Police Court of Singapore. 1 63 



In the course of a visit we paid to the Police Court we had 

 the pleasm-e of becoming acquainted with Mr. Windsor Carl, 

 the well-known author of numerous valuable works relating 

 to the Indian Archipelago and the Papuan Negroes, a gentle- 

 man whose career in life has been of the strangest, at present 

 holding the position of magistrate in Singapore, where his 

 great experience and his thorough acquaintance with the 

 Malay language must be of the utmost service to government. 

 The audience assembled in the Court room, in which only 

 causes under 50 Rs. are tried, consisted for the most part of 

 Chinese. Almost all the officials, clerks, inspectors, and po- 

 licemen were coloured. In one month 414 causes came on 

 for trial, of which 315 were disposed of by the imposition on 

 the culprits of fines amounting in the aggregate to 5975 Rs., 

 but of this sum only 5105 Rs. were realized. The largest 

 number of sentences are passed in March, because the Chinese 

 celebrate the New Year on the first day of that month, and 

 accordingly the largest number of cases of assault, &c., occur 

 at that period. The police employes registered in that period 

 above 100 cases of transgressions of the law. The New Year 

 is however, as must be remembered, the solitary festival 

 which John Chinaman takes out of his appointed work, since 

 recognizing as they do neither Sunday nor feast-day they 

 continue hard at work for all the rest of the year. The ma- 

 jority of decisions refer to prohibited games ; and whoever 

 knows the inextinguishable love of the Chinese populace for 

 spending their time in gambling, will readily comprehend 



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