“An honour... rarely bestowed on a European.”
Like thousands of people from Southern China, Charles Hodges arrived in Victoria soon after gold was discovered and he initially attempted to earn a living by digging gold near Castlemaine. He learned Chinese on the goldfields where, according to his obituary, he was tutored by a Hong Kong Chinese servant.
By the late 19th century, Charles was a familiar figure in the Melbourne Supreme Court; the most famous interpreter in Victoria if not Australia. Hodge’s linguistic skills and court work earned him much respect. His racial designation as 'European' saw settlers invest greater trust in him than other contemporary, skilled interpreters of Chinese heritage, including William Ah Kitt, Henry Lee Young, and James Appoo.
In working as a court interpreter, Hodges regularly circulated between urban and surburbanising spaces, and occasionally travelled through the countryside to translate in regional courts. Unlike the England-born ‘Indian Interpreter’ Gilbert Smith, who lived in the center of an emerging South Asian community in inner-city Fitzroy, Hodges chose to live away from the Chinese Quarter and from the hustle of inner Melbourne.
Charles often stood beside the witness stand. In November 1893, for instance, a European, James Clarke, was on trial for larceny, having been accused of breaking into and stealing a hammer from the factory of Chinese cabinet makers Ah Him and Ah Foot, where foot polisher Ah Woo also lived. Charles translated Ah Foot’s testimony that: ‘At about 3.30 am I heard … the accused, James Clark coming up stairs ... I caught hold of him.’ James was found guilty and sentenced to four months hard labour. Hen Shing and Ah Foot’s translated testimonies illustrate how court interpreters both facilitated the subjection of Chinese Melburnians to colonial law, and also assisted them to make use of the legal system.
In 1887, a delegation of Chinese Commissioners visited Melbourne, having heard about the discriminatory treatment of Chinese subjects in the Australian colonies. On their tour the commissioners met with Charles and with Chinese leaders including merchant Lowe Kong Meng, missionary Cheong Cheok Hong and solicitor Louis Ah Mouy, who were political allies. See John Young's 1866 installation.
During this trip, the Chinese Imperial Government awarded Hodges the Honour of Mandarin of the Crystal Button, one ‘rarely bestowed on a European’, which placed Hodges on the fifth rung of the Imperial silken ladder. The identity of the man standing by Hodges is not known, but he was possibly Hodges’s servant.
Charles’s winter and summer mandarin robes are currently on display at the Golden Dragon Museum, Bendigo.