Women, Crime and the Courts: Hong Kong 1841-1941, a new book by Patricia O’Sullivan, paints a picture of how women were treated in the eyes of the law in the first century of Hong Kong’s existence. That many of the crimes passed through Macau will come as no surprise. The big discovery is the significant number of Portuguese women who worked in the neighbouring region’s prison system
To write the history of Hong Kong and Macau and so many other places in the feminine is a difficult task: the world has long been written in the masculine. Author Patricia O’Sullivan, who has been researching Hong Kong’s archives for the past few years, started from the idea that the courts and the way the law treated women could be a gateway into that world – and she was right. Women, Crime and the Courts: Hong Kong 1841-1941 collects many anecdotes and dramas, from murders to robberies and bombs, as well as stories that pass through Macau and its people, not always in the most obvious ways.
Life in prison
In Hong Kong’s early years, the prison set up for women was staffed mostly by men, but soon the situation changed with various alcohol problems, abuse, and escapes. In 1850, the Hong Kong government hired the first woman to work in a prison, however her name is not known. The second woman started work in 1855, and her name was Mary Goodnings, the wife of a jailer. She remarried twice, both times to successor of her previous jailer husband, which speaks to the vulnerability of her position.
Then comes the most curious record of all: “From 1858 to 1866, the six names that appear suggest that the post holders were Portuguese,” Patricia O’Sullivan notes, none of whom seem related to or married to any of the Portuguese guards who also worked in Hong Kong prisons. “These women, probably born in Macau, may well have spoken Cantonese,” had their own rooms and were in charge of a small number of inmates. More specifically, we read that a report by Superintendent Francis Douglas, sent to the Colonial Office, mentions a Mrs. E. F. Remedios who “spoke Cantonese well and performed her duties to his satisfaction.”
Another Portuguese associated with these duties, in 1869, is identified as Mrs Payne, “the Portuguese wife of Chain-gang Guard Payne and had the advantage of speaking Cantonese”. In 1871 Mrs Payne reached the position of “1st class guard”. In the early 1880s, it was Guilhermina Assis’ turn to have a prominent position among the female penitentiary staff, followed by the 26-year-old Joanna Maria Raptis, who served from the 1890s until 1905. The researcher and author of the book identifies a “pattern for the employment of predominantly Portuguese women that only changed when the prison moved to Lai Chi Kok in 1932.”
Traces of Macau
Since the foundations of the British colony, labour coming from Macau played an significant role. The author begins by highlighting the skilled cadres and expertise that the families coming from Macau brought to the new British possession. These were “old Portuguese families from Macau” who offered “commercial, clerical and linguistic skills” to Hong Kong. The importance of the Portuguese and Macanese community at the dawn of Hong Kong is well known. “With a long history of trade in the region, Macau was a rich source of literate men, used to working in more than one language and quick to acquire a working knowledge of English.”
O’Sullivan recalls that Macau was the most important hub of the Catholic church in the region, having established the first western-style university in Asia in the 16th century, St. Paul’s College. With good schools and a solid education, men arriving in Hong Kong from Macau easily found work in trading companies, insurance agencies, banks, and shipping companies. Until the solid establishment of Hong Kong, only the men went to Hong Kong to work, leaving their families behind to live in the more pleasant Macau. But, says the author, “within a few years the Portuguese/Macanese community in Hong Kong was flourishing, although, for at least a century families kept close ties with their homes in Macau.”
The church and the reverse side
The spirit, too, received nourishment from the City of the Holy Name of God. The book briefly tells the story of a priest, named Joseph, who arrived in Hong Kong from the Portuguese enclave to establish the first Catholic church in 1842 in the area that is now Wellington Street. The first masses were well attended by Irish soldiers and the Portuguese community, and soon the little church became too small for the faithful. In 1947 the construction of St. John’s Cathedral began, at the same time as the Catholic missions opened small schools and hospitals, many of which perished soon after.
There was, however, the other side of the city, known from the beginning as a hotbed of brothels and prostitution, with Wanchai becoming early on a variant of what it is today. Early Hong Kong is filled with stories of young women who suffered at the hands of the small-time smugglers who were then organizing themselves. Some of these narratives told by the author pass through Macau. Such was the fate of Chan Tung-tsoi, a 16-year-old girl kidnapped by a group of men in Guangzhou, taken to Hong Kong, and then to Macau, where she was bought by a Chinese man from California, and then taken back to Hong Kong again. From there, Chan was to have proceeded to Singapore with two women, along with another young girl, but the luck and decency of her former employer in Guangzhou saved her from such a fate. The two Hong Kong women were subsequently taken to court and convicted.
Midwifery was another profession in demand in the new British colony, not always with the best results. There were many deaths during childbirth, both of mothers and children, and not all of them reached the ears of the law. Interestingly, the first case on record involved an old Portuguese midwife and, probably, a Macanese or Portuguese mother. The pregnant woman, says O’Sullivan, was named Leocardia (or Lavidia) Francisca da Cruz Roza, who was married in Hong Kong to a clerk, but already quite ill by the time of her labour. The work ended up in the hands of Clara Cordeiro, an 80-year-old woman from Macau with no professional training in the field. The young woman ended up dying and Clara Cordeiro was charged with the crime and spent at least a week in prison awaiting trial. The records consulted by the author offer no additional information about Cordeiro’s fate, but O’Sullivan believes she was exonerated due to lack of evidence.
The book also gives other telegraphic clues to the history of the Portuguese in Hong Kong. Leonardo d’Almada e Castro Jr, for example, is remembered as the first Portuguese barrister registered in Macau. But this is ultimately a book about women and their fate, revealing almost inadvertently a bit of the lives of Portuguese women who passed through Hong Kong in the 19th century and at the dawn of the 20th century.
Women, Crime and the Courts: Hong Kong 1841-1941
by Patricia O’Sullivan
Blacksmith Books