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then serving on board, with their equivocating and unsatisfactory answers.
But the direct, frank, and unequivocal written confession, drawn up subsequently by the Chief Magistrate, from the mouth of one of her engineers, not examined before the Commission, will, no doubt, receive in Downing Street and Parliament all that attention, which, even to the extent of an acknowledgement of its reception from the Magistracy, has been—so I am informed by the Chief Magistrate himself—hitherto denied to it, on the part of Sir John Bowring's Government.
As if these connections with the head of Chinese pirates were not sufficient for Mr. Caldwell's purpose, whatever that purpose may have been, we next find him contracting, according to Chinese law and usage, a marriage with his concubine Ayow, a singing girl from a Chinese brothel,[1] and the reputed sister, by adoption, (or "sworn sister") of another Chinese girl, Shap Lok, inmate and keeper of a brothel at Hong Kong; and who,—such is one of the reluctant findings of the Caldwell Commission,[2]—in the year
- ↑ Both Mr. Caldwell, and Ayow his wife (whom he called as a witness), admit the character of "singing girl," but deny that the domicil was a brothel. But the direct evidence of her early friend, Mr. Inglis, J.P., and that of Mr. May, leaves no doubt of the fact. Compare Minutes, pp. 18. 22.
- ↑ Report, p. 2. It is true that, in their ignorance of the English law, by which alone they conceived themselves bound strictly to govern their enquiries, into the fitness of Mr. Caldwell for the Commission of the Peace, the Commission, whilst they find the "reputation," of sistership and affinity, find that there is no other proof of the fact; as if there were need of any! In the same mistaken notion of the effect of reputation in matters of pedigree or character,
f
