HC Deb 15 September 1893 vol 17 c1290
MR. T. BAYLEY (Derbyshire, Chesterfield)

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make inquiries into the definite charges made by Mr. W. E. Jinks, in a letter which appeared in the Liverpool newspapers of 13th September, where he states that Mr. Wallace and Mr. Servel, servants of the Royal Niger Company, when the Natives under their charge laid down their arms, and wanted to be sent back to their homes because they had not sufficient food and water, the head man of the Natives and 17 others were killed and many wounded, and that Sir James Marshall, who is in the employ of the Company, has stated that he did not consider the men were in the wrong; that in a Memorial to Her Majesty's Representative at Lagos, signed by over 100 merchants and ministers of all denominations and 36 Native Chiefs, in which they direct attention to the case of the men who were recently disarmed, enclosed in a compound, and shot down at Lokoja, because they refused to continue a dangerous journey, in which they had already suffered the greatest privations; and if he has seen the Memorial?

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir E. GREY,) Northumberland, Berwick

This is not a new case; a question respecting it was put and answered in the House on the 14th of December, 1888. It was inquired into, and the result went to show that if very severe measures had not been taken the Mission Station would have been destroyed.