Fatal cells

The cells in use in Hong Kong’s prison in 1856 were obviously hell holes.

An historian wrote:

“The long tale of Police and Prison misgovernment again came under public notice consequent upon the verdict of a Coroner’s Jury at an incident recently held. Speaking of the cells under the Police Station, Dr Dempster, the Colonial Surgeon, in his evidence at the inquest, said:

‘It is a filthy, disgusting place, badly ventilated, and altogether unfit for occupation by human beings. I was never in the cells but once to see a Policeman under delirium tremens; and so horrified was I with the dirty stinking hole, that I took it on myself to order the man out of confinement at once. It is a sink of iniquity. A man in a weak state of healthy kept in such a place twenty-four hours would receive irremediable injury to his whole system.’

“According to the evidence, the deceased had been kept in one of these cells for four nights and three days! And the following verdict of the Jury was no less startling:

“The deceased died from the effects of disease contracted prior to his arrest – death being accelerated by severe treatment at the hands of the Police, not only in his being dragged from his bed at midnight, when so sick he could hardly walk, but in being thrown into a cell described by the Colonial Surgeon as unfit for occupation by any human being, and further accelerated by the want of attention during his confinement in Gaol; and the Jury recommend that the Colonial Surgeon’s representation regarding the cells at the Police Station be brought to the especial notice of His Excellency the Governor.”

The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, by James William Norton-Kyshe. 1898. Republished, Vetch and Lee, Hong Kong, 1971.

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