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MILLENNIUM ISSUE |
c 1869
So what’s new under the sun? The answer is – at least as far as Hong Kong’s legal history is concerned – nothing. Odd as it may seem, people have been transfixed by the same issues since the beginning of the territory’s colonial history. Sentencing, the right and wrongs of corporal punishment, litigation costs, court fees, the fusion of the two arms of the legal profession, the evils of gambling, the prevalence of corruption and the problems of jury service – does all of this sound familiar? These were the hot issues in the nineteenth century and, as many modern lawyers will easily recognise, the same topics are as hot in 1999 as they were then.
The whole story started in 1833, when a British court was appointed in Canton with jurisdiction over British subjects. Subsequently removed to Hong Kong, this gave a political basis to an institution that was to become a full-blown legal jurisdiction. The tone was set when Captain Charles Elliot RN, Chief Superintendent of Trade and Her Majesty'sPlenipotentiary in China, after the cessation of hostilities, announced Hong Kong to be British and its Chinese inhabitants to be subjects of the Crown – ‘subject to control of British magistrates’ and to be governed ‘according to the laws, customs and usages of the Chinese’.
There was much to do in the aftermath of the cession of Hong Kong to the British Crown. Initially, the legal establishment was built by secondments from the military. First, a Chief Magistrate was appointed – Capt William Caine, whose career in Hong Kong was eventually to take him to a colonelcy. Local land rights were then established after consultation with whomever had a previous claim, including local Chinese persons. A Harbourmaster-cum-Marine Magistrate and a Coroner were appointed, as well as a criminal court complete with a judge – Sir Henry Pottinger, the first Governor.
Life in those days was heady and sudden. One gets a sense of hundreds of enormous events rushing past faster than they can even be comprehended, much less dealt with. As a result there was considerable fudging and mishap, but gradually a legal institution appeared above the parapets and made itself at home. Justice had come to Hong Kong.
Admittedly, justice in Hong Kong could be rough and ready. For example, when Edward Farncomb became Coroner, and when a Chinese man who was found dead in the harbour was identified as a gang member who had been shot by a local merchant named JF Hight, the Coroner’s jury said this was so – and that was the end of the matter. Because of rampant theft an 11pm curfew for all Chinese was announced. In 1842 the Chief Magistrate’s Court recorded punishments such as 60-100 strokes of the bamboo, mostly for robbery, although piracy sanctions were considered woefully inadequate.
Hong Kong was a wild place. Thieves had flocked to the new colony and security was a perpetual problem, with robbers and footpads on every corner, and pirates endangering all shipping. Consequently, the population was united in a call for a police force, and a Superintendent of Police was duly appointed. In a burst of civic duty, one Major-General D’Aguilar – the famously irascible Lieutenant-Governor and military commander and a name today familiar to us all – along with a group of volunteers, offered to beef up the undermanned police establishment. By this time officials such as the first Attorney-General were being specifically shipped out from Britain to create a civil establishment.
In 1844 the Colonial government deemed it necessary to attempt a task that was to prove daunting in the extreme – the new Registration Ordinance (Ordinance No 18 of 1844) called for the registration of all Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong, principally with a view to getting a handle on the ‘bad apples’ so as to improve the precarious security situation. Already, immigration was proving to be a power to be reckoned with.
As Governor Sir Henry Pottinger left the Colony – returning to accolades in Britain – the new Governor, Mr JF Davis, arrived, bringing with him the new Chief Justice, JW Hulme, as well as the Registrar of the new Supreme Court. The busy populace was now very concentrated on security and legal affairs, and so the formal establishment of the Indian night police, new street lighting and the publication of a table of Police Magistrate’s Office’s fees followed in short order.
The new Attorney-General, PI Sterling, was appointed and Major-General D’Aguilar came again to prominence when he championed with great vehemence what was eventually to become the 17th Ordinance of the year 1844. The famous ‘Bamboo-striking Ordinance’, under which Chinese night-watchmen were forbidden to strike bamboo canes together at night, as had been their wont, so that they might signal their employers that they remained ‘on the job’, was largely a product of the short-tempered General’s difficulty in falling asleep.
The Supreme Court finally opened for business in October of 1844. After sundry admissions to practice, the newly ordained court heard a case of abduction.
The new Registration Ordinance was causing a problem – angry Europeans declined to pay the fee and outraged Chinese rioted in the street. LegCo had no choice but to climb down and repeal it in December of 1846. The less controversial Census and Registration Ordinance – involving no payment of fees – was instituted as a stop-gap manoeuvre.
The Triads were problematical, having flocked to Hong Kong and become criminal rather than political in nature, but the legislation to combat this development was now complete. A new Anti-Triad Ordinance was passed, allowing branding of convicted criminals, and the first criminal sessions of the Supreme Court took place, handing down the first sentences of execution and transportation. The legal establishment was growing fast, as more attorneys were admitted to the Court. Such professionals were allowed to advertise in those days, and examples of their ‘tasteful and professional’ self-penned accolades make fascinating reading to someone brought up in the more rigid circumstances of modern professional ethics.
What was the financial cost of all this? The price of justice could be clearly seen, when, in 1845-1846, the British Parliament – which had covered all legal and police costs to date – voted the following funds:
For the costs of the Chief Justice and Law Courts – 6,602 pounds sterling
For the costs of Police at Victoria and Chuk-chu (Aberdeen) – 6,423 pounds sterling.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, hanging was not popular with the Chinese. Indeed, many condemned criminals resorted to suicide rather than face the indignity of the gallows, but Hong Kong marched on. The arrival of Charles May who was, significantly, a civilian superintendent of police, together with 2 inspectors hastened the de-militarisation of the Colony’s legal system. A man called Ingwood, a seaman aboard the HMS Driver, was the first European hanged for murder after he threw another European (his erstwhile drinking companion) over the side of a sampan and watched him drown.
Even at this early stage Chinese advocates were coming forward, and there was employment of educated Chinese for legal interpretation services. There was one Chinese magistrate. Hong Kong was beginning to pay for itself, and an Ordinance was issued to levy an assessed property rate to pay for the burgeoning costs of the police establishment.
A lighter touch: Major-General D’Aguilar was again on people’s minds, being accused of dogmatically pursuing the prosecution of a man whom he caused to be prevented from singing in his own home – fine sentiments from a man whose own dinner-parties were said to be a complete riot! Did people hate him or love him? Who can tell, but quite soon we again hear from the good Major-General ‘Bamboo-sticks’ D’Aguilar, when he insisted on the prosecution of another gentleman for what he called ‘furious riding’ upon his horse!
Reading the pages of history the same influences seem constantly to bear on the people of Hong Kong. Again and again we hear complaints about the quality of the police force. Various new Nationality and Immigration Ordinances were passed. Chinese ‘agents’ were prosecuted, pirates brought to book and the streetlights were still causing upset.
Chinese constable in Statue Square
Daily public floggings were objected to: on one day alone 54 Chinese were flogged and their ‘tails’ cut off for possessing no registration papers. It was said that respectable Chinese people were afraid to come to Hong Kong because of this practice.
But the gallows, although not popular, seemed to be no deterrent either: murders among Chinese soared. There were many pirate attacks, such as that on the opium ship Privateer for which one Chun Teen Sung was convicted of nine acts of piracy and one of murder. He is said to have been impassive on the gallows. Nor was all justice just: the Coroner’s Court effectively exonerated a brothel owner for taking a dying girl out and leaving her to succumb to a disease in the street.
Fraud was common as well as judicial mishap. An example was that of a Portuguese named Marcal who fraudulently sold opium he did not possess and fled to Macau with the money. Three other Portuguese gentlemen were also implicated, Messrs D’Assis, Pacheo and de Mello. Acting Chief Magistrate Hillier issued a warrant, although there was no relevant treaty, and the three were arrested. However, no evidence was offered, although their guilt was not in popular doubt. Released, they were shipped off at once to Macau and subsequently sued Hillier in the amount of 25,000 pounds. They were eventually exonerated but never received any money. Elsewhere in Hong Kong, the stipendary magistrates also caused a good deal of resentment by acting on presumption rather than proof of guilt, the result being, as the Chief Justice railed at the Acting Chief Magistrate, that ‘innocent men have been flogged and imprisoned’.
In 1846 arose an event that was to have unforeseen consequences: the so-called Compton Case. In Canton, a very unpleasant English merchant named Compton knocked over a fruit barrow and thrashed a Chinese officer who tried to apprehend him. In the ensuing riots three people were killed. Compton was charged under Consular Ordinance No 4, by the Consul in Canton, but was fined a mere 200 dollars under Consular Ordinance No 5. Compton appealed by post to Lord Palmerston in the British government, who agreed with the subsequent decision of the Chief Justice of Hong Kong who – against the specific interests of the Governor, Mr Davis – quashed the conviction, saying that ‘convicted under one law and fined under another’ was a legal nonsense. This affair – or rather the acrimony between Governor and Chief Justice that it engendered – was to become obliquely responsible for future events.
The first session of the Admiralty Court took place, trying four cases of piracy on the high seas; but on land the European police – mostly discharged soldiers – were a bad lot and enjoyed no public confidence: drunkenness and theft were rife, with many prisoners escaping.
A new, refined Registration Ordinance was passed in the ongoing attempt to eliminate criminals in the population, and SF Fearon was appointed to the post of Registrar-General and Collector of Chinese Taxes, so some tax revenues were beginning to flow. In 1847, during the time of the expedition to Shanghai, the Governor and Lord Chief Justice continued their squabble, as the Governor declared insultingly that the Lord Chief Justice should not be addressed as ‘My Lord’.
Frauds were committed by the now-Major Caine’s comprador, who used the Major’s name to extort money from Central Market stallholders and then ‘levanted’, or fled, from the colony. Major Caine was impugned but exonerated in a libel case he brought in the October sessions. The summary jurisdiction of the police magistrates and JPs was extended to the detriment of the Supreme Court. However, the Police Court inspired no confidence and a qualified chief magistrate was desperately needed; despite this, the admittedly incompetent Mr Hillier was re-confirmed in office.
Transportation to Penang was a common sentence, and the ship ‘General Wood’, containing 92 convicts en route to Penang, suffered a mutiny at their hands with several people killed. The mutineers sailed the ship off at random and wrecked it on the Malay Peninsula, only one boat being saved. A ship was sent and found several surviving mutineers who even attempted mutiny on the voyage back. However, in Singapore they were again sentenced to transportation rather than death because of a clement jury.
Queen's Road looking west from Duddell Street, 1869
In 1848, in continuing fallout from the Compton case, the Lord Chief Justice CJ Hulme was suspended based upon an unfounded – and much disbelieved – charge of habitual drunkenness referred by Governor Davis. The Governor, who had been trying to undermine the Chief Justice in Britain, had secretly written to Lord Palmerston with his assertions. As a consequence, Hulme, who was a great favourite with the populace, was forced to appear before the Executive Council to answer the following charges:
1st – for having been intoxicated at a dinner party given by Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane on board of HMS Agincourt in the latter part of 1845
2nd – for having been intoxicated at the house of Major- General D’Aguilar in July 1846
3rd – for being an habitual drunkard
Outrage ensued! The Chief Justice was vindicated on all three counts, despite Major Caine supporting the Governor’s asservations, although Major-General D’Aguilar – on the side of the angels for once – spoke powerfully in his favour. But the Lord Chief Justice was nevertheless suspended from his job and there was a public outcry with many cards left at his home as marks of sympathy. Eventually, and viewed as having been terribly wronged, he left Hong Kong as a hero. Governor Davis, on the other hand, was vilified both at home and abroad and soon tendered his resignation as Governor.
Sir Henry Blake addressing the gentry of the New Territories Communities
The Supreme Court by 1848 was complete and entirely free of ‘military justice’, comprising a staff of Registrar, Deputy Registrar, Chinese interpreter, Malay interpreter, Clerk of the Court, Clerk to the Chief Justice and Usher. Lord Chief Justice Hulme, completely vindicated by Earl Grey while back in Britain, returned to Hong Kong in triumph and resumed his duties. Aboard the same ship upon his return was Samuel George Bonham, the new Governor of Hong Kong.
Much groundwork had been done and it was the end of an era, but even so, solicitors and attorneys complained (as always) about excessive court fees. However, it was decided that this was the responsibility of the legislature and not the Court. Attorney’s fees, on the other hand, were considered moderate. Further, the Chief Justice agreed that since there were by then enough barristers, solicitors need no longer act as counsel. But there were other complaints; fees allowed to counsel, for example, were ‘not considered sufficient’. Another vexed question was that of the oath to be administered to Chinese persons. It was common to ‘burn paper’ in court as an oath, but it was represented that this meant as much to the Chinese as to the British: which is to say, nothing. More relevant apparently, was the cutting off of a cock’s head, and although this was never done in the Supreme Court it was rumoured to have been common practice in local magistrates’ courts. The police still continued to attract opprobrium, and a police constable – the public hangman, one Constable Moggle-John – was sentenced to 10 years for larcenous theft.
The re-instated Chief Justice now became embroiled in a new controversy. Governor Bonham had had occasion to be particularly lenient, commuting death sentences on prisoners to whom the Chief Justice had specifically held out no hope. Somewhat piqued, the Chief Justice subsequently told other convicted murderers he could record – but not effect – a sentence of death against them. History does not record what happened to those prisoners at the heart of this new wrangle, and Mr Hulme was soon to leave Hong Kong again, this time on sick leave.
The rule of law was also apparent at sea. Piracy suppression was now scoring huge successes against vast pirate fleets. In one action alone 58 out of 64 heavily-armed junks were taken and destroyed, 1,000 guns were taken or sunk, and 1,700 pirates killed in action with 1,000 driven ashore.
Victoria Waterfront, looking east, Pedder Street, centre. 1868
An order of Her Majesty in Council, dated June 1853, established the rules for appeal to the Queen-in-Council. The Governor extended self-regulation in civil matters amongst the Chinese population, introducing ‘Tepos’ or Chinese peace officers. There was plenty of persecution elsewhere however. Indeed, Jardine Matheson rather publicly threatened any Chinese person with harm should they interfere with a land-sale auction for a property in which it was interested.
The issue of fees and costs continued to raise its head. The Governor authorised the Attorney-General, TC Anstey, to enquire into fees and costs of civil procedures and of practice generally. The upshot was a relevant Ordinance fixing the level of fees once more (a situation that must sound appropriately familiar to lawyers today).
Amazingly, yet again, the Chief Justice was in trouble when the new Attorney-General accused him of ‘exceeding the bounds of temperance’, whatever that might mean. The ensuing public outcry caused a retraction of the calumny. This did not prevent the Attorney-General from taking his place in LegCo shortly after, nor did it prevent him getting into a huge public row when he brought criminal charges against the Sheriff, a Mr Mitchell. Mr Mitchell had said that prisoners should pay for food brought in, a move seen by the Attorney-General as criminal extortion. The Chief Justice – presumably with considerable judicial glee – announced Anstey’s case to be ‘a nonsense’, and said that it was a ‘paltry, vindictive and contemptible action’. Hong Kong by this stage, and with reason, had become known as the ‘noisome scandal of the East’ for the manner in which its public officials attacked each other’s reputations.
A feature of the Colony was the fact that each public official held many jobs. For example, Mr Hickson, a newly-arrived lawyer and the first Crown Solicitor, was also Deputy Sheriff, Coroner and Queen’s Proctor. Many officials were also on the Legislative Council and the Executive Council as well. Multiple functions, as well as private interests, ensured that friction and conflict were routine in the Colony.
A notorious episode involving a baker, Cheong Alum, who it was said had spiced the daily bread with 10 pounds of arsenic then fled to Macau, next caught the public attention – and no wonder! Many were made ill, with homes full of convulsing children, but no lives were lost. Cheong Alum was captured with alacrity, returned from Macau and then kept in appalling circumstances only to be acquitted – along with his workers – for lack of evidence. They were all released and immediately re-arrested, but finally released again. The affair was eventually seen as a victory of justice over emotion.
The Attorney-General refused permission for the amalgamation of the legal professions once again, arguing against the Law Society for its necessity. He then took a defendant in a case he had lost into custody for perjury, in his private capacity as plaintiff’s counsel, incensing the jurors and the public. The defendant was released. The deeply unpopular Attorney-General then paid a visit to Canton, where, his reputation having preceded him, he was found to be without a pass and was arrested. On his return he asked for police protection, which he didn’t get. He was not an attractive personality – contemporary accounts describe him as coming across as incorruptible but rigid – and he was paying for it.
Not to be defeated, however, Hong Kong’s merchants and bankers in a body petitioned the Legislative Council for the amalgamation of the professions. This application rumbled on for some time, although due to the machinations of the Attorney-General, once again it came to naught until the Amalgamation Ordinance of 1858, when solicitors were once again allowed to practise advocacy in Court.
The stocks
Vastly more scandal came during the ‘opium monopoly enquiry’. After another long-running row – this time with Governor Sir John Bowring who had been appointed in 1854 – concerning the Registrar-General, Mr Caldwell, whom he accused of all manner of illegal behaviour, from keeping brothels to consorting with pirates, the unloveable Attorney-General was eventually suspended from office. After a very complicated round of litigation involving several cases, enmity between the suspended Attorney-General and the Governor had become acute. When Mr Anstey left Hong Kong, he left a seething morass that had finally sapped his own health and strength, leaving him a martyr to ‘chronic dyspepsia and headaches’. He left no friends behind, but he had not yet had the last say – pamphlets written and published by himself re-energised the affair, leading to the dismissal of his principal antagonist, Mr Caldwell, by a subsequent Governor. Enervated by the endless in-fighting, the indefatigable Chief Justice Hulme once again left on sick leave but died soon after in Brighton in 1861. The allegedly ‘wicked and corrupt’ Governor Sir John Bowring left quickly thereafter and Mr Anstey was finally sacked by the Secretary of State. The new Attorney-General, a Mr Adams, was also appointed as Chief Justice, thus ending the matter, although recriminations lingered for years. Mr Anstey’s problem was that he was an unlikeable but painstaking and fastidious man, who could not ignore what he saw around him. Even today, the reflection of some of these events hangs on like an insubstantial ghost in the history of the Colony.
Major William Caine, Chief Magistrate, 1841-1846
By 1860 Hong Kong’s name was pretty much besmirched by these and other shenanigans, as well as by the fallout from a serious buccaneering expedition fitted-out in Hong Kong that sacked a village in Macau. To cap it all off the prisoners in the jail – the very vile jail – rioted.
Not only that but there were many scandalous executions where felons choked for as long as 20 minutes, or had to stand for ages with ropes around their necks while the creaking gallows was jury-rigged. Many prisoners fainted repeatedly from terror during these waits, sometimes screaming at the fumbling hangman to do it quicker. Complaints arose that the Governor was excluding the press from the Legislative Council. The opium trade was still fairly brisk, but otherwise things were not going too well.
Kowloon was added to the Colony and the question of court interpretation rose to the fore. It had often been suspected that indifferent interpretation was hampering the administration of justice, and now a system of cadetship was instigated to fill this gap. The cadets were to be British, between twenty and twenty-three years of age, and were to suffer six-monthly examinations. Should they fail then they would be repatriated and any expenses incurred recovered under a bond.
JJ Smale, the new Attorney-General, was appointed, but at a reduced rate of pay, and the Supreme Court house now came under scrutiny. It was nearly falling down. Comment was acerbic, ‘For more than one year past the upper tier of jurymen have been driven out of the box whenever it rained. The Court altogether is the most inconvenient one conceivable. Its shape is oblong, the roof is flat and the skylight is square. For the conveyance of sound … a more unfit room cannot be conceived.’ With this in mind the Court removed to the Magistracy, itself no paragon of comfort.
The Amalgamation Ordinance of 1858 came under fire, being replaced by another that once again separated the professions. The state of the jail was again a consideration, with the hulk ‘Royal Saxon’ being purchased as temporary accommodation pending the construction of a new jail at Stonecutter’s Island. 280 prisoners were initially embarked and imprisoned therein. The old jail, apart from being filthy and dangerous to inhabit, was also pretty porous, and some prisoners had even been known to go out for a relaxed evening’s drinking before returning to their cells. There was even one occasion when the Jail Superintendent threw a party at which prisoners ‘were present, not in jail clothes and fetters, but in evening dress, and until the early hours’.
During all these events there was a continual background of new appointments, sick leaves, illnesses – often dysentery – and deaths. A constant series of piracy trials, nearly always followed by grim executions, fill the pages of the Court records, and give a sour counterpoint to the trivia of the incessant libel cases and internecine legal feuding between and among officials and judiciary alike. Virtually all of the old generation, however, had now disappeared, and although the Court was also under fire for excessive levity during proceedings (jokes and justice, it would appear, offended many sensibilities) the citizens of Hong Kong were trying to put the scandals of a past era behind them.
However, the brush was already tainted and the Supreme Court of Hong Kong was being called ‘the greatest nuisance in the East’ by the Times of London. Moves were afoot to remove its powers over all consulate cases in the East, even though, as the Chief Justice pointed out, consular officials were legally uneducated and their decisions were constantly being reversed on appeal. The Court was, in fact, eventually restricted to a jurisdiction ‘within the island of Hong Kong’. A new Supreme Court of China and Japan was established in Shanghai to take over consular legal cases.
In 1865 the first Bankruptcy Ordinance was privately produced for the British Government by a local barrister who was paid one hundred guineas for his labours. But crime was again on the up, with the police and a lenient magistracy being generally blamed and vilified. A significant bank robbery occurred, with 115,000 dollars in gold and currency stolen by means of a tunnel. The perpetrators were discovered with gold ingots hidden all over their houses and were sentenced to four years, while elsewhere pirates killed eighty people on one junk, with seven miscreants being captured, convicted and executed.
Occasionally, the Chinese authorities were heard from. Ho Yu Teen, a robber, was actually extradited – in those days merely ‘delivered over’ – to China after due legal process under an 1850 Ordinance relating to the rendition of Chinese. He was of course executed in a ‘satisfyingly barbarous manner’, which makes one wonder a little. Still, this was the community that was shortly up in arms when an Ordinance came into force allowing the public flogging of Europeans. ‘All men must come under the operation of the Ordinance!’ thundered the acting Chief Justice. His reply came by way of a petition from the European community requesting remission on a sentence of public flogging for a Mr Thomson. History does not record the result, but the Ordinance stood.
Gambling was punishable by a 200 dollar fine in 1867, so to no one’s surprise it flourished. More stringent legislation was proposed but not adopted, until suddenly an Ordinance relating to the ‘maintenance and cleanliness’ of gambling was rushed through, with the avowed aim of eliminating illegal gambling in Hong Kong. Lacklustre licensed gambling houses failed to spark enthusiasm initially, but that changed, and soon the licences became valuable assets, traded at auctions. Ho Ah Suk bought them for 15,800 dollars a year. There was much furore, at home and abroad, not least because of increased police corruption, and after a petition to the British government by the Hong Kong public, the law was repealed in its entirety. We do not know what happened to that early Stanley Ho, Ho Ah Suk. Later, after further abuse, another experiment with licences came to an end and illegal street gambling became a problem, with Possession Point and Taipingsham having particularly bad reputations.
In 1868 the first Chinese libel case heard in Hong Kong was before the Police Magistrate. Ng Tin Chee, a Chinese Doctor, petitioned that he had been libelled in a Chinese newspaper published by the Daily Star, having been portrayed as a ‘swindler and a knave’. The defendant – one Tseang Yuk Chuen, was committed for trial but discharged by proclamation when the parties reached an agreement. A subsequent case demonstrated that anyone in Hong Kong could commit a libel on anyone in Macau with impunity.
Many solicitors were rendered unhappy when the cost of sending articled clerks to plaintiffs was refused relief from tax. The physical legal infrastructure gave no cause for amusement either. The Court House was still falling down, and was at last completely abandoned for premises previously occupied by a Messrs Russell & Co, with the criminal business being conducted once more at the Magistracy. Apparently morals were also falling, with a Chinese deputation urging the Governor to legislate ‘against adulterers’ because ‘Hong Kong had acquired a bad name for immorality’. Even then, it seems, Hong Kong must have been a popular tourist destination.
The Chief Justice was still against the amalgamation of the professions. The argument he advanced was that standards would be lowered by barristers coming into contact with undesirable clients! Unsurprisingly, he lost his argument on that point, but the division remained. The next session of the Court was the first maiden session in Hong Kong’s history; no information was filed, and the police finally came in for some praise, even though 158 men had been struck off police rolls that year. It was said that the proportion of police to citizens was higher in Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world.
In 1877 Ng Choy became the first Chinese person admitted to the Bar. He arrived, of course, by way of the English Bar, and had previously been a Police Court interpreter. Soon after the first Chinese civil wedding took place. Sadly, advances in one area always seemed to be followed by setbacks elsewhere. The next lapse of this kind was an impassioned argument in favour of the cat for flogging. The Governor and the justices were at loggerheads, and a report from the Colonial Surgeon said that the cat was OK for Europeans, but that the rattan was suitable for Asians because he had never ‘in eight years experience, seen any worse effects than injury done to the skin.’ Flogging was practically abolished thereafter, but some few were flogged ‘on the breech, with rattan’.
When the then Chief Justice Sir John Smales was in his emeritus stage, his irascibility became famous. Frequently he would indulge in acerbic sniping attacks on other Court officials and occasionally sweep out of the Court in dudgeon. Things reached the point where the public were turning up at the Court for the entertainment value of the proceedings, dragging the Court into disrepute, and apparently, ‘turning it into a bear garden’. Complaints against the Chief Justice focused around his ill-treatment of the Registrar, a Mr Gibbons, about the lack of public transparency of bankruptcy proceedings. By now, people were complaining when ‘disappointed of the expected treat’ if the Chief Justice left the Court early. The Puisne Judge stepped in to defuse the row. The Registrar, although popular and in the right, was interdicted – removed from office without pay. He resigned and returned to Britain … proving something perhaps. The Chief Justice was to retire soon after; eulogised by the community, but not remembered with affection until long after, his last few years having been uncomfortable for all.
In 1882, Dr Ho Kai was admitted to practise as a barrister in the Supreme Court to a warm welcome from the Justices, and the new Governor Sir John Hennessy spoke of recognising the opium traffic as State-created crime. Soon, Mr Wong Shin was appointed to be a representative of the Chinese in Council … even executions were held in private. Things were on the turn at last, and Hong Kong was experiencing the beginnings of a ‘civil society’.
It was the turn of the century and the world was fresh and new. The British empire was enjoying its late afternoon in the sun, and the affairs of Hong Kong, once so turbulent and wild, had settled down to the daily hum-drum of an ordered and busy life. The dry pages of history record that period as a sequence of comings and goings, of appointments and routine judgments. Gambling, the police, the relationship between advocate and attorney, the perpetual lack of a new Court House, corruption, embezzlement, murder and theft; these are the staples of those days.
A full legal establishment, armed with precedent and Ordinances that had been tested in the crucible, that was itself underpinned by the strength of common law and backed by the legitimacy of the British Crown, administered justice and equity to a busy and industrious population. The big egos, the madcap adventurers, those days had gone now, were already many years in the past. The stage was set for growth and prosperity, but who then could have guessed that quite soon the world was going to hear a mighty tiger roaring in the South China Sea?
John Newson