POISONING Bread
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The reference to Lane, Crawford's bakery supplying bread at a time there was a poisoning threat, in Saturday's article (24-6-33) is worth of amplification. It was in 1857 that a wholesale attempt was made to poison the European residents of Hong Kong, on partaking in the morning of bread supplied by the E-Sing Bakery, owned by a Chinese named Cheong Ah Lum, found that they had been poisoned, the bread containing arsenic, fortunately not in sufficient quantity to prove fatal. Many people, however, were extremely ill, and Lady Bowering, wife of the Governor of the time was so bad as to become delirious. There were many exceedingly suspicious and yet peculiar factors connected with this incident, with the result that no-one was actually punished for the affair.
It appears that Ah Lum could not have been entirely innocent, for a strange thing was that he left that same morning for Macao with his wife and children, after settling outstanding accounts, but it is alleged that the family also found themselves poisoned after eating bread from his bakery. Ah Lum was returning to Hong Kong voluntarily when he was arrested at Macao, and more than fifty Chinese employed at the bakery were arrested as well and detained for enquiries. In the end, criminal proceedings were brought against Ah Lum and nine of his workmen, but the Sessions jury found insufficient evidence, and all the accused were acquitted. They were all re-arrested on the grounds of being characters, but the workmen were subsequently released, and Ah Lum was imprisoned until July, when the Secretary of State to whom the matter had been referred, ordered his release, under terms which virtually amounted to banishment from the Colony for five years. Thus the actual prime mover in the plot was never brought to book.
It was under these circumstances that Lane, Crawford's founded seven years previously, came to the relief of the Europeans by providing their bread supply.
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