightfulness that a detailed description of them is impossible in a reputable news- paper.

They were run as private profit- making concerns. Their keepers made money out of the inmates by starving them, torturing them, or exacting bribes; by harshly ex- ploiting their labour and, when they were women, forcibly selling their virtue to outside visitors as well as to those inmates who could. afford to pay the procurer's price.

Innocent anfortunates

were

big

by STUART FLETCHER

hurled into the midst of the most depraved characters, sanitation was just a word of ten letters withi no further significance, and fire thousand prisonera died every year from Jail fever, a form of typhun peculiar to English prisons.

It was by no means a rare occurrence when in 1750, a Lord Mayor, two judges, and several Jurymen and officers of the court died from fall fever caught from the prisoners at the Old Bailey.

They

P

RISONS at this time, of

course, had nothing to

do with punishment. were merely hovels, dons, and dungeons where gulity, inno- cent, and witnesses alike awaited trial.

Punishment for all but the most trifling offences unconnected with property consisted of either trans- ference by way of the scaffold to another world or transportation by Way of the Atlantle to the New World.

About a thousand convicts were transported every year to Britain's American territory. One result of America's successful War of Inde- pendence was that 200 offences previously punishable by trans- portation became capital offences.

The rest of the transportees were accommodated on hulka, converted vessels in the Thames or at Poris- mouth, where the conditions were as horrible as those in the jails on shoro,

The first agitation for relorin

was made by John Howard, an aus- tere Evangelieni, who quite fortul-. tously became Sheriff of Bedford- shire in 1773, and, instead of re- garding his ceremonial duties as predecessors had done as a harmless ebarade, took them so carnestly that before long he had become a self-appointed prison in- vestigator.

Ho spent the remaining sixteen years of his life braving the typhus-haunted horrors of British jails and exposing the scandals he found there.

His hair-raising evidence in Par- lament resulted in the Penitential Bill of 1770, which in its turn finally produced the three-quar- ters-of-a-million pound Milibank Prison on the alte now occupied by the Tate Gallery, and the nume- rous other "model" prisons that followed it.

'NOIDENTALLY, some of the urgent need for prisons to accommodate lawbreakers passed with Captain. Cook's discovery of a new trans- portation dump in Australla. Be. tween 1787 and 1867 150,000 men and women were sent out na con- victs to Australia.

One of Howard's enthusiasms, the result of his shock at the Ha. garthlan horrors of 18th century Jails, was for solitude in which the criminal could become morally re- generated by isolation from cor- rupt influences and by meditation upon higher things. Designed on this principle the new jails of

day

the early 19th century confined the prisoner 18 far as Pos- Bible to a cell, or (carefully "depersonalised" by a TDusk

theso masks were retained as part of prison uniform until the end of the 10th century) to the treadmill shed and the chapel.

W

ITHIN the prisons the result was widespread suicido and Insanity. Outside, meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution, the Corn Laws and the Chartist agitations produced a fifty per cont. Increase in the number of criminal offelices, The State's answer to poverty was the prison.

While solitary confinement was being claborated in some Jalis, a silence system was being worked out at others. According to this theory prisoners' could work, eat, exercise, even sleep in the same rooms, but they must never talk to one another.

Conditions varied from onc prison to another. All were bad in some degree, and the slightest leakage to the outside world of humanitarian treatment of prison- ors called forth angry protests,

For example, "I would banish," wrote the Liberal Sydney Smith, all the looms of Preston Jall and substitute nothing but the tread- wheel or the capstorn, or some Jabour where the species of labourer could not see the results of his toll, where it is as monoton- ous, irksome, and dull as possible."

With such sadism to confront, it took the reformers, a long proces- sion of men and women with Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, the Gunker, as their inspiring example, very many years of protesta bofore Parliament in 1877 centralised the control and conduct of the nation's prisons,

1804

Eight Men Criminals A General's Views and in is swept away the coliter

To One Woman

in order to seek special rights or privilegeH which would abridge the rights of subjects Do you know that the most 30, to 3 for men of 30 to 40, and to

age is 137 And 1.9 between 40 and 60.

lawless

system as a general principle and

On Hatless Women substituted useful industries, such

+

GENERAL STEPHEN LUSHINGTON,

aa mallbag-making, for the foolish torture of the crank and the tread- mill.

| INGE then many of the more blatant anomalies

BRIGADIER outspoken critle of the modern generation, has resigned his or citizens of friendly States, that there are eight times as The age of 13 Is twice as lawless chairmanship of the Aldershot and from countenancing action many men criminals as women? the age of 10, and the age of 10 magistrates for health reasons, removed. Voluntary workers are

is twice as lawlers ns that of 30. it was announced recently. inimical to the security of such

These facts are given in the

General Lushington, who is 74, Statca. She has violated this Criminal Statistics for 1937, is-THE figures for women show a clause.

sued by the Home Office recent- similar decrease of lawless-nd presided for six years.

He was always insistent that a ly.

ness with increase of age. The woman appearing in his court should; most lawless age groups are those of wear a hai.

"Do you possess n hat?" he once a continuous decrease in every asked a girl witness. "Yes," replied girls of 15 to 16. Thereafter there age group,

The British Note allows no equivocation, and is probably

the sternest protest Great Bri-THE number of people found guilty of offences of all tain has despatched to a foreign | kinds in 1937 was 805,380. Power in many years. It brings

There were 483,689 people found Great Britain into line with an- multy of traffe offences about go other Kreat Democracy-the per cent, of the total,

to

United States, which despatched ก similarly worded note Japan just before the end of the

year.

If the two great countries on either side of the Atlantic con- tinue to move in stop in this fashion within reference to Japan, the issue of Third Power rights in China will not long be loft in doubt.

Those

guilty

crimes of "real"

•

Among every 10,000 women and giris last year, there were five indictable offenders; among every 10,000 men and boys there were 39.

The report makes this comment in

the iri, "but I haven't got. I here." "It is an Insult to the Court and a disreputable proceeding.

TU torted General Lushington, and dis. allowed the giri's expenses.

RESPECT

On another occasion he told a hat-

number 77,629, and the police figure regard to youthful offenders: "The less woman witness: "You are In- show that the value of property stolen during the year was under £6 large number of young people who voking God's name to what you are appear before the courts, and the going to say. you consider that in 77 per cent. of the cases, and

what question of

are the best you have invoked it with due respect above £100 in only about 1 per cent methods of checking their lawless-to God without hat?"

Which shows you how much pettyness, are matters requiring serious

consideration. crime there is.

woman.

"Certainly,"

replied the "I never wear a hat."

After assuring the chalcman that To get back to the lawless dire: of

"For many years the polley of the every 1,000 boys ngod 13, 13.0 were courts has been so to deal with the she was not acting with any disre found guilty of indictable offences. young offenders as not to turn those spect to her oath, the witness was This Agure drops to 10 for boys of irresponsibly lawless into habitually allowed to give evidence barchett Ills successor as chairman la and 10, to 8 for boys of 17 and 18, to 6.8 lawine adults. The figures suggest for youths of 19, to 6.3 for those that this polley has met with a sub-other retired Army officer-Lett.

Colonel E. C. Ogilvio, who le 71. aged 21 to 20; to 4 for men of 28 to istantial measure of success."

21

welcomed instead of being re- garded as, to quote a former chale man of the Prison Commisalon, source of dimculty." Labour con- ditions, food, and health services have improved. Bolitary condne- ment has been abolished except as

punishment.

But whoever, after reading the dread- ful contents of the Webba" "Engilah Prisons under Local Government," should feel that those bad old days are Kone, should also read the Calverts" book, The Lawbreaker," and, better still, The Truth About English

distinguished ex- Prisons," by A prisoner, Mark Benney, in order to off- bet complacenco.

We are to some extent and by com- parison with certain other countries a free people. But those of us who are Bocialists belleve that within a frame- work of voluntary discipline greator freedom than we possess is obtainable. The application of this to the ques- tion of the criminal has been beat alated by Bernard Shaw! “Imprison- ment cannot be fully understood by those who do not understand freedom.”