Watching Over Hong Kong

Watching Over Hong Kong

by Sheilah E. Hamilton

Hong Kong University Press HK$250

There is a tried-and-jested Hong Kong joke that runs like this: if you find a scruffy old man asleep in your office or apartment block lobby anywhere else in the world, you call the security guard. In Hong Kong, he is the security guard.

Such frivolities aside, in a city whose preferred reading is popularly supposed to be spreadsheets, it is invigorating that anyone should take the time and trouble to write about such a specialised subject as private policing covering the century following the founding of the colony - and to do so entertainingly.

Professor Sheilah Hamilton is a forensic scientist and approaches her subject in the manner of her profession: about a third of Watching Over Hong Kong: Private Policing 1841-1941 is taken up by notes, appendices, a bibliography and an index, backing up her thesis and adding a measure of colour to the events she describes.

In the early, freewheeling days of the colony the military provided some sort of security but was unable to prevent the rampant burglary that plagued the newly installed residents. Hence the genesis of Hong Kong's private policing, in the shape of locally employed watchmen, who were often suspected of being in the pay of, or at least colluding with, the criminals they were paid to guard against. Non-Chinese, specifically Indians, were employed by the larger hongs such as Jardines, who were an obvious target for theft given the large amounts of opium stored in their godowns.