Old Bailey Street
Old Bailey Street
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Old Bailey Street

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Old Bailey Street

Old Bailey Street is located in Central, Hong Kong. The name is derived from Old Bailey, a street in central London, United Kingdom, where the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales is located.

Old Bailey Street runs downhill from Caine Road in the south to Hollywood Road in the north. Along the way, it has junctions with Chancery Lane (贊善里) and Staunton Street.

Victoria Gaol (later Victoria Prison), the first prison in Hong Kong, was built in 1841. As the population in Hong Kong grew, a larger prison was needed and in 1925 construction began in Stanley. Later that year, a new prison opened as Stanley Prison where those sentenced to more than a year in detention were sent.

Old Bailey Street was built after the completion of the Victoria Gaol. It connected Hollywood Road right to the entrance of the prison. The road used to be called "the long slope" by locals. One possible reason is that after serving their prison term, the inmates emerged from the gate at Old Bailey Street and led new lives, hence "the long slope".

During the early colonisation of Hong Kong, prisoners in Victoria Prison were forced to parade in public, were often beaten with a cane, and their arms locked with a cangue on which their name and crimes-committed were penned. Policemen, often of Indian descent, would walk the prisoners to a plaza in front of the Man Mo Temple where the lawbreakers were scoffed and condemned by the passers-by. After a few hours, the criminal was returned to the Old Bailey Street jail. This form of punishment was abolished after World War I.

The Government Central School for Girls (later named Belilios Public School) was founded in 1890. Located at No. 16 Hollywood Road, which was then on the corner of Old Bailey Street and Hollywood Road, the school aimed to give 'an ordinary middle-class English education' to the daughters of Chinese, European and Indian residents of Hong Kong.

In the afternoon of 15 December 1941, during the Battle of Hong Kong, a stick Japanese bombs hit the junction of Old Bailey Street and Caine Road, the junction of Pottinger Street and Hollywood Road, Wellington Street and the Central Police Station. The bombing was part of a systematic bombardment of the Hong Kong Island's north shore that was launched on that day.

The Nanhua Ribao (南華日報) reported on July 20, 1942, that a handcart had slipped downward along the steep Old Bailey Street the day before, and had bumped into a rickshaw, injuring the puller.

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