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NOTES AND QUERIES
not built a palace, pays the rent of one for his own accommodation out of the public purse." The Government accounts for the period reveal that the rent was paid to Johnston for its hire by Government. But it is quite clear from Davis's letter to Stanley that, in August 1844, he could only have been living in Johnston's House if it were then known as the 'Record Office.' That is not beyond possibility for, if the early buildings on the site in the present Botanical Gardens were known as the 'Record Office' when Johnston lived there, his later residence may have attracted the same name to distinguish it from 'Government House.' But that conclusion cannot disturb the main argument.
As a postscript, it is worth commenting on the suggestion that Sir Samuel Bonham, third Governor, lived at Spring Gardens (Spring Garden Lane in the present Wanchai). Sayer quotes a reference from Robert Fortune's Tea Districts of China (1852) and comments that it is the first and only evidence that a Governor of Hong Kong lived at Spring Gardens. Sayer should have read his Friend of China where he would have discovered advertised, after Bonham's departure from Hong Kong, the sale of a house, doubtless one of those depicted on Murdoch Bruce's sketch of Spring Gardens, which was stated to have been lately in the occupation of Bonham. Fortune was right; or, as Sayer would have put it, he was a veracious witness,12
Hong Kong, 1968,
DAFYDD EMRYS Evans
NOTES
1G. R. Sayer, Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age, 1937, Oxford University Press.
2ibid, p. 211.
3Johnston to Pottinger, 12 November 1841; CO129/10, f. 51 (Colonial Office Records).
4c.g. Pottinger to General Burrell, 7 March 1842; CO129/10, f. 114.
5Pottinger to Johnston, 26 May 1842; CO129/10, f. 204.
6Davis to Lord Stanley, 16 August 1844; CO129/7, f. 20.
7Friend of China, Overland Summary, 23 December 1843.
8Woosnam to Gordon, 18 April 1843; CO129/10, f. 360.
9Gordon to Pottinger, 10 February 1844; CO129/5, f. 141.
10Pottinger to Johnston, 21 October 1843; CO129/10, f. 522.
11Friend of China, 18 April 1846.
12See also Friend of China, 26 December 1849. The house was erected by Messrs. Blenkin, Rawson & Co. on Marine Lot 42 and rented to Government for £500 p.a.
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