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Frederik Reichmann had left Germany in 1897 at the age of sixteen. For some time he was in London where he rose to the position of chief inspector of the popular restaurants of Lyons and Co. He then spent a short time in Australia where he married the daughter of Mr. A.B. Crew, a former head of the Land Record Office in Sydney. Mr. Crew wished to set up his new son-in-law in business in Hong Kong. As a German, Mr. Reichmann was eager to take over an establishment that had most of the German trade.
There are a number of difficulties presented in the material available on the background and identity of Mrs. Uschmann. In the correspondence concerning German women and children interned in 1914 it was stated that Miss Petersen is the daughter of Mrs. Uschmann and that she had a sister in the Colony that might be willing to support her. The sister was probably Mrs Arthur G. Seidel. On a list of the internees the names of Mrs. Uschmann, Mrs Seidel and Miss Petersen follow each other. The next clue for establishing relationships is the obituary of Mrs. John Sanderson Smith, who died on 9 March 1936, aged forty-one. She was born in Hong Kong and had been the proprietress of the Station Hotel which had been closed in March 1930. She was survived by her husband, J.S. Smith of the firm of Lubing and Smith, two sisters in Shanghai, a brother in London and a brother-in-law A.C Seidel. Wreaths were sent by "Sister Maggie, Harry and family, Sister Martha, Arthur and family, Sister Lizzie, Franz and family" (CM 9 May 1936, emphasis supplied). This information can be related to the children of Christian Friedrich William Petersen and his wife Mary recorded in the baptismal register of the London Missionary Society's Chinese congregation. Maggie Mary born on 15 October 1887, Martha Louise born on 5 January 1889 and Henry William born on 4 January 1892. These were presumably the brother and sisters of Mrs. Sanderson Smith who was born in 1895 but not recorded as baptised in the church records. If these conclusions are correct it would identify her mother, Mrs. Uschmann, as the wife of Mr. Petersen, the long-time proprietor of the German Tavern. Mary was his second wife. He died in 1896 aged sixty-four leaving his wife to administer his estate which was valued at $16,000. Was Mary Petersen a Chinese? Children of Caucasian parents were not baptised in Chinese congregations, except under the most unusual circumstances. On the other hand, if she were Chinese, why would she have been interned as a German alien in 1914? The statement in 1911 that Mrs. Uschmann had been connected with the German trade some twenty or twenty-five years suggests that she...