The hospital was declared for construction on 26 March 1870 under the "Tung Wah Hospital Incorporation Ordinance". The push for the facility's construction began when the British colony's Registrar General saw an indiscriminate mix of the dead and dying huddled together in the nearby Kwong Fook I-tsz [zh], a small temple built at Tai Ping Shan Street.[2] The large number of deaths were in part due to the arrival of the upcoming Third Pandemic of bubonic plague from China, though it[clarification needed] was not declared an official establishment until 1872.[3]
The hospital was subsidized by the government at a price of HK$45,000 along with HK$15,000 in land grant. The grand opening on 14 February 1872 was considered the grandest ever witnessed in Colonial Hong Kong. A lot of cultural prejudice existed at the time, with Chinese citizens not trusting western medicine and other practices such as surgery. Many of them would rather die than be admitted into a western clinic.[4]
In 1911, the government enacted Ordinance No. 38, known as the "1911 Expansion of Tung Wah Hospital Ordinance", to help deal with the population growth of Kowloon and the New Territories along with Kwong Wah Hospital.[5]
^Wiltshire, Trea (2003) [1987]. Old Hong Kong – Volume One Central, Hong Kong (reduced ed.). Asia books Ltd. p. 74. ISBN962-7283-59-2.
^Tsai Jung-fang (1995). Hong Kong in Chinese History: community and social unrest in the British Colony, 1842-1913. Columbia University Press. ISBN0-231-07933-8.
