Esing Bakery incident

The Esing Bakery incident, also known as the Ah Lum affair, was a food contamination scandal in the early history of British Hong Kong. On 15 January 1857, during the Second Opium War, several hundred European residents were poisoned non-lethally by arsenic, found in bread produced by a Chinese-owned store, the Esing Bakery. The proprietor of the bakery, Cheong Ah-lum, was accused of plotting the poisoning but was acquitted in a trial by jury. Nonetheless, Cheong was successfully sued for damages and was banished from the colony. The true responsibility for the incident and its intention—whether it was an individual act of terrorism, commercial sabotage, a war crime orchestrated by the Qing government, or purely accidental—remain matters of debate.

In Britain, the incident became a political issue during the 1857 general election, helping to mobilise support for the war and the incumbent prime minister, Lord Palmerston. In Hong Kong, it sowed panic and insecurity among the local colonists, highlighting the precariousness of imperial rule in the colony. The incident contributed to growing tensions between Hong Kong's European and Chinese residents, as well as within the European community itself. The scale and potential consequences of the poisoning make it an unprecedented event in the history of the British Empire, the colonists believing at the time that its success could have wiped out their community.

In 1841, in the midst of the First Opium War, Captain Charles Elliot negotiated the cession of Hong Kong by the Qing dynasty of China to the British Empire in the Convention of Chuenpi. The colony's early administrators held high hopes for Hong Kong as a gateway for British influence in China as a whole, which would combine British good government with an influx from China of what were referred to at the time as "intelligent and readily improvable artisans", as well as facilitating the transfer of coolies to the West Indies. However, the colonial government soon found it difficult to govern Hong Kong's rapidly expanding Chinese population, and was also faced with endemic piracy and continued hostility from the Qing government. In 1856, the Governor of Hong Kong, John Bowring, supported by the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, demanded reparations from the Qing government for the seizure of a Hong Kong Chinese-owned ship, which led to the Second Opium War between Britain and China (1856–1860).

At the opening of the war in late 1856, Qing imperial commissioner Ye Mingchen unleashed a campaign of terrorism in Hong Kong by a series of proclamations offering rewards for the deaths of what he called the French and British "rebel barbarians", and ordering Chinese to renounce employment by the "foreign dogs". A committee to organise resistance to the Europeans was established at Xin'an County on the mainland. At the same time, Europeans in Hong Kong became concerned that the turmoil in China caused by the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) was producing a surge of Chinese criminals into the colony. Tensions between Chinese and European residents ran high, and in December 1856 and January 1857 the Hong Kong government enacted emergency legislation, imposing a curfew on Hong Kong Chinese and giving the police sweeping powers to arrest and deport Chinese criminals and to resort to lethal force at night-time. Well-off Chinese residents became increasingly disquieted by the escalating police brutality and the level of regulation of Chinese life.

On 15 January 1857, between 300 and 500 predominantly European residents of the colony—a large proportion of the European population at the time—who had consumed loaves from the Esing Bakery (Chinese: 裕成辦館; Jyutping: jyu6 sing4 baan6 gun2; Cantonese Yale: Yuhsìhng baahngún) fell ill with nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, and dizziness. Later testing concluded that the bread had been adulterated with large amounts of arsenic trioxide. The quantity of arsenic involved was high enough to cause the poison to be vomited out before it could kill its victims. There were no deaths immediately attributable to the poisoning, though three deaths that occurred the following year, including that of the wife of Governor Bowring, would be ascribed to its long-term effects. The colony's doctors, led by Surgeon General Aurelius Harland, dispatched messages across the town advising that the bread was poisoned and containing instructions to induce vomiting and consume raw eggs.

The proprietor of the bakery, Cheong Ah-lum (Chinese: 張霈霖; Jyutping: zoeng1 pui3 lam4; Cantonese Yale: Jēung Puilàhm), left for Macau with his family early in the day. He was immediately suspected of being the perpetrator, and as news of the incident rapidly spread, he was detained there and brought back to Hong Kong the next day. By the end of the day, 52 Chinese men had been rounded up and detained in connection to the incident. Many of the local Europeans, including the Attorney General, Thomas Chisholm Anstey, wished Cheong to be court-martialled—some called for him to be lynched. Governor Bowring insisted that he be tried by jury.

On 19 January, ten of the men were committed to be tried at the Supreme Court after a preliminary examination. This took place on 21 January. The other detainees were taken to Cross Roads police station and confined in a small cell, which became known as the 'Black Hole of Hong Kong' after the Black Hole of Calcutta. Some were deported several days later, while the rest remained in the Black Hole for nearly three weeks.

The trial opened on 2 February. The government had difficulty selecting appropriate charges because there was no precedent in English criminal law for dealing with the attempted murder of a whole community. One of the victims of the poisoning was selected, and Cheong and the nine other defendants were charged with "administering poison with intent to kill and murder James Carroll Dempster, Colonial Surgeon". Attorney General Anstey led the prosecution, William Thomas Bridges and John Day the defence. Chief Justice John Walter Hulme, who had himself been poisoned, presided.