Curiosities include the existence at the time of licensed brothels, and the regulation but not prohibition of opium. Users of the latter who came before the courts were charged with possession "without a permit from the opium farmer." "Farmer" didn't mean producer -- opium was the government's monopoly, and it "farmed" out its right to sell it for a fee.
Today Hong Kong's magistrates are, in the words of Garry Tallentire, a modern magistrate there who contributes a chapter, qualified solicitors or barristers, male and female, "of local, British, Indian, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian origins." In Stewart's day, by contrast, they were mostly "male, British and unqualified in the law."
Strictly by the book
Tallentire makes two other points of great interest -- that in the 1880s there was no specific law under which people suspected of bribery could be charged, and that custodial sentences in those days were generally shorter than they are today. This latter point gives pause for thought -- as Jan Morris commented in her book Hong Kong (1988), Britain's colony 17 years ago was a strict place. Clearly it remains so.
Behind this book lies a controversy between those who think that, in Jan Morris's words, "On the whole, with many lapses and exceptions, British government in Hong Kong [was] good government," and those who believe that "the early modern state had to resort to violent and exemplary punishment ... to demonstrate [its] monopoly of authority" (Samson Chan, in an unpublished UK doctoral thesis quoted here). This is not to mention the belief that Britain's laws in Hong Kong were designed primarily to control and repress its Chinese population (a law that Chinese, and only Chinese, had to carry a lamp or a police pass after dark is the center of much discussion here). In this stand-off, Bickley, a Hong Kong poet and academic of long standing, is on the whole on the pro-British side. Her lengthy introduction, however, is a masterly and impartial survey of her subject-matter.
The most readable book on this topic is probably still Austin Coates' ironic Myself a Mandarin (1968), on his experiences as a Hong Kong magistrate in the 1950s. Read together, that book and this new one offer a historical overview of an evolving system -- how British concepts of justice reluctantly adapted themselves to the alien realities of life in an imperial outpost in southern China.
RSS