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the accuracy of the registration.7
It is consistent with a climate of insufficient funds and a well-established colonial principle of subsidy to voluntary agencies to provide services that fee payment was resisted by government. Mr. May, the Acting Governor, proposed instead that the money should be spent on a maternity charity, viz. the Training School of Chinese Midwives at the newly completed AMMH, which subsequently enrolled the two trainees from the Civil Hospital.
Setting Up: the LMS and the Chinese subscribers.
Dr. Ho Kai is largely credited with the initiative in promoting Western medicine for the Chinese people in Hong Kong, building on the LMS' interest in missionary medicine and funding the Alice Memorial Hospital and the College of Medicine for Chinese. From its inception, the Alice Hospital, by now comprising the Alice Memorial Hospital and the Nethersole Hospital, had been dependent on the wealth and goodwill of the Chinese elite, amongst whom Dr. Ho Kai was a leader. After just six years of operation, the 1893 Annual Report of the Finance Committee noted that subscriptions from the European community were down by $1,000, although the expenses of a growing hospital were higher. At the same time, subscriptions from the Chinese had increased from $1,708 to $3,131 between 1891 and 1892. Indeed, the Report suggested that the example of the Tung Wah should be followed, and representatives of the Chinese guilds be invited to join the hospital finance committee, to increase Chinese participation.
This proposition was not implemented, and in 1908, Dr. Gibson opposed any increase in Chinese membership of the AMMH's Management Committee, because of likely friction and consequent reduction in trust which Chinese people had in the LMS organisation. At the same time he noted that the subscribers gave little to the Alice compared with their donations to Chinese institutions, such as the Tung Wah and District Dispensaries.9 Chinese finance was crucial for the expansion of the hospital; indeed, for the establishment of the maternity hospital proposed in 1901, support from the rich Chinese was essential.
When the Chinese benefactors moved, mobilisation was rapid. To correspondence from Dr. Ho Kai to Dr. Gibson on 3 March, 1902,