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With the promise of marriage, he induced the girl to leave the brothel and live with him, leaving behind her mother's unpaid debt as well as his own unsettled bill.
The brothel-keeper threatened to bring suit for the recovery of her debts. Tong A-chick tried to settle the two accounts with a token payment hoping to delay court proceedings. Meanwhile, he was dismissed from his Government post. This gave the brothel mistress new courage to bring her demands before the court.
The girl was imprisoned as a debtor; but when the case was tried in the Court of Summary Jurisdiction, the magistrate dismissed the claims on the ground that it had not been proper to secure the original debt by a pledge of “a body” for obviously immoral purposes.
With the case decided in favour of A-chick's friend, he took out a summons in the name of the girl against the brothel-keeper for certain property she had kept when the girl had left to live with A-chick. Before the case was heard, A-chick's uncle, who had been a compradore to a former sheriff and was still rendering service to the Government, tried to use his connections to intimidate the brothel-keeper. The girl, however, lost the case.
The publicity connected with this sordid affair did not enhance A-chick's reputation in the community. It seemed better to leave Hongkong to try his fortunes in another place. At this time his uncle was planning to go to California so it was natural for A-chick to join him.
Tong A-chick left Hongkong about the middle of January 1852. The departure had been delayed by the disastrous Lower Bazaar fire at the close of 1851. In the four hundred or so buildings destroyed were most of the provisions, clothing and necessaries accumulated by the emigrants for their voyage to San Francisco, together with their written contracts with the captain and charterers of the ship on which they were to sail.
The loss resulted in a dispute with the captain. An appeal was made to the Rev. S. W. Bonney at Whampoa, where the arrangements were made.