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NOTES AND QUERIES
Incidentally, the furniture was once owned by the wealthy Canton Co-Hong family of Poon, whose fortunes had fallen on bad times. The Chinese government had seized their property for debt and sold it at public auction.
The transfer of the proceedings of the Chinese community from the Kung Soh to the Hospital Hall confirmed the suspicion of portions of the foreign community that the Committee of the Hospital was arrogating to itself too much power and was functioning as an unofficial government for the Chinese community. Even before the Hospital building was ready for occupancy, one of the newspapers reporting on a scheme to recruit Chinese labour for the southern states of the United States, stated that the Board of the Hospital "appear to have constituted themselves the governing body in the colony in all Chinese matters. This we predicted in reference to the Hospital almost from the time it was founded; and on this point there will be much to say at some future date". (Daily Advertiser, 7 Oct. 1871). And indeed there was much more said in the Hong Kong English language press in the ensuing years about these quasi-government functions of the Hospital Committee.
With the rising tide of criticism against the alleged usurpation of government authority by the Committee of the Hospital, the views and practices of the Magistrates changed regarding the propriety of recognizing any judicial power exercised by the leaders of the Chinese community. In a case heard at Magistrate's Court in 1875, a witness said that when the prisoner beat him, he threatened the prisoner that he would go to Tung Wah Hospital and complain about being duped and beaten. To this the Magistrate asked the witness,
why he should go to Tung Wah Hospital to complain, explaining to him that this was a British Colony, and the Tung Wah had no powers. This was a British Colony and the police station was the place to complain to. If he had been badly injured he would understand his going to the Tung Wah for cure, but to go there for the redress of a wrong was preposterous. (Daily Press, Oct. 22, 1875).
It might seem preposterous to a European Magistrate for Chinese to first turn to their own countrymen for justice but to the Chinese it apparently was a most natural procedure.