Sir William Robinson (1836–1912) was a British colonial official who became the 11th Governor of Hong Kong on 10 December 1891. Born in Wetherden, Suffolk, he had previously governed the Bahamas, Barbados and the Windward Islands and Trinidad, and from 1889 to 1891 served as the first Governor of Trinidad and Tobago. His gravest trial was the plague that arrived from Canton in May 1894: it spread rapidly through densely packed Chinese districts such as Taipingshan, killing more than 2,500 people that year. On 10 May he declared Hong Kong an infected port and convened the Sanitary Board; the affected area was placed under the board, with house-to-house inspections, compulsory isolation of patients and demolition of buildings. The measures provoked strong resistance from Chinese residents and merchants, and Robinson at one point allowed patients and bodies to be sent to Guangzhou and publicly blamed the Chinese for not co-operating, deepening the divide between the communities. The plague troubled Hong Kong for nearly three decades and forced the government to confront overcrowding, drainage and sewage. In 1892 he presided over the first graduation of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese and personally presented the prize to Sun Yat-sen, its top graduate; in 1895 Sun set up the Revive China Society in Hong Kong before being expelled from the colony for five years in March 1896. In May 1896 Robinson held the only officially organised referendum in Hong Kong's history, on the composition of the Sanitary Board, and in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, the curfew that had run since 1842 finally ended. He left office on 1 February 1898, retired to Britain and died in London on 1 December 1912. Robinson Road in Hong Kong is in fact named after the fifth governor, Hercules Robinson, and not after him.
Robinson's handling of the 1894 plague made public health a central question of Hong Kong governance for the first time; the inspection, isolation and demolition measures of the epidemic years long outlasted his term and pushed the government to tackle drainage and overcrowding, while his heavy-handed approach deepened the gulf between the Chinese community and the colonial administration.
Achievements
- 1891 · Became the 11th Governor of Hong Kong on 10 December.
- 1894 · Declared Hong Kong an infected port and convened the Sanitary Board during the plague outbreak.
- 1896 · Held the only officially organised referendum in Hong Kong's history, on the composition of the Sanitary Board.
- 1898 · Left office on 1 February at the end of his term.