HC Deb 10 August 1882 vol 273 cc1408-14
MR. O'DONNELL

said, that, as they were approaching the end of Supply, he was bound to take this opportunity of reverting to a subject which he had previously brought forward. He had given Notice that he would call attention to the flogging of 11,000 prisoners in the gaols of Bengal during the period of excessive mortality between the 1st day of January 1879 and the 31st day of March 1880, almost exclusively on charges of short work; and, had the Forms of the House permitted, he would have moved— That the appointment to the Indian Council of Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal under whose tenure of office these floggings took place, is a condonation of reprehensihle misgovernment calculated to hinder and discredit good government in India. His complaints were borne out by official Papers recently circulated, and they were fully justified by a despatch of the Secretary of State this year, in which he said— I have been much impressed in particular by the statement contained in the Bengal Gaol Report for 1879 that heavy mortality has been going on from month to month without the attention of the Government being called to it, and I request that measures may be taken to prevent the recurrence of such a state of things. The statement of the noble Marquess implied his recognition of the want of supervision which, during the year 1879, allowed the mortality to continue unchecked. When Sir Ashley Eden became aware of the state of the gaols in his own Presidency, he began to make effectual improvements. Writing on July 20, 1880, he admitted the extreme gravity of the case, and the fact that during 1879 the great mortality among the gaol population could not be attributed to the general condition of the public health. He stated that the chief cause of the increased sickness in the gaols was the new diet scale, which was insufficient for men who were frequently in a poor state of health. When it was introduced the Superintendents were instructed to watch its effect, and to report any sickness resulting from it; but its effect was probably too gradual to be noticed by them. No Report, therefore, was received for nine months, although, to say nothing of the deaths that occurred, the majority of the discharged prisoners were found to have lost weight. That was Sir Ashley Eden's account of the matter; and it followed, from his own admission, that for nine months he asked for no Report—a fact that argued serious dereliction of duty. Had similar deaths occurred in English gaols, verdicts of manslaughter would certainly have been returned. Sir Ashley Eden also admitted that during the year 1879 prisoners were flogged, probably for short work, in unprecedented numbers. The noble Marquess would, perhaps, maintain that Sir Ashley Eden was in no way responsible for that; but he contended that a Lieutenant Governor who knew that p, new dietary was being tried, and made no further inquiry, was responsible for the result, if he had any responsibility at all. During that year—1879—there were 8,232 floggings; and in the first six months of 1880 there were 3,386; and a whole year was allowed to pass before even quarterly Returns of corporal punishment were ordered, for those Returns were mentioned as having been prescribed in January, 1880. The deaths were 97 per 1,000, so that every tenth man who was imprisoned for a few months found himself virtually sentenced to death. The noble Marquess had said last year, in reply to a Question he had put to him, that— On its being discovered that the diet scale was unhealthy, a change was made and the health of the prisoners improved. That reply was technically accurate, no doubt; but the phrase "on its being discovered" did not fairly describe the state of the case, seeing that the discovery was not made for 12 months. One might conclude from the ambiguity of that answer that a remedy was immediately applied, and the House would be so misled as to have a right to complain of that sort of answer being palmed off on the noble Marquess by his informants. The statement was technically true; but the lateness of the so-called discovery was the all-important omission. In the Report of the Sanitary Commissioner of the Government of India—a Report as exculpatory as possible of the Central Government—it was admitted that the supervision of the prisoners was so neglected that there was no security for their getting even the reduced scale of diet. The Report says— The temptation which presents itself to the gaol officials to enrich themselves at the expense of the prisoners is very great. …. The embezzlement of their food is very profitable. And yet the Superintendents paid so little attention to the condition of their gaols that they did not even report the number of deaths which occurred in them. Accordingly, the Government of India had now to warn the Superintendents to observe when the prisoners were falling in weight, and when the gaol officials were plump and sleek. A large number of the articles of food which the prisoners were required to use appeared to be worthless. And yet the Superintendents, who were so careless or so ignorant of what was necessary for the food of the prisoners, were allowed by Sir Ashley Eden, in Bengal, to go on without sending in a Report for nine months, though during the whole of that time the prisoners were perishing like flies. On the 7th of June, 1882, two years after Sir Ashley Eden began to remedy the evils in the Bengal gaols, and three and a-half years after those evils had reached their culminating point, Sir Ashley Eden's successor said that under the head of offences relating to work, the number fell from 40,000 and odd to 27,963 in 1881; that the Inspector of Prisons attributed it to better diet, and an extra early morning meal; and that the decrease in the number of punishments was in some measure due to the orders under which no prisoner who was losing weight was punished for short work. It was impossible for the noble Marquess to whitewash the kind of Government supervision which allowed what he had described to take place without any Report received or required. He was happy to say that there was little doubt now that the necessary reforms would be carried out in the gaols of Bengal. There was, for instance, a prospect that wooden platform beds would be substituted for raised beds of earth. For the information which had led him to bring the subject of the Bengal gaols before the House he had not been in any way, in the first instance, indebted to the letters of his brother, Mr. Charles O'Donnell, of the Bengal Civil Service, who, however, owing to the suspicion of being the informant, had been exposed to dastardly persecution in a variety of ways. As a matter of fact, not one but several correspondents had called his attention to the condition of the Bengal gaols, and the details he subsequently received on some points from his brother only formed part of the evidence on which he had acted. Official persecution would not deter his brother from doing his duty, nor would it prevent him (Mr. O'Donnell) from bringing forward the grievances of the people of India. He hoped that ere long not only one but 50 Irish Representatives would stand up in defence of the 250,000,000 of people in India.

THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON

said, that he had had some difficulty in following the hon. Member through his rather discursive examination of the Papers presented to the House. He did not think that it was necessary that he should answer the hon. Member at any great length, as the hon. Member had himself admitted that the grievances formerly existing, including the maladministration of the gaols, had been carefully investigated and, to a great extent, removed. More than once he had paid a fair tribute to the service rendered by the hon. Member in bringing facts bearing on the subject under the notice of the House; but it was to be regretted that he should have thought it necessary to make, for the second time, what he (the Marquess of Hartington) could not help thinking were unnecessary and un- founded charges against the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. Before making any observations upon the prison diet and similar matters, he would refer to what fell from the hon. Member at the close of his speech. The hon. Member said that some of his information came from his brother, who had been exposed, so he alleged, to the most dastardly persecution because he had supplied that information. Well, he knew that Mr. O'Donnell had had the misfortune to incur on more than one occasion the censure of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal and of the Governor General of India. He also knew that the recent conduct of Mr. O'Donnell had met with the most careful, minute, and impartial investigation at the hands of the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, of the Members of the Supreme Council, and of the Viceroy himself, and that the Viceroy was satisfied that Mr. O'Donnell had been treated with great consideration. He ventured to say there was not the slightest foundation for the statement that had been furnished to the hon. Member, that the action taken by officials with reference to his brother was influenced in the slightest degree by the course he had adopted with reference to the Bengal prisons. The hon. Member had referred at great length to Papers that he (the Marquess of Hartington) had laid on the Table, and he had referred to what he called the admissions of Sir Ashley Eden. The fact, however, was they were not admissions, because it was Sir Ashley Eden who, in his review of the Gaol Administration Report of 1879, first called attention to the excessive number of corporal punishments and the great increase in the mortality of prisoners. That information was published and commented upon; and, but for the course thus taken by Sir Ashley Eden, the matter might have been ignored up to the present time. Therefore, it was unjust to Sir Ashley Eden to say that the matter was first brought forward by the hon. Member. The hon. Member complained that action was not taken by the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal as soon as the facts were brought to his knowledge. It was impossible for the Lieutenant Governor, who had to administer the affairs of 40,000,000 people, to exercise personal supervision over the administration of prisons; and it was only when he had brought before him, from time to time, official Reports that he could take action. The statement of the hon. Member that prisoners were starved was, no doubt, borne out by what Sir Ashley Eden had said, perhaps somewhat hastily, as to the great mortality having been caused by a change of diet. It appeared to be doubtful whether the great mortality was owing to starvation or to a change of diet. Dr. Lewis was of opinion that the mortality was not owing to a change of diet, and that the cause of the mortality must be sought for in some other direction. It was far more important to ascertain what were the real causes of sickness and mortality which prevailed in Bengal than whether some official had or had not failed in the discharge of his duties. When the attention of the Government of Bengal was called to the matter, means were taken to remedy the evils complained of; and there could be no doubt that measures had been adopted that were likely to be productive of improvement, not only in the gaols of Bengal, but in the gaols all over the country. Instead of deserving censure, Sir Ashley Eden deserved the highest approval of the House; and he considered it fortunate that the country had obtained at the Council of India the assistance of one who had so vast and great a knowledge of Indian subjects as Sir Ashley Eden had.

MR. ONSLOW

said, he could not sit in his place and listen to the remarks of the hon. Member without assuring the House that Sir Ashley Eden was one of the ablest administrators they had in the Government of Bengal. He did not wish to say one word against the hon. Member's brother; but he would say this—that no hon. Member had a right to come to the House and endeavour to get his brother out of a very serious difficulty into which he got entirely through his own fault in writing anonymous and scurrilous articles in newspapers and elsewhere against his superiors. [Mr. O'DONNELL: No; that was the charge against him.] He did not know what the charge was; he knew it was the fact. He knew something about the gaols in India, and he knew that many years ago nothing could be more awful than their condition. He thought it was manifest there had been some reform. It was impossible to effect reforms in India all at once. That had to be done gradually. Anyone who went to India would see that a thousand things wanted reform; but an immense amount of money was required to reform all of those things. He hoped that a real attempt would be made by the Government to ameliorate the condition of prisoners in India. With respect to what had been said as to the oppression of the Natives of India, he did not believe that they were oppressed; but that, on the contrary, they had never been better governed than they were at present.

MR. T. P. O'CONNOR

contended that the despotic power exercised in India was worse than useless if it were not used to redress the evils of which they had heard. Respecting what had been said as to Irish Members taking up the cause of the Indian people, he did not think that any interference by them would be calculated to do the people of India much good. He was surprised that hon. Gentlemen opposite should have permitted the sole responsibility for bringing forward these terrible grievances, or for getting them in any way redressed, to rest with his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell).

Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.