COURDS(1)
243
References have been made in these notes to the old Court House where the Royal Asiatic Society had a meeting room, afterwards used by the Chamber of Commerce on its foundation in 1861, (see 29-6-33).
A brief history of the old Court Houses of the Colony is therefore in order. We find that the Supreme Court has been housed in three different buildings. It was first situated in Wellington Street, being opened on October 1, 1844. In 1848, it was removed to what was then known as Exchange Building, in Queen's Road, on part of the site of the present China Building, and opposite what is now the King's Theatre. The Exchange Building had belonged to Messrs. Dent and Co., and was purchased by the authorities in 1847; it was here that the Chamber of Commerce first blossomed forth, as the Court remained in its second premises until the completion of the present Courts of Justice, which were opened in 1912.
In looking up old records one occasionally comes across some sentence of a court of law which in modern times seems harsh in the extreme. It was little more than a hundred years ago that the law of England sanctioned punishments which are nowadays considered brutally savage, and for comparatively minor offences, such as picking pockets. The old days in Hongkong saw some of these examples of severe punishment, and flogging now only sanctioned when a man is certified medically fit and in special cases (such as snatching with accompanying violence) was meted out freely enough in the first few years of the Colony's existence. In mitigation of this seeming harshness we must take into account the conditions at the time, the desperate type of criminal met with, and the need for severe sentences to impress evildoers with the desirability of keeping within the law. There is one instance, however, when the general opinion appears to have been that the law went too far, and I summarize the affair from the old record. It is of topical interest, dealing with the problem of mendicants still with us, and still a problem.
In October of 1847, the Police were instructed to launch one of their periodical campaigns against the destitutes of the Colony. One Saturday the constables set out and rounded up about a dozen paupers, as the chronicle names them. That same afternoon these poor people were flogged at West Point, and then taken across the harbour and landed on what was then Chinese territory. The protests this action aroused were based on the fact that the victims of Police zeal were some of them well-known mendicants, nearly all of them decrepit, mostly diseased and none of them half as much a menace as the numerous low-class rogues who had come over to the island for criminal purposes.
That flogging was considered necessary in dealing even with minor offences is borne out by the provisions of the Police Court Ordinance passed in 1847, which authorised corporal punishment for various crimes, up to the extent of as many as sixty strokes of a rattan. The practice of deporting undesirables was therein provided for.
A photograph is published to-day which should be of considerable interest to readers. It was taken in 1911, and