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The other individuals shown in this old photo have been kindly identified for me by local residents, as follows:
Standing, left to right.-Lt.Moseley; Lt.Alfred Woolley (of the P. & O.S.N. Company); John McCallum (of Lane, Crawford, & Co.), and H.J. Holmes (father of Mr.H.K. Holmes, the present Crown Solicitor).
Seated.-Major H.J. Tripp, and Capt. (Dr.) James Stockwell (with cap in hand.)
This photograph was taken in 1880; two or three of the group could not easily be recognised, and I am indebted to Mr. George Lammert, who knew them all, for the identification.
In 1886, it might be noted, we find the following list of officers recorded, most of the above being still in the Corps. Major Tripp, Captain Francis, and Lieutenants McCallum, Moseley, Holmes and Woolley. Capt. J.J. Francis (see 26-10-33) had evidently replaced Dr. Stockwell in the Corps when the latter retired.
The gentlemen were all prominent in their day; and through the courtesy of Mr. Colin Stockwell I have been able to obtain the following notes about his father.
Dr. Stockwell was Medical Health Officer for the Colony's water supplies, and was in charge of the Civil Hospital at one time (between the years 1878-1883). His son was born in the Civil Hospital in 1882. Dr. Stockwell, who died in Queensland in 1907, went home to Scotland in 1883 and bought a practice at Leven, Fifeshire, but he often heard the "call of the East", and in the Nineties ran across an old schoolmate from Loreto who had become Premier of Queensland (Sir Hugh Nelson), and who had him appointed Governor of Stradbroke Island, Queensland. He died at the age of 71 as the result of a chill when getting wet through in a sudden storm in the Bush during a long horseback ride of many miles to visit a patient.
The Doctor had many stories to tell of Hongkong days, and one of his old friends who recollects him well is Mr.H.H. Read of Shanghai, who first came to Hongkong in 1882 and now lives in the Northern port.
Dr. Stockwell is remembered well for his keenness for the Choral Society and other Hongkong social interests, particularly St. Andrews Society, which he helped to found.
His wife, who was with him when he died and now resides in Sydney, is a link with early Hongkong, as she was born here in 1854, being Miss Isabel Clifton, daughter of Capt. S. Clifton, 67th. Foot, the first Superintendent of Police at Shanghai, who took the first time-expired men (100 of them) from the 67th. Foot to Shanghai from Hongkong to form the original police in that Settlement in 1854.
Mrs. Limby (Berthe Clifton) her sister, still in Shanghai, was born in Shanghai, being four years younger than her elder sister.
Captain Clifton's marriage in Hongkong is one of the earliest in the Cathedral register (1842), and thus we go back to the very beginning of the Colony's history.
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