Our Criminal Classes. 
Many young women belonging to respectable families, 
enter into a state of concubinage with an unmarried man 
with the hope and perhaps the promise that at some time 
their nuptials will be celebrated, who, if they knew 
that the children born of such a connexion would be for- 
ever branded as bastards and they themselves be objects 
of scorn and contempt, would shrink from such a state of 
life. Very little disgrace attaches here to a woman who 
lives with one man in recognized concubinage so long as 
that man is sole and unmarried and able at any time to 
consummate their nuptials, but it is a matter of common 
observation that where the few maintain this relationship, 
which if rigidly kept is certainly not the most disgrace- 
ful life, intact, too frequently infidelity on the one side 
leads to jealousy and subsequent infidelity on the other ; 
illicit polyandry succeeds to the previous concubinage, 
and from polyandry to prostitution is under our institu- 
tions a step more distinguishable in name than in reality. 
That a vast number of our people in this colony live in 
a state of immorality, merely using that word with regard 
to the relation between the sexes, is unfortunately too 
true, as the number of illegitimate births in comparison 
with those born in wedlock clearly shows. At the same 
time, I think it is very unfair to class Hindoo and 
Mohammedan children as illegitimate whose parents 
have been married according to the tenets of their 
respective religions. These illegitimate children naturally 
grow up in a careless and neglected fashion if they live 
at all, surrounded by filth both mental and physical, and 
it is no wonder that the results are most unsatisfactory. 
It is well known to the City Magistrates and the Police 
that certain quarters of the city swarm with shameless 
B 
