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DAVID SASSOON & CO.
Another concern with its origin dating back to early Hongkong is David Sassoon and Company, Ltd., who actually originated in the pre-Colony days, for they were already well established in Canton in the Forties, soon after Hong Kong became British, and moved over here not very long afterwards. The founder of the firm in India, David Sassoon, was born at Baghdad in 1782, and settled at Bombay about the year 1832, being a son of the leader of the Jewish community in Mesopotamia. Other members of the family became famous in the East as well as in England, where they are at the head of affairs concerning British Jewry, and it is unnecessary to recall the several distinguished men to-day bearing the name of Sassoon.
Opening in Hongkong on the waterfront, in one of the first commercial premises to be built here, David Sassoon and Co. became located on Des Voeux Road in due course, when the Praya (as it then was) came to be so named. They occupied the old premises up to within the last decade, and were among those big firms which claimed foreshore rights at the time the central Praya came to be constructed, in 1890. For a good many years the old house, at 8, Des Voeux Road Central, had been used both as a business place and a family residence, and though reconstructed earlier in the present century, the traces of its former use remained. Some of the old furniture has been preserved, including a desk at which many, no doubt profitable, transactions were concluded in those early days. The present address is 12, Des Voeux Road Central.
In the old chronicles we find the address of the firm given as Pedder's Wharf, as that part of the waterfront was then known. In 1861 the principals of the concern, known then as David Sassoon and Arthur Sassoon. They had already opened a branch at Foochow. Three years later Mr. Arthur Sassoon (one of the founders of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank) was head of the firm, with Messrs. Solomon Sassoon and Solomon Ezekiel as partners.
There is a reference in an old chronicle, in November 1870, to the founder of the China firm, a press report mentioning his return after a trip to Calcutta, and stating that he was "the first Jewish merchant that set his foot at Canton, now fully a quarter of a century ago, in the milk and honey days of the old factories," and mentioning that "in conjunction with his elder brother Abdallah, now a member of the Bombay Legislative Council, he established the now eminent firm of David Sassoon, Sons and Co."
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