Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra15161885roya).pdf/318

 It is no exaggeration to say that Hua-Hoey gambling corrupts and brings to ruin thousands of people-men, women and children but how to check it and minimise the evil is a very difficult question.

The common gaming houses in town are well known to the Police They are defended by strong iron barred doors, have ladders, trap-doors and escapes and are always ready for a raid by the Police. Premises have to be hired and fitted for the purpose, and there is a certain amount of risk in the undertaking, but a Hua-Hoey lottery can be opened any- where, in a shop, a private house or a Kampong. The result is not often declared at the same place and without a warrant the Police caumnot enter a building. All kinds of artifices are practised when the winning number is exhibited in order to escape detection by the Police. Sometimes the character is marked on a piece of yam or sweet potato and swallowed if the Police appear: or it is written on the palm of the hand or on the sand and quickly rubbed out. Instead of the well known Hua-Hoey characters the numbers corresponding with them on the lottery papers are now frequently used and it is extremely difficult for the Police to procure satisfactory evidence against the principals engaged in the business.

The agents with their lottery papers, pencil and stakes col- lected are sometimes arrested and fined, but it has been held by a learned Judge that the possession of these "tickets," as they are called, is no offence. In Burma it was held by one high judicial functionary that the thirty-six animals game was not gambling within the meaning of the Act in force there.

The more respectable Chinese are fully alive to the wide- spread mischief caused by these Hua-Hoey lotterics and a memorial, printed as an Appendix to this paper, has been recent- ly addressed to the Legislative Council by certain Chinese inha- bitants of Penang praying that most stringent measures should be adopted for their suppression.

C. W. SNEYD KYNNERSLEY.