



CRIME. 183 



of prostitution, and no one can pass through the streets of our 

 towns without having ample evidence of the utter degradation 

 of our lower class females/'' 



With reference to juvenile offenders the inspector remarks : 

 " I regret to have to report a very large increase under this head, 

 there having been sixty-two boys and twenty-two girls com- 

 mitted in 1877, as against thirty-five boys and eleven girls 

 in 1876. 



u I had entertained sanguine hopes that the commencement 

 of this year would have seen the opening of the much-needed 

 reformatory and industrial schools ; but I regret that objections 

 raised by one or two individuals against the proposed site have 

 caused the whole question to be indefinitely postponed. 



" In the meantime the evil is increasing and developing, and 

 before long we shall reap the bitter fruits of this procrastination. 



" A very large proportion of our criminals here are not of 

 what, in England, is called the criminal class. I do not mean 

 to assert that there is no such class here ; unfortunately, one of 

 the results of our increasing civilisation and prosperity is, that* 

 such a class is rapidly increasing ; but we even yet have neither 

 a distinctly criminal class any more than a thieves' quarter. 



" There is no shame here attached to the fact of having been 

 an inmate of a criminal prison ; and so long as this will be the 

 case, it is vain to hope that the gaol will have much reformatory 

 effect. 



" The labourer in these colonies, whether African, Creole, or 

 Asiatic, works as little and sleeps or idles as much as he can, 

 and his ordinary food consists of plantains, corn-meal, salt fish, 

 and rice, washed down with rum when he can get it. 



" He lives on, or near, an estate, in a hut, and neither his 

 employer nor any one else cares much if he lives or dies, unless, 

 indeed, he be an indentured immigrant. 



" If such a man commits a crime, and is sent to gaol for 

 twelve months, can it be contended that, physically, he is worse 

 off than when working on the estate ? 



" In the gaol he is well lodged and fed at the public expense, 

 with food identical with that which he consumes when at liberty, 

 and clothed (also at the public expense) in a way which, to a 

 labourer in the old country, would be a mark of disgrace, but 

 which to him conveys no such feeling. He has medical at- 



