660
MILITARY (Contd.)
It is difficult to answer this query.
We know (see 10-7-33) that one of the earliest military cemeteries (that of the 55th Regiment) was at the Taipingshan area of the city, on the hillside, and that the first civilian cemetery was at Queen's Road East, where St. Francis Yard is today. This latter place was only used from 1841 to 1845, in which period 55 people were buried there. When the Happy Valley cemeteries were opened in 1845, burials no longer took place in Wanchai, and in 1889 the remains were removed from St. Francis Yard to the new "God's acre." When we come to military cemeteries, however, there is great difficulty in ascertaining their whereabouts, except in such cases as at Stanley - where no building operations have disturbed the graves.
An investigation at Aberdeen reveals no signs of any old European graves, yet there is a current belief that soldiers were at one time buried there. We know that there was a military post at Aberdeen in the first few years of the Colony but later there was a concentration at Stanley.
At Saiwan, too, there was traditionally a small military burial ground, but nowadays the area is covered with Chinese graves, and search fails to disclose any belonging to the troops of H.M. Even in the military section at Happy Valley, most of the inscriptions appear to be commemorative, rather than actual gravestones.
At Stanley, however, it has been possible to trace the regiments which were stationed there from the tombstones that still remain, and the names of nearly all the deceased. Several interesting facts arise, in looking over the Stanley cemetery, which after the passage of so many years it is not easy to explain.
For instance, we have mention of the 75th, 98th, and 20th, and 11th Regiments of Foot, and 18th Royal Irish.
We know that the 95th and 98th were here in the earliest days, also the Royal Irish, while several other units came later.
The 2nd Bn. of the 20th Regiment were here in the Sixties. In the Forties we also had the 55th, and 49th Regiments, and the 59th in the Fifties. I cannot trace the others just yet; it is to be feared that the original inscriptions may have been wrongly "restored." There is also a large plot given over to the wives and children of the military, and the totals at Stanley work out at 89 graves. The cemetery is in two sections, the upper apparently the older, with 60 graves, mostly of children. It is intended to give the inscriptions in full in a following article.
Meanwhile, we can note that the cemetery was in use up to a comparatively late period, for men, women, and children were still being buried at Stanley in the Sixties, the latest inscription being dated 1869. The oldest that can be deciphered is dated 1843. Several, however, are no longer fully decipherable.
It is of interest to find that a Corporal and a Private of the 98th Regiment were killed on May 1, 1844, in an attack by Chinese pirates "in the Bay of Chek Choo," as Stanley was then called.
But we are still left speculating, for in the most intense period of sickness there were hardly two score burials at Stanley and there is an unexplained gap between the Forties and the Sixties, none of the graves being dated between those periods. Where were many scores of others buried? It seems that we shall never know definitely.
Reference was made yesterday to the only remaining military cemetery of the old days which can easily be traced and where the graves have been preserved at Stanley. It is proposed to reproduce all the inscriptions on the gravestones so far as they can be deciphered in this article, for it is as well that the record be made now, in case effects of the weather, or land resumptions, should later remove these memorials of the old days. Apart from