The following facts may be mentioned as indicative of the progress made by the Colony during this period, viz. the formation, at the instance of Mr. W. Gaskell, of a local Law Society (October 28, 1854); the organisation of a volunteer fire brigade (January 23) and a Chinese fire-brigade (March 7, 1856); the improved lighting of the town, including now also Praya East and Wantsai, 100 oil lamps being added (October 1, 1856) to the previously existing 250 oil lamps, and the lighting rate providing for the whole expenditure (Ordinance 11 of 1856); the establishment at Pokfulam of a number of villas for use as sanatoriums and of farms laid out to grow ginger and coffee (June, 1856); the establishment by Mr. Douglas Lapraik and Captain J. Lamont of new docks at Aberdeen (June, 1857).
The measure of turmoil which the Colony underwent, during this period, through warfare without and within, was added to by accidental calamities. Even before the emissaries of Cantonese Mandarins invaded Hongkong as patriotic incendiaries, some serious conflagrations took place in the central part of the town (February 16, 1855), in Taipingshan (January 27, 1856) and at the western market (February 23, 1856). A harmless shock of earthquake was felt in Hongkong (September 28, 1854), heavy rains did a great amount of damage to drains, roads and Chinese houses (June 22, 1855), and a typhoon passed very near to the Colony (September, 1855) causing much injury to the shipping and the piers, besides burying a number of houses at Queen's Road West by a land-slip, the immediate consequence of the heavy rain which accompanied this typhoon.
The obituary of this period includes, among others, the names of Mrs. Irwin (July 21, 1857), Colonel Lugard (December 1, 1857), Dr. W. A. Harland (September 12, 1858), and Acting Attorney General J. Day (September 21, 1858). Since the death of J. R. Morrison (in 1843), no event in Hongkong was mourned so generally and so deeply as the death of Dr. Harland, who since 1844 had acted as Resident Surgeon at Seamen's Hospital and latterly as Colonial Surgeon, and died of fever contracted while charitably attending on the Chinese poor.
