first nights lighted with gas (1864)

hkspace_wl
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first nights lighted with gas (1864)

As reported by the Daily Press, Hong Kong Dispensary was lighted with gas on Dec. 3rd evening. Some other buildings includes Hong Kong Hotel etc.

Not only in Central district as above, part of Queen's Road East in a "Queen's Theatre", the building was lighted with gas, by Dec. 12 (Monday).
Some other coverage in the China Mail [2] tells about its usage, e.g. on Dec. 12 and 15 nights :
   (Dec. 13)
   THE "Queen's" Theatre was opened for the first time last night ...
   The fittings and scenery do the company great credit, the chairs being
   very comfortably arranged, and brilliantly lighted with gas.
   (Dec. 16)
   THERE was a performance given last evening in a new erection called the Queen's
   Theatre. The principal piece selected was "Ingomar," a five-act tragedy by, we believe, Miss Lovell... [3]


So the island residents were living happily ever after, with gas lamps from 1864 ? 
    (as lit with gas by some 500 lamps, in Queen's Road extending uphill to Upper Albert Road ...) [^]

note : these gas lamps were at least two decades before the well known Duddell Street ones started.


(to be continued)
 

sources
1. Hongkong Daily Press, 1864-12-5 & 1864-12-12
2. Overland China Mail, 1864-12-31
3. the Dec. 16 one should be kind of melodrama instead of tragedy though,
    the play adapted by Maria Lovell from a German play; the theatrical company was San Francisco Troupe

[^] update :      
     As the records, the gas was supplied from the plant at West Point / ShekTongTsui then. So more than 10 miles of mains should be quite true.
     The manager of the gas company was addressed as Mr R.C. Witty, even on official notices. Note it is not spelled as Whitty as we read in some later records.
 

Date picture taken
1864
Shows place(s)
Hongkong Dispensary [????-????]
Shows organisation(s)
The Hongkong and China Gas Company Ltd [1862- ]

Comments

(cont'd from above)

Below is a letter to the editor of Hongkong Daily Press in 1865 :

Letter to the Editor, by lamp post (1865), by hkspace_wl

Think even non native speakers could feel the irony or sarcasm. On the face, possibly one person's surname is also punned indirectly.

On the left column of it, we read the editorial says in some less-harsh paragraph :

      Lest it should be supposed that we are speaking without the book, we ask the reader 
   so take a look at Wyndham Street, at the Old Bailey, at Caine Road and at many other 
   crowded thoroughfares, and he will see no signs of a lamp.

      To extinguish the oil lamps before the gas was ready was bad enough, but to make the
   gas to light lonely lanes leading to Government House, whilst those who pay heavily
   for gas are left in the dark is a feat which it was left for Governor Robinson to perform.
      ... ...
   
There had been unlikely a court case for these expressed on newspapers, unlike some cases few years earlier. My guess.

One other narrative of the scenarios was retold in Old Hong Kong. It may help us to know the scene a bit more :

 

     "Dramaticus". - A pen-picture of early Hongkong (1866) is contained in a criticism of the street lighting of those days :

        "We beg to call the attention of the proper authorities to the very unequal distribution of the
         Gas Lamps in different quarters of the town. From the German Club by the Tank, to the head
          of Ice House Lane there is not even one lamp, yet that corner is as dark and dangerous as any 
          in Hongkong. Every one must have noticed the depth of gloom that overhangs at night that  
          portion of the Queen's Road from the Clock Tower to beyond the Ice House. There is only  
         one gas lamp in a distance of at least five hundred yards and that is partially hidden by  
         being between the piers supporting the verandah of one of the houses in Bank Buildings."


sources 
  Hongkong Daily Press, 1865-2-2 p.2
  Old Hong Kong