But what were the rights of real and pseudo-concubines? Could they and their children be discarded without support? To what extent might they challenge the rights of the real wife? The 1948 Committee produced no definitive answers to these questions, nor did it urge any precipitate action to change the status of concubines. It did recommend that after a certain date, the taking of new concubines be declared illegal. Sir Man Kam Lo, a Chinese member of the Hong Kong Executive Council, subsequently wrote a dissent to the 1948 report, saying that he believed the concubine should be allowed to remain in cases where the principal wife was ill or unable to bear children. As he noted, the birth of a male heir is of the greatest importance to the succession of a Chinese family. Very few families, he felt, would regard an adopted son as a suitable heir. Arthur Ridehalgh, former Attorney General, and John C. McDouall, Secretary for Chinese Affairs, made a detailed study of Chinese marriages in the colony in 1960 and submitted a variety of recommendations intended to clear up some of the ambiguities and contradictions. It was their proposal that the government set a definite date for outlawing Chinese Modern Marriages and to validate all marriages of this type which had been previously contracted as monogamous unions, provided that neither spouse was lawfully married to anyone else. The so-called concubines of husbands who had been parties to a Chinese Modern Marriage would receive no further legal recognition, and in fact they had never been entitled to any. Regarding Chinese Customary Marriages, the study favored the recording of these marriages to establish their validity, and the banning of all future marriages in which either partner is under sixteen years of age. As to Reputed Marriages, the study advocated remarriage of the couples under colony law with the right to back-date the marriage to the time they had begun to live together. The Ridehalgh-McDouall report also favored several changes in the divorce laws. One change would permit a principal wife in a Chinese Customary Marriage to get a divorce with maintenance until her death or remarriage if the husband, after a date to be set by law, acquired a concubine without the principal wife’s consent or knowledge. Another recommendation, after a date set by law, would bar divorce in a Chinese Customary Marriage without the free consent of both parties.