PROJECTS AND ENQUIRIES
DAN WATERS
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The main role of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is to organise lectures and visits both within and outside the Territory. We also publish an annual Journal together with other occasional publications and mount infrequent exhibitions. But in addition, the HKBRAS also undertakes various projects. Some of these are carried out by its Volunteers who assist the Government Antiquities and Monuments Office. See JHKBRAS, Volume 40, 2000, page 231.
Your Branch also receives enquiries, often from overseas, requesting assistance or information about Hong Kong history and the like. We normally help the enquirer if we can and treat it as a form of community service.
A typical example was in 1998 when we received a letter from the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia. They had received enquiries about the locations of seven graves thought to be in Hong Kong, 'Could we help?' Yes, we would try. This project has been written up in some detail under the title, “Tracing Graves in Hong Kong: Research Methodology,” by Dan Waters, see JHKBRAS, Volume 38, 1998-1999.
Then again two of our members living in England, Mrs Rosemary Lee and Captain Tony Bromfield, were undertaking research for the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, about a Captain Samuel Plant. He was an authority on navigating the Upper Yangtze. There is an article about the good Captain and his wife in JHKBRAS, Volume 41, 2001.
In 1999, we received an enquiry from Australia from Victoria Brown. She wanted information about her great-grandmother, Miranda Main (née Mann), who was headmistress of Kowloon British School during the first decade of the 20th century. Again we were able to help.
Then we had an enquiry from a relative of Lieutenant Henry Dallas who died in Hong Kong in 1844. Up to World War Two there was a memorial to him in Saint John's Cathedral. 'No,' we were informed, it