Wongnaichung valley; firing matsheds on Crosby's premises in Queen's Road Central; capture of S.S. Thistle (January 13, 1857) by Chinese soldiers disguised as passengers, who murdered eleven Europeans and several Chinese and burned the vessel.'
On the morning of January 15th, 1857, a few hours before the mail carrying to England the foregoing budget of news left the harbour, the foreign community was seized by a general panic, as at every European breakfast table there arose the simultaneous cry of 'poison in the bread.' Some 400 Europeans, partaking that morning of bread supplied by the E-sing bakery, owned by a Heungshan man called Ah-lum, suffered more or less from arsenical poisoning. Every 4 lb. loaf of white bread, subsequently analysed at Woolwich (by F. A. Abel), contained grains ·92 per cent. of white arsenic. Toasted bread contained the smallest proportion (·15 grains per cent.) of poison, yet 4 ounces of it were found to contain 2½ grains of arsenious acid. Brown bread contained about 2½ times and white bread about 6 times the quantity found in the toast. Those who ate least suffered the most. Some, Lady Bowring for one, were delirious for a time; many had their health permanently injured; all received a severe nervous shock by the sudden consciousness of being surrounded by assassins. No immediate death was caused by this poisoning incident but some, as for instance Lady Bowring, who had to return to England and failed to recover, were evidently hurried into the grave by it. Even after the lapse of a year (January 17, 1858) the local papers asserted, with reference to the death of a Mr. S. Drinker and Captain Williams of the S.S. Lily, that their deaths had been medically traced to the arsenic swallowed by them on the great day of poisoning. On that memorable morning the excitement was of course most intense. The medical men of the Colony, whilst personally in agonies through the effects of the poison, were hurrying from house to house, interrupted at every step by frantic summons from all directions. Emetics were in urgent request in every European family. Ah-lum, the baker, who for some weeks previous had been worried by messages from the
