The Honourable Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), MA, LLD, Founder of Hong Kong Government Education and Head of the Permanent Hong Kong Civil Service, was also a Hong Kong Police Magistrate. His work in education was greatly admired. His work on the bench was also frequently approved by his contemporaries and this gives an understanding of how some English-speaking people in colonial Hong Kong thought in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Education was one means for colonial administrators to provide future adult citizens with an understanding of what they expected of them. But most of those who attended school in nineteenth century Hong Kong did not attend colonial, but traditional confucian schools; and most residents among this highly transient population had little formal education of any kind. The Police Magistrate’s court was another place where some might learn what was and was not accepted, after some brush with the law. The newspaper reports of Stewart’s court cases give a unique picture of colonial society. They show sailors, soldiers, policemen, teachers, clergymen and priests, wives and husbands, parents and children, servants and scamps, prostitutes and their clients, kidnappers, traffickers in human beings, children and students, gamblers and informers. They give an image of urban and country life and life at sea. The cases reveal the rough edges of the interface between local and western cultures, as well as within the various cultural groups in multi-cultural Hong Kong. But, particularly through the demeanour of magistrate Frederick Stewart himself, they also show sincere attempts to live in a neighbourly manner, to respect and learn from others, and to work hard to create an improved society; a society where all might live safe and fulfilling lives, whether cocooned within their mother culture, or mingling and merging within the other various groups forming Hong Kong society.
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