1939-01-17 — Page 6

THE HONGKONG TE LEGRAPH, TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 1939,

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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.

the

For eighteen months. Japanese militarists in China have ridden rough-shod over the rights of subjects of friendly States, and their violation of the tenets of the Nine Power Pact 1.07 which their Government edged its word has been 50 complete that the Treaty, to-day may be considered non-existent.

It is interesting to note the four pledges Japan made with reference to China in that 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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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,

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COMING SOON THE QUEEN'S

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 violu- tion of this clause has drawn forth the British and American Notes of Protest.

She agreed to refrain from taking advantage of conditions in order to seek special rights

or privileges which

would

= korg Whitelaw

R

APPERSEMENT

DIFFICULT TO KEEP UP WITH

Sir Samuel Hoare's

ATHER more than a hun-

dred years a gentleman named Sarouel Hoare, an eester of the Home Secre-

ary, whose proposals for penal reform in England were reported recently, was urging upon prison governors of his time the wide- spread introduction of the tread. mill into our jails.

As Chairman of the Prison Disei- nilne Society, Samuel Hoare was in a position talk with some conspicuous ad- authority of its vantages with regard to the moral bencfits resulting to the prisoner."

The use of the treadmill had been first suggested in the Peniten- tary Act of 1779, 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 Uttie liable to be spoiled by ignorance. neglect and obstinney."

O

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

They were run as private profit- inaking 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 ns well as to those inmates who could afford to pay the procurer's price. Innocent unfortunates were

big day

by STUART FLETCHER

hurled into the midst of the most depraved characters, sanitation was just a word of ten letters with no further significance, and five thousand prisoners died every year from jail fever, a form of typhus 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 dled from jail fever caught from the prisoners at the Old Bailey.

P

RISONS at this time, of course, had nothing to

with do

punishment. They were increly hovels, dens, and dungeons where guilty, inno- ecnt, and witnesses alike awaited trial.

Punishment for all but the most trifling offences unconnected with property consisted of elther trans- ference by way of the scaffold to another world or transportation by way of the Atlantic 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 Ports- mouth, where the conditions were as horrible as those in the Jalls on .shore.

The first agitation for reform

Eight Men Criminals. To One Woman

Inwleas

was made by John Howard, an aus- tere Evangelical, who quite fortul- tously became Sheriff of Bedford- shire in 1773, and, Instead of re- garding his ceremonial duties as his predecessers had done as a harraless charade, took them so earnestly that before long he had become a self-appointed prison in- vestigator.

He 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- Hament resulted in the Penitential Bill of 1770, which in its turn finally produced the three-quar Lers-of-a-million pound Millbank Prison on the site now occupied by the Tate Gallery, and the nume- rous other "model" prisons that followed IL.

NCIDENTALLY, some of for the urgent need prisons to accommodate Jawbreakers passed with Captain Cook's discovery of a new trans- Ec- portation dump in Australln. tween 1787 and 1867 150,000 men and women were sent out as con- victs to Australia.

One of Howard's enthusiasms. the result of his shock at the Ha- garthian horrors of 18th century Inila, 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

A General's Views

A3

the early 19th century confined

far the prisoner

as pos- #ible to a cell, or (carefully depersonalised by I mask theso maska were retained as part of prison uniform until the end of the 19th century) to the treadmill shed and the chapel.

W

TITHIN the prisons the result was widespread suicide and Insanity, Outside, meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution, the Corn Lawa and the Chartist agitations produced a fifty per cent. Increase in the number of criminal offences. The State's answer to poverty was the prison.

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

Conditionis 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- ers enlied 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 capstem, or some species

where of labour

the labourer could not see the results of his toil, 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 Quaker, as their Inspiring example, very many years of protests before Parliament in 1877 centralised the control and conduct of the nation's prisons, and in 1994 swept away the solitary system as a general principle and

On Hatless Women substituted useful industries, such

BRIGADIER GENERAL STEPHEN LUSHINGTON, outspoken critic of the modern generation, has resigned his chairmanship of the Aldershot

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 10 between 40 and 50. or citizens of friendly States, that there are eight times as The age of 13 is twice as lawless and from countenancing action many men criminals as women as the age of 10, and the age of 10 magistrates for health reasons,

Is twice as lawless as that of 30, it was announced recently. inimical to the security of such

These facts are given in the

General Lushington, who States. She has violated this Criminal Statistics for 1937, is- THE Gigures for women how a

similar decrease of lawless-had presided for six yours, sued by the Home Office recent-1

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 hat.

clause.

THE number of people found

guilty of offences of all kinds in 1937 was 805,836.

There were 483,000 people found gully of traffic offences-about 60 per cent, of the total.

is a continuous decrense in every girls of 15 to 18. Thereafter there age group.

Among every 10,000 wornen Bad giris last year, there were five indictable offenders; wmong every 10,000 men and boys there were 39.

as malibag-making, for the foolish torture of the crank and the tread-

iii.

S

INCE then many of the more blatant anomalies of prison lite have been Voluntary workers aro welcomed Instead of being re-

removed.

Is 74, garded as, to quote a former chair- man of the Prison Commission, “a source of difficulty." Labour con- ditions, food, and health services have improved. Solitary confine- ment has been abolished except as a punishment.

"Do you possess a hat?" he once asked a girl witness. "Yes," repiled Die girl, "but I haven't got it here." "It is on Insult to the Court and disreputable proceeding

TU- torted General Lushington, and cls- allowed the girl's expenses.

RESPECT

On another occasion he told a hat-

The British Note allows no equivocation, and is probably the sternest protest Great Bri- tain has despatched to a foreign Power in many years. It brings Great Britain into line with an- other great Democracy-the

Those

crimes of "real" guilty United States, which despatched

The report makes this comment in a similarly worded note 10

number 77,529, and the police Ogures

property regard to youthful offenders: The teas wornan wliness: "You are show that the value of Japan just before the end of the atolen during the year was under £oarke aumber of young people who voking God's name to what you are appear before the courts, and the going to say. Do you consider that tho beat you have invoked it with due respect question of what are inethods of checking their lawless-to God without a hat?"

"Certuinly,"

woman. replied the nesa, are matters requiring serious consideration,

"I never wear a hat."

After assuring the chairman that "For many years the policy of the courts has been so to deal with the she was not acting with any disre- young offenders as not to turn those spect to her oath, the witness was irresponsibly inwless into habitually allowed to give evidence bareheadedi. Itis successor as chaleman is an- 10, to 8 for boys of 17 and 18, to 6.8 lawless adults. The figures suggest

year.

If the two great countries on either side of the Atlantic con- tinue to move in step in this

to fashion within reference Japan, the issue of Third Power rights in China will not long he left in doubt.

in 77 per cent. of the cases, and above £100 in only about I per cent. Which shows you how much petty crime there le

To get back to the lawless nge: of every 1,000 boys aged 13, 13.8 were found guilty of Indictable offences. This figure drops to 10 for boys of

in-

for youths of 18, io 5.3 for those that this policy has met with a sub-other retired Army officer-Lieut.- aped 21 to 28; to 4 for men of 26 to stuntlal measure of success."!

Colonel E. C. Oglivic, who is 71.

But whoever, after reading the dread- ful contents of the Webbs' “English Prisons under Local Government," should feel that those bad old days are gone, should also rend the Calverts book, "The Lawbreaker," and, better Stiil, Tia Truth About English

distinguished ex Prisons," by prisoner, Mark Benncy, in order to off- act complacence.

Д

We are to some extent and by com parison with certain other countries a free people. But those of us who are Bocialista bellove that within a framio- work of voluntary discipline a greater freedom than we possess is obtainable. The application of this to the ques Lion of the criminal has been best stated by Bernard Shaw: “Imprison- ment cannot be fully understood by those who do not understand freedom."