forgotten-souls-a-social-history-of-the-hong-kong

The belief in the early separation of children from their parents for
education back in England still held firm. Otherwise it was thought youngsters
would mature too early in the tropical climate, be physically weakened and
infected by (as the Westerners saw it) the laxer moral standards of the East.
A poem entitled A Plea for European Schools in Hong Kong portrays a
combination of the Western view of Chinese morality and its unquestioning
assumption of its own moral superiority.
But East is East and West is West;
Can we eradicate The habits of a nation, Or their morals elevate?
His ways are not our ways; though they Be passing good for him,
We grieve to see our children learn
His code of morals grim.28
Major Henry Knollys sternly advised:
English mothers, do not bring out your children, whatever their age, to
Hong Kong except under dire necessity. They will not drop off suddenly but
they will inevitably droop and pine and drift into weakly health which not
improbably may permanently affect them.29
This kind of outlook led to a ��degenerate�� status attaching itself to Europeans who
had been allowed to remain in Hong Kong as children. Major Knollys reflected
this when he wrote:
As to Hong Kong women, born and bred there, the most charitable criticism is that their attractions are on a par with their scanty numbers and that those with whom an English gentleman would care to exchange two words of
conversation are rara nantes in gurgite vasto [rare fish in the vast ocean].30
At the lowest end of the social scale, European prostitutes had now come to stay, another sign of Hong Kong��s growing wealth. In 1883, the Hong Kong Telegraph reported a case of ��two fair but contentious belles whose dazzling display of beauty illuminated that dingy room where justice is dispensed at times in such eccentric fashion�� by yet another of their frequent visits in front of the magistrates. They were said to ��reside in that choice region of our city known as Cochrane Street��. 31 These women seem even to have had some kind of social recognition. John Stuart Thomson for example reported that ��the denizens of Lyndhurst Street were permitted to watch the races from a remote corner of the stands��.
Three sad deaths in the later part of the century were caused by entanglements with European prostitutes. The grave of Franciska Berger [32/3/21], a native of Bremen, lies high up on a narrow ledge one grave away from her lover, a river pilot from Hanover, T.W. Drewes [32/3/19]. On 24 October 1883, having visited her earlier in the day, Drewes came back with a gun and shot Franciska in the neck and then turned the gun on himself. Franciska first came to notice in January 1869 when she was sued by a Singapore tavern keeper for $200. She was described in court as ��the fair actor girl�� and was said to have been touring with a San Francisco troupe. She had run away from Singapore leaving her debts unpaid including money owed to the butter man and the milk man. She found a protector in Hong Kong, Charlie Dermer, the barman from the Stag Hotel, who agreed to underwrite her debts. At the time of her murder, Francisca was living in Gage Street with Kitty Waters and Sally Clarke, the madam of the establishment.
According to the testimony of the two girls, before the shooting Sally had been playing the piano and Franciska singing. There had been sandwiches and beer but no drunkenness. No further explanation was forthcoming. Franciska, who is the only known prostitute in the Hong Kong Cemetery, was buried by the Basel missionary, Rudolph Lechler.
In a similar case, a lonely young Armenian from Isphahan, Apcar Gabriel Apcar [23/12/1], took under his protection a girl called Eva Saunders. Apcar was
a stockbroker and clerk working for the family firm. The unfortunate young man had lost money in the stock market crash of 1889 and jealousy over his relationship drove him deeper into depression. He shot himself in the head in September 1890.
Afterwards Eva claimed that she had come to Hong Kong to make money and not to seek a relationship. She said at the inquest that she had taken Apcar��s money for the rent of her rooms in Lyndhurst Terrace, but paid her own household expenses
and did not feel it necessary to give Apcar exclusive rights. When the official receiver tried to sell the furniture in Eva��s flat, she instructed a firm of solicitors to
argue that the furniture belonged to her and won her case.32
Hong Kong, a Hub in the Far East
Hong Kong continued to tempt a number of enterprising and respected businessmen, with wide-ranging experiences of trading in the Far East, to settle and do business there. An example of this can be seen in a brief account of two distinguished Armenians who were both unlucky enough to die soon after arriving. Peter Aviet Seth [5/3/10] was one of the oldest foreign residents in Singapore of the Armenian Community having arrived in 1828 aged fifteen. He had spent three years from 1833 trading in Borneo especially with the Hill Dyaks. He attempted to start a new Armenian colony in Melbourne, Australia and after it failed took up auctioneering in Singapore, while continuing to trade with China, Java, Macau, Sidney and Melbourne. After the death of his wife, Seth lived with Galstaun Edgar [5/2/17] and worked in Edgar and Co. He left Singapore with Edgar in mid-1886 for Hong Kong, but died in the same year. 33 Members of the Edgar family had run successful trading enterprises in Singapore for over a hundred years. After furthering his education in Calcutta, Galstaun Edgar
travelled to Batavia and then Surabaya where he founded the family firm. In 1886,
the family sold up and travelled to Hong Kong where they hoped to expand their business interests, but in six months Gaulston was dead from a carbuncle that turned malignant. A plaque was put up to his memory in St. Gregory��s Church in Singapore. It reads in Armenian:
To the memory of Gaulston Edgar, a benevolent merchant, in recognition of his kindly enviable love for work and honest faithfulness, generosity to the needy and many laudable acts throughout his whole life until his tragic untimely death. He was a faithful husband, compassionate father and true
friend to everyone. Born in New Julfa, Died in Hong Kong 30th January 1887
at the age of 45.34
The amount of traffic in and out of Hong Kong was increasing and it was inevitable that some of those visiting or passing through should die in the city. For example, James Twinem [5/3/11], a commissioner of customs in Kiung Chow, died at sea on the way to Hong Kong in 1886.
The Scot, Joseph Hogg [5/3/42], master mariner and latterly surveyor at
Manila, came from the Philippines to die in Hong Kong in 1899. But of all these
visitors, the most colourful was Captain Samuel Cornell Plant [12A/5/15], and it would be wrong to leave these years without mentioning the headstone of the
first man to command a merchant steamer plying the rapids of the Upper Yangtze
River. Plant died of pneumonia in February
1921 on the boat bringing him to Hong
Kong and is buried in the Cemetery with his wife, Alice Plant, who followed her husband to the grave just three days later.
Born in Framlingham, Suffolk in 1881, Plant
followed his father into the merchant navy. At the age of fourteen, he went to sea in the iron ship, SS Reigate, commanded by his father. After working his way up the ladder
of promotion, in 1891, he was offered the
command of the steamer, Shushan by the Tigris and Euphrates Shipping Company. Plant took the ship to southwest Iran where he was asked to extend the current service to the upper reaches of the Karun River above the rapids where no maps of the narrow, winding, fast-flowing waterway existed.

In 1896, after successfully taming that river and starting a regular passenger
and freight service, Plant caught typhoid fever and had to return to England to recuperate.
There he met Archibald Little at the Oriental Club which resulted in him being offered command of the Pioneer. Little was having this steam ship built at Glasgow in the hope that it could conquer the rapids, whirlpools and huge seasonal fluctuations in the depths of the water along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. In this way, Samuel Plant and his wife Alice came to China in
1899 and remained on the Upper Yangtze River for the rest of their lives. Plant took the Pioneer up the river and in June 1900 succeeded in his first attempt to conquer the Three Gorges. The mission was successfully accomplished in seventy-three hours steaming over seven days. The rumblings from the Boxer Uprising led to the Pioneer being commandeered by the consulate to evacuate expatriates from trouble spots. Plant and his wife stayed on. He traded up and down the river between Yichang and Chongqing in a junk until he was asked to take command of a pair of purpose-built steamers for the Chinese-owned Szechwan Navigation
Company. Then in 1910, Plant accepted the post of senior inspector, Upper Yangtze, in the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, finally retiring in 1919 with a
Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs medal for outstanding service. The Chinese government built him a small bungalow on a promontory overlooking the mouth of the Xiling Gorge and the Xin Tan Rapids. Steamers approaching this stretch of the river would salute Plant by sounding their whistles and he would reply by waving his hat or handkerchief. After his death the British consulate in Chunking
raised a memorial where the Dragon Horse Stream flows into the Yangtze at Xin
Tan village. The thirty-foot obelisk was constructed of pink granite on a brown
sand stone base. With Alice constantly by his side, Plant had demonstrated that
the mighty Yangtze River could be tamed and navigated by steamers if the men involved had the right combination of skill, patience and common sense.
The Effects of the First World War
The First World War impinged but little on life in Hong Kong. It did spell an
end to the years of German prosperity in the colony as German assets were seized and Germans incarcerated as prisoners of war. One such prisoner was Ernst Schelle [16Ci/3/1] who died in March 1919 and whose small granite headstone
proclaims the fact. After the war there may have been a slight slackening of the tight rank and status rules that had bound Hong Kong for so long. For instance in the matter of church seating in St. John��s Cathedral, there was a feeling that such clearly delineated social distinctions at church services did not accord with postwar
feelings, after so many had shared in the same sufferings and hardships brought on by the war. In 1918, it was decided that there should be free seating at Evensong
and at Matins. Once the bell had stopped tolling at the main Sunday service, anyone could sit in the seats left vacant by absent seat-holders. The abolition of seat
holding came about ten years later in 1928. But the old behaviours and shibboleths
still kept their grip on the minds of expatriates, showing the staying power of social attitudes and patterns of behaviour in a small, distant colony like Hong Kong.
Somerset Maugham, who travelled to Hong Kong and China in the 1920s,
wrote a series of sketches full of sharp observation of the life-styles, manners and attitudes of the expatriate community. He described a typically splendid, opulent dinner such as still graced the tables of the businessmen:
In the middle of the snowy damask cloth was a centrepiece of yellow silk �K and on this a massive epergne. Tall silver vases in which were large chrysanthemums made possible to catch only glimpses of the persons opposite you, and tall silver candlesticks reared their proud heads two by two down the length of the table. Each course was served with its appropriate
wine, sherry with the soup and hock with the fish.
Even the conversation showed little difference from that of past years:
They talked of racing and golf and shooting. They would have thought it bad form to touch upon the abstract and there were no politics for them to discuss. China bored them all, they did not want to speak of that; they only knew just so much about it as was necessary to their business, and they looked with distrust upon any man who studied the Chinese language �K it was well known that all those fellows who went in for Chinese grew queer in the head.35
In another of Maugham��s vignettes, a British socialist named Henderson lauded democracy on the one hand and boasted of his Fabian background, while on the other hand swearing at and even kicking his rickshaw puller.36 It would take another world war and the upheavals it engendered to bring an end to such entrenched attitudes as those that appear to have prevailed at the treaty ports on the China Coast.
Chapter 21 The Disasters of These Years
Three disasters, plague, typhoon and fire, shattered the peace of Hong Kong society during these years and added to the number of graves in the Hong Kong
Cemetery. The typhoon of 1906 was one of the fiercest manifestations of the pure
force of nature that Hong Kong had yet endured. And it had endured many.
The Plague
The plague, or black death as it was called in medieval Europe, arrived in
Hong Kong from Canton in 1894. It raged for the three summer months,
killing at least 2,500 people and driving out 100,000 others, who fled in terror, spreading the infection wherever they went. The disease started with a high fever followed by headaches, stupor and glandular swellings in the arm-pit or groin, and usually ended in coma and death within forty-eight hours. Hong Kong��s Chinatown provided the perfect breeding ground. The squalid slum of tangled, overcrowded alleys in Tai Ping Shan and Sai Ying Pun was seldom penetrated
by wary government officials. Human and animal filth and garbage lay in heaps
everywhere clogging the inadequate open drains. The unsanitary conditions, for so long the despair of the colonial surgeons, had bred an army of rats who grew fat on uncollected waste. Once the rats were infected there was little the authorities could do to stop them passing on the disease to the crowded inmates of the poorly constructed houses.
By 23 May 1894 nearly four hundred plague cases had been found and on
that day the army was called in. The Chinese had little faith in foreign doctors
or Western medicine and strongly resisted anti-plague measures. They did not
want to report cases and have their loved ones taken away to isolation wards on the Hygeia, the ship moored out to sea, or to the glass factory in Kennedy Town, hastily converted into a hospital, never to see them again.

21.1. Newly built Kennedy Town glass factory used as a makeshift hospital during the outbreak of the plague, 1893. (By courtesy of Dennis G. Crow.)
Infected bodies were whisked out of the temporary hospitals to be buried en masse in anonymous lime pits, thus denying the dead the proper funeral rites and the comforts of the nether world. To avoid submitting to such treatment, sufferers were smuggled from house to house, spreading the disease as they went. Houses were barricaded against searchers and the sanitary officers and police were stoned. Inevitably, feelings rose and rioters converged on the house of the Tung Wah
Hospital chairman for not protecting the peoples�� interests. On 23 May, three hundred men from the First Shropshire Light Infantry,
known as the Whitewash Brigade, were detailed to carry out house-to-house
searches. The men had all volunteered, and in return received extra tobacco and a
pay rise of fifty cents a day. They entered suspected buildings by force if necessary
and, where they found signs of the plague, threw all the household goods into the street to be burned, disinfected the rooms and lime washed the walls. Their duties included clearing out the corpses from the dark deserted houses by the light of candles, electric torches having not yet been invented.

It was not uncommon for a soldier, groping his way about the house in the dark, to place his hand on a dead victim of the disease. The dead were collected and put into carts and, as each cart became full, the soldier-driver took his pathetic load to a place where the bodies were burnt.1
Unsurprisingly, members of the Whitewash Brigade started falling ill with the
disease. That summer, ten soldiers caught the plague. Eight recovered and two died including Private Boliver, whose grave was cleared when the Aberdeen tunnel was built, and Captain George Colthurst Vesey [6/5/47]. Vesey, an Irishman, had been put in charge of a cleansing programme that involved clearing ten acres of Tai Ping Shan and of moving the seven thousand or so inhabitants. He was due for retirement at the end of the tour of duty. His grave was placed in an isolated corner of the Cemetery. Two monuments [20/5/5] and [19/2/7] were raised to honour the dead of the Shropshire Regiment who died from whatever cause while serving in Hong Kong.
Also on 23 May, a notice went out asking for fifty volunteers from the civilian
population to aid the police in their grim task by accompanying inspectors on
house-to-house visitations in the areas of Yau Ma Tei, Western and Shau Kei Wan, but the plea went largely unheeded. Far fewer men volunteered than the
fifty called for. Among the brave men who rendered real service in the long hot summer months were George Reinhold Lammert [23/3/7], the auctioneer, and George Hutton Potts [12A/11/23], who had arrived in 1864 aged twenty-one and worked for Russell & Co. before moving into broking. He was one of twelve children, several of whom came to Hong Kong and made a name and fortune for themselves. The third volunteer who was picked out for special mention was the Indian H. Samy, three of whose descendants are found in the Cemetery.
House visitation was perhaps the most arduous and the most disagreeable work of any in connection with the plague, involving in addition of the mere
physical labour of climbing up innumerable flights of almost perpendicular
stairs and going into every room and cockloft in a mass of Chinese houses, in the hottest part of the year, contact with every form of dirt �K and the serious danger of infection; for these gentlemen had themselves to handle the sick and dying.2
Many policemen also received the thanks and recognition of the community
for their part in fighting the spread of the disease. Inspector Mann, for example,
whose wife, Isabelle Mann [23/8/10] is buried in the Old Residents Section,
personally visited every house in Shau Kei Wan with Jeyes Fluid and lime and
won a silver medal for his disregard of his own health and his devotion to duty. Thomas Henry Gidley [2/6/8] and George Phelps were among the policemen
to receive honourable mention and public thanks. Gidley, who died in 1904 aged
thirty-one, must have been only twenty-one years old when he was made ward master on the Hygeia and responsible for the plague victims during every stage
of their illness, from admitting them, to nursing them and finally, all too often, to
coffining the corpses. Phelps worked with him removing victims of the disease
from their houses to the hospital ship and later helping with the coffining of the dead, which included filling the occupied coffins with quicklime. Gidley, who won a plague medal in 1894, lost a daughter, Eugenie Esmeralda Ernestine [27/1/11]
aged four years to the plague in 1886. A policeman with a young family during these years must have been fraught with worry.
By June, between eight and nine hundred people were dead from the plague, three hundred and fifty houses had been condemned as unfit for habitation, seven thousand Chinese had lost their homes and the whole area of Tai Ping Shan had been cordoned off and closed. The Chinese were fleeing the infected town in thousands. Signs of desertion were evident in the streets: laundries were closed, rickshaws and chairs abandoned and stores shuttered. The disease began to strike Europeans. An early victim was a reporter from the China Mail, Donald MacDonald [23/8/3], who died on 20 June 1894.3 He had joined the paper seven years earlier and had married Mary, the only daughter of H. Crawford of Lane Crawford, just six months previously. In July, Frederick Harold Benning [6/5/41], the eldest son of Captain Thomas Benning [5/3/7] of the Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company, died aged nineteen and was buried near Captain George Vesey. By September the worst was over for that year, only to break out
again the following summer and again more virulently in the summer of 1896. The
Plague Services Recognition Committee was set up to decide who should be
rewarded with medals for their services in fighting the disease. The committee
contained the names of the rich and influential members of the society, and it can be clearly seen that members of the minority groups were by now publicly recognized figures of some standing. The Armenian, Catchick Paul Chater, and the Parsees, Dorabjee Nowrojee and Hormusjee Mody, were members of the committee. The Jews, E.R. Belilios, R.S. Sassoon and S. Moses, were also
members. Kai Ho Kai, Fung Wa Ch��un and Ho Tung represented the Chinese,
and Heinrich Hoppius the German contingent. Lessons were learnt concerning the necessity of higher standards for house-building, the collection of rubbish and sewage disposal. The government could no longer ignore the poor sanitary conditions in the Chinese quarters of the colony.

21.3. Resulting from the plague, a government scavaging cart. (By courtesy of Dennis G. Crow.)
The plague continued to revisit the colony most summers up to 1904.
Inspector Galbraith Moffat [6/5/12], who had survived the work of removing
the rubbish and fumigating infected houses in 1894, and was probably awarded a silver plague medal, then died of plague in June 1896. ��There can be no doubt
that he contracted the disease in the performance of his duties, as a few days ago, he removed a body which was very decomposed and which had perhaps died of plague��. 4 Moffat was a senior warden of the United Services Lodge
of the Freemasons and was buried by his lodge. In 1898, two nurses from the
Government Civil Hospital succumbed to the disease. Sister Frances Higgin [45/9/9] caught the plague in April 1898 and passed it on to Sister Gertrude Ireland [45/9/10] who was nursing her.
The Typhoon of 1906
Of all the typhoons that swept over Hong Kong, the one remembered with
the most dread occurred on 18 September 1906. It unleashed a catastrophe of
appalling and unprecedented magnitude. There was no warning. At 8 a.m. the sky was overcast and it was drizzling when a sudden wind arose from nowhere.
Half an hour later, by the time the typhoon gun had been fired and the black ball
hoisted to signal the coming storm, it was already too late. The wind had reached cyclonic force. The bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Hoare, had gone sailing with eight young curates. His boat was smashed to pieces on the rocks and his body never seen again. Only two of the curates managed to survive and carry back the bad news. Another family, William and Hannah Donaldson [37/1/20] from Glasgow and their two little boys, Willie and Ernest, drowned in the Hong
Kong harbour. But those to really suffer were the boat people. Their retreat cut off, ��they were caught in the throes of the storm like sheep in a slaughter pen��. The
watchman on HMS Tamar reported:
It was an endless procession of junks and sampans, mostly dismasted, tearing past the ship, some abandoned and others with several wretches still on
board and very much terrified. Many were rudderless as well as mastless and,
consequently, completely at the mercy of the elements. It was pitiable to see them pass so close and yet be unable to rescue them.5
The fishing fleet was wiped out. Approximately 1,796 native craft sank. Five European vessels foundered, twenty-two were stranded and five broke up on the


sea wall. Thirteen more were badly damaged. A huge memorial was raised to the five petty officers of the French Navy torpedo ship, La Fronde [21A/4/30], who died in the storm. The ship was picked up by a giant wave and thrown against the depot wall. The monument used to stand at the junction of Gascoigne Road and Jordan Road in Kowloon, but was moved to the Cemetery for traffic reasons. The ramifications of the disaster continued.
According to reports, the harbour master Captain Lionel Barnes-Lawrence [45/8/10] fell victim to duty and contracted an illness brought on by overwork. He died less than one month later. Over ten thousand lives were lost and property to the value of many millions of dollars destroyed.6
Fires in Hong Kong Culminating in the Racecourse Fire of 1918
Throughout its history, Hong Kong people, particularly the Chinese, had been the victims of devastating fires. The territory was slow in finding an effective method of containing and putting out such blazes. The overall organization of the early groups of volunteers from regiments and companies, each with their own small hand-pulled fire engine was defective, training was lacking and their
equipment often poorly maintained. In accounts of a destructive fire in 1867, for
example, the China Mail asserts: ��Many of the police engines were practically useless, in some cases the stream (of water) barely issuing from the nozzle, and their hoses bursting continually��.7 Looting, sometimes on a grand scale, broke out with some soldiers and policemen also taking whatever they could conceal. The
great fire that raged over 25 and 26 of December 1878 demonstrated that there was still an absence of any efficient system in the management of the force. This fire
destroyed 361 houses in Central.8 Two indomitable Victorian lady travellers wrote accounts which give a very
good idea of the terrors of large-scale fires before the advent of professional fire
brigades. Mrs. Gordon Cumming described how:
That livelong night we stood or sat on the verandah watching this appallingly magnificent scene �X flames rising and falling, leaping and dancing, now
bursting from some fresh house, shooting up in tongues of fire, now rolling
in dense volumes of black smoke�K. Very soon it was evident that neither
their [the fire-fighters] numerical strength, their engines, nor their meagre
water-supply could possibly master the fire �X a very startling revelation to
the colony which prided itself on the perfect organization of its fire brigade�K. A considerable number (of the fire-fighters) were none the steadier for their
Christmas festivities, and so a good deal of British valour was misapplied.9
Isabella Bird described the fire in even more graphic terms:
It was luridly grand in the twilight, the tongues of flame lapping up house after house, the jets of flame loaded with blazing fragments, the explosions,
each one succeeded by a burst of flame, carrying high into the air all sorts of projectiles, beams and rafters paraffin soaked, strewing them over the doomed city, the leaping flames coming nearer and nearer, the great volumes of smoke,
spark-laden, rolling towards us, all mingling with a din indescribable.10
The aftermath was equally terrible:
In every corner of the unburnt streets whole families were huddled together
beside a little pile of the poor household stuff they had succeeded in saving
while the houses which a few hours before had been happy homes lay in smouldering ruins. I never could have believed that any community could have borne so awful a calamity so bravely and patiently. Not a murmur was heard; not a tear have I seen shed by women who have lost every thing, and crouched shivering and half-dressed in a really chilling breeze.
At least two monuments exist to members of the volunteer fire brigade who lost their lives while fighting fires. The first is to Robert Anderson [38/1/7] who died in February 1882 aged twenty-six years. He came from County Antrim in Ireland but had been working as a policeman in Glasgow when he volunteered for the Hong Kong Police Force. He was one of the largest policeman in Hong Kong, weighing 230 pounds and also ��one of most useful and active members of the Government Fire Brigade being ever in the van whenever danger was to be braved or good service rendered in saving life or property��. 11 His helmet and crossed batons and the set square and dividers symbol of his membership of the Freemasons are carved on two sides of the square base of the monument. The second is in memory of Stephen Fox [33/2/3] ��who was killed by the falling of
a house at a fire in the Queen��s Road, Central��12 in November 1887. There was still no professional fire brigade when, in February 1918 during the
race meeting, the public stands collapsed under the weight of the spectators onto
the fires of restaurateurs and hawkers whose cooked food stalls and charcoal grills
underneath quickly started the blazes that led to one of the worst disasters that
Hong Kong has ever suffered. As recounted by J. Miller, a witness at the coroner��s
enquiry:
Attention was immediately diverted from the ponies by an uproar from the Chinese stands. On looking over, I saw a whole row of matsheds with thousands of people collapsing sideways, one against the other like a pack of cards�K. It seemed to be but a moment or two later that the tragedy became
more awesome by an outbreak of fire. In a few moments, the whole range of mat-sheds was a mass of flames.13

Panic set in and the crowds stampeded. The bugler sounded the Fall In and all the soldiers rallied to help. Many ladies present began to tear up their petticoats for bandages. People rushed to help the victims. Sheung Kim dragged over forty people out of the wreckage. The emergency services arrived and did their best.
The horrifying casualty list from this fire was 570 dead, 52 in hospital and 34
missing. Known victims buried in the Cemetery include Albert Ahwee [16B/1/1], a Japanese husband and wife, Hung Yin Gee and Chung Saam Long [31ii/2/1], who ran a restaurant and were presumably providing lunches for race-goers and were subsequently trapped by the fire. David Marshall [7/8/11] aged twenty-
one also perished there. Whole families were wiped out while solitary amahs sat
alone in houses waiting in vain for their return. One such family totalled eleven members, another thirteen of whom only three returned. A memorial was raised on Caroline Hill to which the immediate victims were taken to be buried. Those interred in the Cemetery included only those who died later in hospital from their
burns. Finally in 1922 an official and professional full-time fire brigade was set up.

21.7. The racecourse during the fire of 26 February 1918. (By courtesy of
Chapter 22
The Old Residents Section in the Hong Kong Cemetery
Section 23 of the Cemetery is devoted to the new type of settler, the old-timer. Hong Kong was by reputation a small, unloved and distant island where men came to make money and left as soon as they had gained their competency.
Those who stayed were mostly the underdogs who could not afford to go ��home��, wherever that was. By the 1890s, this was changing and one special section of
the Cemetery was kept for those who had passed at least twenty-three years in Hong Kong and then died in their adopted home. In this section there are 138 headstones, representing a total of 150 people. Of these, 104 are men, 36 are women and 10 children. The imbalance between men and women highlights the continued shortage of women in the colony. The people in this section died over a twenty-five-year period at the turn of the century. The earliest grave seems to belong to Frederick Stewart [23/5/7] who was buried in September 1887, and the later graves date to about 1910. Where it is known, the kind of employment
of those buried in this section or of their husbands is shown below in numerically descending order.
Table of Employment of Those in Section 23
Merchants 21
Merchant Navy 21
Civil Service 15
Tradesmen 11
Professionals 10
Hotel and Tavern Keepers 9
Managers and Technicians 8
Imperial Customs 7
Armed Forces 4
Missionaries 4

Total 110
Besides a wide range of employment, Section 23 also contains men and women from a number of countries. The largest minority groups are the Scottish with twenty-five members or 16 percent, closely followed by the Germans with twenty-four names representing nineteen men and five women. Beside these, six people are recognizably Americans, although it is difficult to give exact figures, since their names do not, like the Germans for instance, indicate their country of origin. Among the Americans, Rear-Admiral Ralph Chandler [23/5/6] is the highest ranked American officer in the entire cemetery. He died in February 1889. It is a mystery why the authorities should have buried him in the Old Residents Section. Also represented are three Armenians and two men from the West Indies, Edward Lewis [23/7/6] from St. Vincent, and William Gomes Thomas [23/7/9], an innkeeper from St. Thomas who may have initially been brought to Hong Kong as policemen. If so, they may have been black. Two of the Armenians were children. Arratoon Apcar [23/4/13], aged twelve at his death, was the son of Mr. and Mrs. A.V. Apcar. His father had lived in Hong Kong for thirty-eight years and was managing director of the Pacific Mail Shipping Line which was owned by the family. He built and settled in Ava House in Kowloon. Ripsima Jordan [23/4/6] was the small daughter of Paul Jordan [7/10/4], a broker and committed Freemason, and a nephew of Catchick Paul Chater. The monuments to civil servants in this section, especially to policemen who had attained a higher rank, clearly show their rise in prestige in the social scale. George Rae [23/8/5],a native of Tonghe in the north of Scotland, was promoted inspector of nuisances in 1883, foreman of the fire brigade and assistant inspector of markets in 1885 and inspector of dangerous goods in 1890. He retired on a pension in 1892 and died aged forty-five in 1893. He had been in Hong Kong for twenty-three years. The photograph was taken soon after his funeral.

The Scotsmen
Perhaps this would be an appropriate place to acknowledge the huge part that Scotsmen played in Hong Kong��s development.1 Many of the well-known and highly respected men who worked in Hong Kong came from Scotland. These included Douglas Lapraik, Thomas Sutherland who have been mentioned earlier, and Dr. Patrick Manson from Aberdeen University who went to found London��s Institute of Tropical Medicine. Two of his sons share a memorial in the Cemetery,
Alexander Livingston Manson [26/8/6], who died in 1887 aged seven and Dr. Patrick Thurburn Manson, his eldest son who died on Christmas Island in 1902.
Others came to Hong Kong as missionaries, teachers, sea captains, professionals, ship��s carpenters, technicians and policemen.
A long line of canny Scotsmen steered the Jardine, Matheson & Co. to prosperity, while men with Scottish ancestry like Phineas Ryrie [23/8/6] and Robert Shewan helped put Hong Kong��s industry onto a sound footing. Ryrie is an
example of that independence of mind that has made Scots fight for their rights all over the world. Ryrie was a member of the Legislative Council for twenty-five years and he continually questioned government measures. In 1871 he won a battle for freedom of speech in the Council and again in 1873, due to his protests, a rule was made that the estimates must be produced in sufficient time to be examined by the unofficials before they were debated. Other Scots who came to Hong Kong and
made their mark in the territory, like Frederick Stewart [23/5/7], were intelligent
men self-made men from humble backgrounds, who had profited from the excellent
Scottish school system which at that time far outclassed England��s educational
efforts.
Following in the footsteps of John Lamont and the Coupers, father and son, an important group of Scottish managers and foremen built up the ship and repairing building industry, a number of whom are represented in Section 23. The skill, devotion to duty and length of service of the Scottish technicians and managers impressed all their contemporaries. These men from Scotland were said to have been more democratic in their outlook than many Englishmen of that time and inter-racial relationships in the dockyards were excellent. They were among the earlier expatriates who made Hong Kong their home and kept their children with them. Among those lying in Section 23 is Thomas Lamont [23/9/6] who had grown up in Hong Kong with his father, John Lamont, and then followed in his footsteps by becoming superintendent of the Aberdeen Docks. Alexander Geddes Aitken [23/8/14] was the foreman of the P. & O. repairing shop from 1865
to 1876 and after that foreman at Union Dock, where he remained until his death in 1901. He clocked up thirty-six years in the dockyards of Hong Kong. One of his sons, Rutherford Aitken, is buried with his father. Rutherford died in 1908 aged twenty-seven. Kate MacDonald Lammert [23/2/8] was born little Kitty Aitken, According to her obituary: ��She endeared herself to all in the colony as one of the brightest of the home-grown children��. She married George Reinhold Lammert, the well-known auctioneer from Lithuania. Having given birth to three babies, she
died aged twenty-five of typhoid fever. Lammert then went on to marry her sister,
Jane Aitken, demonstrating the closeness between these two families.
Also among the indispensable Scottish foremen was Andrew Harvie [23/7/15] from Glasgow. His monument proudly proclaims, ��For twenty years in the employ of the Dock Company��. He worked as a moulder for Union Dock to the time of his death in 1902 aged sixty. Harvie also had outside interests of his own. The China Mail reported that in May 1899 his lorcha loaded with timber and stores for the lighthouse had been blown onto the rocks in the night with the loss of three lives. He had lost three lighters previous to this. His red marble monument adorned with a thistle is handsome and his estate of $22,500 shows that he died wealthy. Another foreman joiner, Alexander Ewing [23/7/3] from Dumbarton was, according to the inscription on his headstone, ��many years in the employ of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Company��. Like many in this close-knit community, he was married and one of his infants, Alick Ewing [41/8/2] died in 1899 aged two years. Alick��s grandfather and grandmother are also mentioned in this inscription. Mr. Kyle also worked in the Kowloon Docks and he and his wife were living in Kowloon.
One other name not from the Old Residents Section must be added to this illustrious list of Scottish dockyard managers and foremen. James Liddell [8/7/4], also a native of Dumbarton, came to Hong Kong in 1865. He became the highly respected superintendent of the Kowloon Docks responsible for building many ships including the light ship on the Formosa Shoal in the Straits of Malacca. In August 1881, the Hong Kong Telegraph reported that Liddell was leaving on SS Chinkiang for his first holiday after sixteen years�� continuous service. ��He has never required a single day��s holiday until now��. Liddell is commemorated on the memorial to his wife, Mary Sinclair, and his two daughters, Maggie and Minnie, but managed to retire to West Kilbride, Scotland where he died in 1929 aged ninety-one.
A number from among this group moved across to Kowloon where living was cheaper and they were closer to their work. They were joined by the merchant navy captains on local runs. Captain Cobban [23/8/13] for example, who was on the Hong Kong to Manila run, lived at 11 Knutsford Terrace in the same street as Alexander Geddes Aitken. It is said that they had enough land in front of their houses to accommodate their own bowling green. The Union Church built a chapel nearby to meet their needs and such was the clout of this community that their demands for a primary school in which to educate their children led to the
building of the British School in Nathan Road in 1901. The school was paid for
under protest by Sir Robert Ho Tung who had hoped for a school catering more widely across the racial divides. However his own children were admitted and made the trek every day from their home on the Peak to attend in the building on
Nathan Road where the Monuments and Antiquities Office now stands.
The Germans
The Germans began arriving in greater numbers and making their presence felt during this period. In 1881, when the Freya and the Itis, war-ships of the Imperial German Navy, were visiting, the captain of the Freya, Paul Kupfer [8/13/5], died in Hong Kong. His funeral procession was one of the most impressive the
colony had ever seen. It included over one hundred German sailors and officers, some bearing palm leaves, bouquets of flowers and ��devices in evergreens, besides
men from HMS Victor Emanuel and two Spanish men-of-war and nearly all the German residents. Kupfer, the son of the ober-burgomeister of Berlin, was ��a man of large and robust habit of body and most genial and happy temperament��. 2 He died of a heart attack aged forty.
By January 1897, the Germans in Hong Kong numbered 208 and accounted for about 5.75 percent of the European population. This seemingly small
percentage represented a much higher economic and political potential than the numbers may suggest. In the government for example, Rev. E.J. Eitel, the ex-Basel missionary, followed in the footsteps of the Rhenish missionary, Rev.
William Lobscheid, who had been appointed inspector of the government schools in 1857. The missionaries�� knowledge of Chinese made them particularly useful
to the administration. Eitel was then appointed to the board of examiners for the
Chinese examinations for the cadets and the police force and was finally given the
difficult job of Chinese secretary to Sir John Pope Henessey. He was also one of the first Europeans to make a study of feng shui, the author of a Dictionary of the Cantonese Dialect and wrote the first historical account of events in Hong Kong, Europe in China. Eitel arrived in Hong Kong in 1862 and stayed for thirty-
five years. He left the Basel Mission when it refused to allow him to marry Mary
Eaton and joined the London Missionary Society. They married in January 1866 and one son, Herbert John Eitel [23/5/5] who was born in 1870, died aged twenty years and lies buried in this section.
In all eleven German missionaries from this period, five of whom were women, are buried in the Cemetery. Four of these including an inspector of missions, Rev. Sauberzweig-Schmidt [1/3/8], were from the Basel Mission, three were from the Rhenish Mission and three more from the Berlin Mission. Their length of service in the East meant that they were fluent and knowledgeable in the Chinese language and culture and their educational attainments and missionary training gave them the necessary intellectual grounding. The presence in Hong Kong of this formidable body of missionary scholars must have had an effect on the cultural scene. Martin Schaub [4/8/6], for example, was in the Far East for twenty-six years and in that time wrote a number of works including A History of Christian Missions and a treatise, On the Administration of a Christian Mission.
There were twenty-one German wholesale trading companies, five agents
for money exchange, shipping and securities and eight shops. In the 1890s, four
Germans served on the board of Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation
and three on the board of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company. In 1897, both of these companies had a German chairman. By the end of 1906, it was
reported in a memorandum sent to Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow in Berlin that 60 percent of the total imports from Europe to Hong Kong and 65 percent of the exports from that port to Europe passed through German hands.3
The German contingent of twenty-four names buried in Section 23 spreads over all the employment categories. Eight were merchants, assistants or wives of merchants. Christian Grossmann [23/8/11] from Hamburg had come to Hong Kong aged twenty-one as an assistant with Siemssen & Co in 1865. He left to become a partner of Kirchner, Boger & Co in 1867 and then set up as a merchant in his own right in 1879, and continued as such until his death in 1899, by which time he had lived in Hong Kong for thirty-four years. Louis Mendel [23/3/10], who was born in Altona, had joined Arnhold Karberg & Co. in 1867, becoming a partner in 1874. He left to set up on his own in 1885 as a broker. He had been in Hong Kong for thirty-two years when he died in 1897. Two of the
German merchants committed suicide. Oscar Wegener [23/11/12], a merchant
from Kiel, worked for Hesse Ehlers and Co. until it was wound up by him in 1898 when he started his own company, Lautz, Wegener & Co. which he ran until his death by suicide in 1902. He stated in a letter that he took his own life because
of his worsening health problems. The second, Friedrich Christian Dittmer [8/10/4], who was employed by Hesse & Co., had ��retired to his room and shot himself through the forehead with a revolver in 1881 in a state of depression��.4 The Liedertafel of which he was a prominent member sang at his graveside.
Three graves belonging to German wives stand out for the fineness of their metalwork railings. Emmi von Bose [23/5/3] was a Nissen by birth and
probably related to Woldemar Nissen, one of the first directors of the Hongkong
& Shanghai Bank. She was married to Carl von Bose, a partner of Carlowitz &
Co., one of the oldest German firms in the East. The carving of the small metal
pillars at the corners which support the metal work enclosure and the metalwork itself is very fine. The second belongs to Emma Schroter [23/7/10] and the size of her monument suggests that her husband must have been of the merchant class although nothing is known of her background. The third and most outstanding metalwork �X probably the best example of nineteenth-century metalwork in Hong Kong �X surrounds the grave at [32/7/4] where sadly the lead lettering has been lost. It was probably stolen by thieves, such as the one, for example, who
was caught in November 1950 prising the lead letters out of the inscriptions in
Section 2. This grave probably belongs to Bertha Kramer, the wife of Julius
Kramer, who was admitted as partner of Arnhold, Karberg & Co. in 1892. Bertha died in February 1896 at
Luginsland on the Peak and Julius left Hong Kong soon after.
There had also been a big increase in German shipping during this period. Sir Henry Blake
writing in about 1908
reported that: ��Ten years ago the German flag in Hong Kong harbour was comparatively infrequent.

Today the steamers of Germany frequently outnumber our own in that great port��. 5 This increase in shipping is matched in the Cemetery by the large increase
in the number of German merchant navy officers and crew who were buried in the Cemetery during this period. Ten German master mariners and thirteen officers or crew can be identified from this period, compared to a total of five in the previous period. Of these, five were born in Apenrade and four in nearby Flensburg, the area where the Jebsen family started the shipping line of Jebsen & Co. in 1895. Four
others came from Hamburg. Two long-serving captains with identical monuments lie side by side in Section 23. Lorenz Cordsen Jwersen [23/10/16] of the SS Tritos and Heinrich Christian Bertelsen [23/10/17] of the Chi, both from Flensberg,
may have been brothers-in-law. They died in November 1890 and January 1891
respectively.
Among the four German tradesmen identified are two close friends. Christian Frederich Rapp [23/4/3] was first named on the jury list in 1864 as assistant and then a partner of Frederick Schwarzkopf, the doyen of German society in terms of years spent in the Far East. Rapp left the firm in 1877 to go into business as an auctioneer and commission agent. His friend, William Schmidt [23/9/10], a gunsmith from Thuringia, was a versatile man, who besides repairing arms, making ��gun gear�� and converting rifles to breechloaders, advertised his skills in sharpening surgical instruments and repairing musical instruments, sewing machines and iron safes.6 He opened a shop in Wellington Street in 1865, later moving into Beaconsfield Arcade. In 1881, Schmidt and Rapp were attacked when on their way back by boat from a day��s shooting on the mainland. Shots were fired and the Chinese captain of the Germans�� boat killed, his place at the helm being taken by his wife. Schmidt readied his arms, a repeating carbine, a revolver and a fowling piece and sent a few shots into the air to show he was armed, thinking they were being attacked by pirates. The boat was then boarded and the two sportsmen were surprised and relieved to find that their assailants were wearing the well-known red sash and blue uniform of the Canton Customs Service. They were taken to Canton but luckily soon released unharmed.7
Five Germans in Section 23 were tavern or hotel keepers, including the three members of the Bohm family who owned and ran the Windsor Hotel. Maria Bohm [23/11/5], wife of Paul and two of their children, Albert and Elsa, lie in the section. One of the oldest residents, Georg Felix Muller [23/2/3] from Hanover, first arrived in Hong Kong in 1846. He had held the licence of the El Dorado but auctioned it off and threw in his lot with Charles Frederick Petersen [23/3/1] as runner and keeper of his boarding house. One other German tavern keeper from this period is Andreas Wilhelm Wohlters [20/10/9] who died in 1888. He had
been granted the licence of the Nelson Tavern in 1870 and by 1872 was also paying the rates on the Union Tavern at No. 45, Lower Lascar Road. In 1871 Wohlters,
aged thirty-nine, celebrated his marriage in the Roman Catholic Cathedral to Coriane Maria da Cruz from Macau who was just fifteen. One wonders how Maria felt being married to a tavern keeper more than twice her age.
Relationships Which Crossed the Racial Divide
Those with steady loving relationships which crossed the racial divide were more likely to choose to stay in Hong Kong. They realized that Britain was not a country where a Chinese wife would be well received or able to settle happily. In spite of the opprobrium attached in the late Victorian days to such liaisons, approximately 21 percent or 22 of the 104 in Section 23 are known to have been married to Chinese women or to have been in a long-term relationship. More may have kept Chinese mistresses but, since the main source of our knowledge comes from the wills of the men who made provision for such partners, men who died intestate or were too poor to leave money might also have belonged in this category. For example, it is quite likely that Thomas Carter [23/11/9], carpenter, shipwright and blacksmith living in Tank Road in the heart of Chinatown had a Chinese partner, but there is no proof.
The men with Chinese partners in Section 23 seem to be spread evenly across the classes from, probably, Phineas Ryrie [23/8/6], premier merchant and for twenty-five years a member of the Legislative Council, downwards. They fall into two almost equal categories. The first group of twelve names includes
those men who married their Chinese girl. With the exception of Mary Ayou Caldwell [23/4/1], wife of the ex-registrar general, Daniel Caldwell, most of those with Chinese wives in Section 23 come from the lower levels of society. Among the more respectable members of society married to Chinese women was the previously mentioned German auctioneer, Christian Friedrich Rapp [23/4/3]. He had married Mei Ho and obviously had great faith in her capability as he appointed her as guardian over his six children in his will. His wife, Mei Ho/May Rapp [12/9/4] who died in 1932 aged eighty-five, outlived him by nearly forty years. The immaculate state of her white marble headstone and the regular flowers laid
there suggest that there are still descendants of the Rapp family living in Hong Kong. Alfred Parker [23/8/8], chief engineer of SS Tai On, was married at the Chinese congregation church of St. Peter, indicating that his wife was Chinese. She worked as matron of the Hong Kong Hotel.
Four of the husbands come from the lower ranks of the civil service, one from among the tradesmen and one from the merchant navy. Edward Lewis [23/7/6], who left provision in his will for his widow, Ah Ching Lewis and daughter, Yan Noi, came from Kingston in the West Indies in 1865. He joined the Public Works Department where he served for the next thirty-six years until his death in 1897. Lewis was appointed watchman of the Pokfulam Reservoir and given accomodation in the small house, which still exists at the head of the reservoir in order to guard against anyone trying to poison the water. He failed to preside effectively over his band of coolies, and their violent quarrelling and assaults reached the newspapers. However, he was later promoted to head the security at Tai Tam Reservoir. The Scot, John Maxwell [23/7/12], an ex-policeman from the Royal Naval Yard also working for the P.W.D., took his first child to the London Missionary Society Chapel to be baptized. A promise was then extracted from him that he would marry his girl, Wong Ah Hing, which he duly fulfilled. William Godwin [23/7/13] from Middlesex married the Chinese widow of Christian Jensen, entered in the 1882 Jury List as assistant at the travern the Land We Live In. Godwin was custodian of the recreation ground.
Johann Rauch [23/9/11], ex-police sergeant, married Chan Lai who is buried with him. Rauch was the first man to be granted a spirits licence for the Praya East Hotel in Wan Chai. It was previously feared that soldiers in the neighbouring barracks would have too easy access to alcohol. After Rauch��s death, the hotel was taken over by H.J. Faunch [23/9/13] who was born in Knightsbridge, London. He carried on the business with his wife, Tai Hoo, until his death in 1901, when he left all he owned to her and their daughter, Nellie. Thomas R. McBean [23/9/7], usher and interpreter in Hindustani and Bengali at the Supreme Court for twenty-five years, was married to Francesca Brigitta Cruz described as a Chinese woman, whom he was accused of maltreating. His obituary in the Hong Kong Telegraph stated that: ��Although not pretending to much education, his faculty for languages was marvellous. Besides the above languages he was often called to translate in Portuguese, Japanese and Malay. He died suddenly leaving his wife and seven children totally unprovided for��. 8 At the request of the barrister John Joseph Francis and Bishop Raimondi, a compassionate allowance of $875 was awarded to Mrs. McBean. Three tavern keepers with Chinese wives include the Petersen brothers. Christian Frederick Petersen [23/3/1], who established the German
Tavern, lost his first wife from Bristol in 1878. She is said to have died aged twenty-eight from the effects of taking cajuput oil. Christian then married a Chinese girl
and three of their children were baptized in the Chinese To Tsai Church.9 Rev.
Philipp Winnes, the Basel missionary, first reported that a poor German named
Petersen had opened an inn for German sailors in 1858. ��In this inn, I preached until the sailors had had enough and that they had quite soon��.10 By 1867 Christian with his brother Peter was running the Continental Hotel on the Praya as a kind of club for ships�� captains. They were disapproved of by the authorities for the gambling games they organized, but both later attained the respectability of having their names on the jury list. The size of Christian��s headstone and the fact
that he was able to leave an estate of $52,000 indicate a shrewd man in a financially
lucrative occupation. Peter Petersen [8/21/1] is described as a native of Sweden on his headstone, so the brothers were probably from Schleswig Holstein which had recently been captured by the Germans. Peter was for a time barkeeper at the Land We Live In where he took the owner, Louis Kirchmann [23/10/3], to court for assault. This tavern was notorious for the number of shooting incidents and a policeman was always deployed to stand outside its door. The assault case came before the magistrates and Kirchmann was found guilty and fined. Peter then moved to the City of Hamburg and finally held the licence for the Royal
Oak until he died in 1876, aged fifty-two. In 1874, Peter was taken to court by his
Chinese mother-in-law, Ow Atai, for assaulting her. He had ejected her rather too forcefully from his house. The case was dismissed by the magistrate.11 Cross-cultural relationships have never been easy. Kirchman was most likely married to a Chinese woman, Anna Kirchmann [23/10/4], who had been born in Canton. Kirchmann died a
wealthy man leaving nearly $21,000 to
his daughter and her children.
The second category of men, those with ��protected women�� rather than Chinese wives, includes ten names. Two, George Snelling [23/5/4] and Jens Anton Ahlmann [23/12/6], could be said to come from the lower

middle ranks of society in Hong Kong. Snelling had come to Hong Kong from Calcutta. He had in the course of his career run the London Inn, the Albion Inn, and
finally the Stag Inn. Snelling, whose estate totalled $10,500, left money for his Chinese girl, Tai Yau, as well as $500 in trust for his
daughter, Ah Mun. Ahlmann and his two ��protected women��, Atkinson and Ng Ah-mui [23/12/6], between them produced seven daughters and one son. Jens was born in the Sonderborg Disrict of Denmark but moved to San Francisco where he became an American citizen, and then moved on again to Hong Kong. He remained a resident for forty-six years working for nearly thirty years as chief officer of the P. & O. coal hulk, Fort William, and later as pier master at the P. & O. wharf. He finally took charge of the hulk belonging to the ships�� chandlery, Blackhead & Co., where he worked until his death in May 1903
aged seventy-nine years. It must have been something of a record in Hong Kong
to still be at work at that age. In 1969, Ng Ah-mui, who had died in 1883, was moved by one of her grandsons, Peter Wong, from a Chinese cemetery to join
Ahlmann in Section 23.
The other nine names in this category come from the ranks of the merchants or merchant navy. Four merchants, Phineas Ryrie [23/8/6], David Sliman [23/3/6], David Culloch [23/8/9] and Hector Coll Maclean [23/9/3], all had lasting relationships with Chinese women. According to information in Carl Smith��s card index, Ryrie bequeathed in his will $5000 to Maggie and Eva, the daughters of a Chinese woman, A Chun. Sliman was for many years Jardine, Matheson & Co.��s agent in Swatow, but was working in the head office in East Point at the time of his death and must have been visiting Swatow when, according to his headstone, he drowned there in 1897. His girl, Lam Yu-shi, is said to be buried in the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Happy Valley. The merchant Culloch was from an old Scottish family based in Ardwell in Kircudbrightshire. He worked for Turner & Co. for more than a quarter of a century and took a leading part in the management of the Hong Kong Hotel before leaving to try his fortunes in Japan in 1868. Returning in 1871, he rejoined Turners and lived at the Haystack, on the Peak. On his death he left the income from the rent on a property in Gough Street to his Chinese girl, Young A-chun, for the rest of her life. Culloch

died of a heart attack aged forty-eight and his estate amounted to $40,000.
Maclean left his money to his son-in-law, Sir Robert Ho Tung, who had married his Eurasian daughter, Margaret Mak Sau Ying. Maclean worked as Jardine
Matheson��s agent in Tientsin where he was described in rather unflattering terms
by Edward Bowra:
A good-looking, good-tempered rather addle-pated fellow with a vast notion of his own importance and of the littleness of other mortals, much given to the cracking of bad jokes and the making of poor puns; and if it were not for the intense amusement which he himself derives from his own jocularity he would be rather a bore.12
Margaret was born in 1865 which must have been around the time Edward Bowra reached Tientsin. Three more names come from the merchant navy. Thomas Rowan [23/13/11],
an Australian master mariner who died in 1906 aged sixty-eight, left 23 Mosque
Street to his Chinese woman, Ah Junka, with the residue of the estate going to nephews in Melbourne. George Hopkins [23/5/1], an ex-master mariner who had managed the Scottish Oriental Steam Ship Co. and lived at the Bungalow
on the Peak, left $4,000 to Sam Ho, ��the Chinese woman at present under my protection��, and, in a codicil, another $2000 to their daughter Ah Sung. The
third, Captain James Stewart [23/7/5] of the Hong Kong, Macao & Canton Steamboat Company��s SS Kai Pan, baptized his son in the Chinese St. Peter��s Church, so almost certainly had a Chinese wife. He lived at Isadale, Kowloon. The fourth and last name in this group belongs to Thomas Trustlove Phillips [23/11/7]. He was a member of the Imperial Customs and a Freemason. In his will, Phillips bequeathed to Achune from Canton all the money in his account in the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank and all the furniture in his house in China. In addition, he left money to pay the fees of his four children, Minnie, Jane, Thomas and Daisy, to attend the Diocesan Schools, ��provided their mother can see them if she wishes��. The ��protected�� women in Section 23 seem mostly to have been under
the protection of the better off and socially more respectable men. One wonders
if it was the case that, while the lower ranks were encouraged to marry their consorts for the sake of respectability, those in the upper ranks found the cost to their reputation too great to countenance marriage to their Chinese girls.
The Children of the ��Old Timers��
Intermarriage, particularly among the families of the tradesmen and technicians, had increased the numbers of Hong Kong�Vborn Europeans. Beside the Aitkens and Lammerts who have already been mentioned, two Crawfords from the ships�� chandlery and general stores, Lane Crawford, found their resting place in Section 23, namely Lindsay Stanford Lamont Crawford [23/3/5], who is said to have died of the plague in 1898, and Ninian Robert Crawford [23/13/7]. The names, Stanford Lamont Crawford, conjure up a picture of close friendships between
William Kent Stanford, the merchant navy mate who went to prison over the
opium swindle, John Lamont and Ninian Crawford. They all moved in the much same social circle. It was said that by this time a customer to Lane Crawford could
wander from room to room and find anything there from a pin to an anchor.13
A.G.B. Hance [23/5/2], the son of Henry Hance, the botanist, is another who can be included in this group. He is remembered on a monument dedicated to three young engineers working for the Imperial Customs Service. Young Hance was working as second officer on SS Ho Fei, one of the revenue cruisers, when he died in Sydney, Australia aged thirty-two. An imposing monument commemorates Arthur Wagner [23/10/13], the son of one of the first professional musicians in Hong Kong. Carl Wagner, his father, was living in Hong Kong by 1861 when the birth of a son was announced in the paper. Wagner lived in Hollywood Road and taught music, repaired and sold musical instruments, played the fiddle at parties, and tuned pianos. But these occupations did not provide sufficient income and he was bankrupted and only discharged from bankruptcy in 1870. Carl then turned his hand to tavern keeping and finally ended up as first clerk in the police department. Arthur was educated at St. Saviour��s School, where he took some prizes. He served time as an apprentice under the engineer and boilermaker, William Dunphy, and then in 1883 became an assistant in the surveyor general��s office. He died while in Canton working as engineer to the fleet of imperial revenue cruisers, ��a slave to duty��, having taken on his superior��s work load while he was on leave.
Another old timer, Henry John White [23/12/7], had arrived in 1847. He bought and ran the British Hotel, but left on the Corsair in 1849 for Australia. However he was back by 1859, letting rooms and opening a business as a wine merchant. He may have been related to John Robinson White [8/17/1], who had been an auctioneer and hotel keeper in Macau, but came to Hong Kong in 1869 and, by 1871, had become manager of the Commercial Billiard Rooms and then went on to run the Stag Inn. White died in 1896 and, in his obituary, it is said that he was formerly a soldier who had fought through both the Crimean War and the
Indian mutiny before coming east. He was buried with his wife and brother-in-law, Charles R. Reed [8/17/1] Interestingly, seven Reed brothers served during
the Second World War in the Volunteers with most serving in the Eurasian company, four of whom lost their lives. After White��s death, his wife continued to
run a boarding house, Zetland House. Herman White [23/12/7], Henry��s son,
fought in the First World War, but came back to Hong Kong and worked on the staff of the Hong Kong Club. He later became manager of the Kowloon Hotel
where he was assisted by his brother, Nowell, who later managed the Ritz Cafe. According to the inscription on his headstone, Nowell Bernard White [23/12/7], a member of the Volunteer Force, was killed in action against the Japanese on 18
December 1941. The sons of these two brothers continued the connection with Hong Kong that may have began nearly a century earlier in 1847. Perhaps it would
be appropriate here to mention that the mixed blood daughter of Daniel and Mary Ayou Caldwell is also buried in Section 23. Emily Caldwell [23/3/7] married an American, John Martin Armstrong [23/3/9], who had been a clerk to Rawle &
Drinker as far back as 1849. After closing the accounts of Drinker & Co. in 1854, he joined the American firm of Thomas Hunt. This was one of the oldest firms of the ships�� chandlers on the China Coast, and had moved from Whampoa to Hong Kong at the time of the Second Opium War. From 1858 to 1869, Armstrong was a storekeeper for Hunt, leaving in 1873 to become an auctioneer. Armstrong died in 1897, but Emily lived on until her eighty-fourth year, dying in 1921. One of the sons
of this couple, John Henry Armstrong, was educated in Hong Kong and after twenty years�� service with the Volunteers, he was honoured by being chosen as aide-de-camp to the governor.
The European Associates of Dr. Sun Yat Sen
A group of European men, a number of whom are now lying in Section 23, may
have helped to influence the thinking of Dr. Sun Yat Sen and the direction of the
revolutionary movement he led. These men set up the College of Medicine for the Chinese and some then gave their time free of charge to teach there. It is thanks to them that Sun Yat Sen was able to qualify as a doctor in Hong Kong and it was during his time under their tutelage that he formulated his revolutionary ideals.
Dr. William Young [23/13/4] was the first Western doctor since the days of Dr. Benjamin Hobson and Dr. Hirschberg to try to further the practice of Western medicine among the Chinese in Hong Kong. Dr. Young was a Scot who had immigrated to Canada, graduated from the University of Montreal and then moved on to Hong Kong. In 1881, he decided to form a Medical Mission Committee to promote medical care among the poor Chinese. Dr. Young consulted with Rev. John C. Edge [16Ci/4/21], a member of the London Missionary Society and the Union Church.
Under the auspices of that church, the two men enlisted the interest of others in the organization of a committee. They included in the committee Rev. Rudolph Lechler of the Basel Missionary Society and Frederick Stewart [23/5/7], whose post as headmaster of the Central School gave him strong links to the Chinese community. Also included were
E.R. Belilios, Wong Shing, H.W. Davis, of the accountancy firm Linstead & Davis, and Ninian Robert Crawford [23/13/7] of Lane Crawford. Dr. Young and Rev. Edge together opened a dispensary on two days a week using spare rooms at the Tai Ping Shan chapel. The success
of the dispensary, which looked after 927 patients in the first quarter of its operation, together with the offer by Belilios to donate $5000 to a hospital
for the Chinese, spurred the committee to make more ambitious plans.


Sir Kai Ho Kai [8/4/3] now became interested in the project and, in the absence of Dr. Young who had returned for a time to Canada, he worked hard to stir the interest of Chinese Christians in a hospital for the Chinese. The hospital proposal, after some setbacks, was finally launched in 1884. Mary Ayow Caldwell

468 Forgotten Souls
[23/4/1] and the mother of Ho Kai each
gave $250 to the fund. Ten thousand dollars
was raised at a bazaar in the Botanical
Gardens and $3000 came from the Chinese
community. Rev. John Chalmers [23/3/4] of the London Missionary Society helped
with the fund-raising by realizing $14,000
towards the new hospital from the sale of the Lower Bazaar Chapel. He had by the time
of his death in 1899 spent forty-seven years in
Hong Kong, long enough for both him and his wife to have been present at the deathbed of Henrietta Shuck.
The new hospital building with its
eighty beds was paid for by Kai Ho Kai and
named the Alice Memorial Hospital after
his first wife. The foundation stone was laid
in 1886 with the main speech being made
by Rev. Chalmers. The hospital was finally inaugurated on 1 October 1887 and
put under the control of the Medical Missionary Society. Dr. Patrick Manson, on seeing the hospital rise from its foundations, formed a Hong Kong Medical Society to include those who had been working for the success of the scheme, Rev. Chalmers, Frederick Stewart and Kai Ho Kai as well as Drs. Cantlie, Hartigan and Jordan.
The new hospital for the Chinese made possible a further plan, to open an
attached medical school. This was accomplished by 1890 when ten students,
including Sun Yat Sen, were enrolled and reported to be living and studying in the hospital, seven of them being Christians. The Medical Society Committee reconstituted itself as the senate of the new medical school with Dr. Manson as dean, Rev. Chalmers as chairman, Frederick Stewart as rector and Dr. Cantlie as secretary. The teachers for the new college included Dr. Gregory Jordan, the Armenian nephew of Catchick Paul Chater and brother of the broker Paul Jordan, who taught tropical medicine and Kai Ho Kai who taught medical jurisprudence, all free of charge. Dr. Manson and Dr. Cantlie were later to be responsible for rescuing Sun Yat Sen from imprisonment in the Chinese embassy in London and a certain death had the embassy succeeded in smuggling him out of the
country. H.W. Davis then provided the funds to build the Nethersole Hospital
for women and children, so called after his mother��s maiden name, which opened
in 1893. Demand soon outstripped the number of beds available and, through the munificence of Kai Ho Kai and his sister, Ho Miu Ling, the enlarged hospitals
opened on a new site in Bonham Road, and the College of Medicine was now
able to meet the full requirements of clinical students and open the first training
course for general nursing in South China and the first courses for midwives. Thus, the money made by Kai Ho Kai��s father, Rev. Ho Fuk Tong, in property transactions and passed on to his children, was largely spent improving the health of the Chinese population. This almost revolutionary shift in direction towards meeting the needs of the Chinese majority grew out of the work of the small group dedicated to their interests, a majority of whom lived and died in their adopted island home.
Merchant Navy Group
At the close of the nineteenth century the strength of Hong Kong still lay in its position as the premier port of call on the China Coast. This explains the fact that one of the largest groups in Section 23, numbering some twenty-one, consists of men who belonged to the merchant navy. Four captains could now afford addresses on the Peak or in the Mid-Levels. Charles Tomlin [23/3/3] of the Canton, Hong Kong & Macao Line lived at Mountain View. Henry Hope Joseph, superintendent of the P. & O., also had a house on the Peak where his wife Helen [23/4/5] died in December 1894, to be followed four months later by his eldest son Edward Henry Joseph [23/4/4], aged four years. Captain Edward Burnie [23/2/7], marine surveyor for Lloyds and for many years a captain with the Douglas Line, lived at Ferndown, Robinson Road and his friend, Captain George Hopkins [23/5/1] of the Scottish Oriental Steamship Co., lived nearby at the Bungalow. Henry Kennett [23/8/2] from Yorkshire was among the master mariners who, like Captains James Stewart [23/7/5] and Cobban [23/8/13], moved to Kowloon about this time. Hong Kong also boasted nautical
schools where mariners could gain their master mariners�� qualifications. Captain Ambrose Clarke [23/10/18] for example, who died in 1899 aged fifty-eight, taught
navigation and nautical science in such a school.
In spite of the precautions taken and the increased size of the steam ships, piracies still occurred. In December 1890, the SS Namoa belonging to the Douglas Line was sailing to Hong Kong from San Francisco with 220 Chinese

returnees and five first-class passengers. As the ship neared Hong Kong, a gang of fifty to sixty men poured out of the Chinese passengers�� quarters, changing into
the uniform of soldiers as they came out. They began their attack by taking control of the arms and ammunition. Carl Magnus Peterson [23/10/15], a lighthouse keeper from the Imperial Customs Service who happened to be on deck,
encountered the pirates first but was shot four times in the head before he could
raise an alarm. Captain Thomas G. Pocock [23/13/10] was summoned from the saloon for negotiations, but was shot in the chest before he could reach the door. Having thoroughly cowed the rest of the crew and passengers, the pirates ordered the Namoa to be steered in a big circle while the pirates went to work relieving everyone of their hard-earned savings. A protesting Chinese merchant was thrown overboard to drown and his two wives after him. The cargo of opium was left,
but the pirates escaped with $55,000 in cash besides jewellery, watches and gold.
The Namoa returned to Hong Kong the following morning. Pocock was given an
official funeral with all honours, and collections were taken up for his wife and four
children. Eventually most of those involved were put to death. Grisly postcards showing the ringleaders being beheaded on a beach outside the walls of Kowloon fort became a popular buy.14
Although the execution of the ringleaders caused a hiatus in piratical activity, attacks began again in the new century with at least three more headstones proclaiming death at the hands of pirates. In November 1911, the chief
officer H.J. Nicholson [16B/1/21] was, according to his inscription, ��killed while defending his ship against a piratical attack in the West River��. As reported in the
Hong Kong Telegraph:
It appears that the vessel went aground and it was not long before a number of pirates in several junks came up and when within a short distance of the Shui On they opened fire.�K The chief officer received three bullets in his abdomen. The poor fellow in terrible agony managed to crawl to his cabin where he succumbed almost immediately. The crew being unable to defend themselves against the onslaught of the pirates were at their mercy and they simply looted the ship taking away several junk loads of cargo.15
On the very next day thirty pirates boarded the Kwong Yuen also in the West River and divested the passengers of their money and clothes. The pirate attacks continued as, for example, when in 1924 James Wilcox [16Cii/3/1], captain of the SS Tai Lee of the Douglas Line, was shot dead by his Chinese boatswain and members of the crew who took over the ship. They looted 20,000 pounds sterling worth of goods and departed with nineteen Chinese passengers whom they hoped to ransom.
Journalism
Journalism still represented itself as one of the few avenues open to the public where opposition to the government could be voiced and perceived malpractices
highlighted. It was also another area where the influence of independent-minded
Scots dominated the field. Two men in particular towered over the profession. The first, George Murray Bain [23/1/3], was born and educated in Montrose, and arrived in Hong Kong in the 1864 as a printer. He worked as sub-editor of the
China Mail, rising to become editor and then in 1875, sole owner of the paper. Bain
made his home in Hong Kong residing at Birnam Brae on Conduit Road, Mid-Levels. His wife, Anna [9/3/13], and his son, Horace Murray Bain [23/1/4], who followed in his father��s footsteps, are both buried in the Old Residents Section. The China Mail under Bain was the more conservative of the newspapers.
In contrast, Robert Fraser-Smith [23/8/3], who in 1881 founded the Hong Kong Telegraph, was a force to be feared in the territory. He preached ��the gospel
of anti-humbug �K With scathing pen he pricked various bubbles, and made
worthy and unworthy citizens alike tremble in their shoes��. Austin Coates called
him ��a first-rate journalist, a hilarious character and a real firebrand��. He added that Fraser-Smith ��let fly at commercial malpractice, government sloth, discrimination
of all kinds and anything that smacked of corruption��. 16 His taste for racy reporting
led to five separate summons for libel, two of which resulted in prison sentences.
In the last, he had made unsubstantiated charges of assault and rape against John Minhinnett [1/1/4], a P.W.D. foreman and was sent to prison for six months.
Minhinnett, a Plymouth man with a Chinese girl, was a rather unpleasant character who earlier had been convicted of falsely accusing a rickshaw man of assaulting him
in order to get the man into trouble. Soon after the governor, Sir George William
des Voeux, had been told that Fraser-Smith was on the point of death in prison and therefore released him on humanitarian grounds, he witnessed the selfsame
man defiantly sauntering past his box at the racecourse looking fit and healthy and
smoking a large cigar. Fraser-Smith on another occasion, armed with a deck chair, a pile of books and a whisky and soda, sat himself in the middle of the cricket club pitch in protest at the way the cricket ground, which had been intended as a general place of recreation, had become the preserve of an exclusive club.17
Managers and Tradesmen
By the end of the nineteenth century new categories of employment were finding
their social level in the territory. Examples from among the up-and-coming managerial class are William Whiley [23/2/4] and T.C. Crane, whose wife, Mabel Crane [23/3/2], is buried in Section 23. Whiley, an American, was the
resident manager of the Sperry Flour Mill, while Crane was a manager working for the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company. Of the eleven who can be counted as tradesmen, the top social positions were undoubtedly held by the Christian Friedrich auctioneers and owners of well-known stores. This would have included the two Crawfords, Lindsay [23/3/5] and Ninian [23/13/7] of Lane Crawford and Christian Friedrich Rapp [23/4/3], Paul Brewitt [23/6/1] and John Martin Armstrong [23/3/9] from among the auctioneers.
The best known family of auctioneers was undoubtedly the Lammerts. They first registered as auctioneers in 1861 and continued to run auctions through to 2000. George Reinhold Lammert [23/3/7] came to Hong Kong in the early 1850s from Lithuania, working as assistant to Charles Glatz in his watch-making shop. He settled in Hong Kong and started as an auctioneer in Stanley Street in 1858. Before the opening of the Suez Canal it was very difficult and slow to obtain European items for the household. This meant that there was a very good market for second-hand goods. By 1861 there were fourteen registered firms of auctioneers, but Lammerts continued to be the leading firm right up to the 1990s. Rheinhold married Jane Aitken at St. John��s Cathedral in 1863 and had ten children. His wife and several of his children are buried in the Cemetery. He was succeeded in 1890 by his son, George Philip Lammert [12A/2/11], who carried on the business until his death in 1939, by which time he was known as
the grand old man of Hong Kong. The direct family involvement in the business line died out when Lionel Eugene Lammert [23/3/7] left Hong Kong to fight in the Second World War, but the business continued under Ken Watson who had
married into the Lammert family.
Andrew Millar [23/9/1] was the government plumber. His name first reached the jury list in 1864 when he was listed as foreman plumber at Mr. Logan��s. He opened his own establishment in 1868 advertising as ship, house and steamboat plumber, coppersmith and brass founder, with an address in Wan Chai. He later added gas fitting to his list of skills. Millar was among those who moved to Kowloon. In 1877, he charged his gardener there with stealing his vegetables. James Edwin Howroyd [23/13/2] from Yorkshire, the clerk of the works for the government who would have supervised Millar��s work, is also buried in the Old Residents Section within a few metres of Millar��s monument. Millar died in 1890 aged forty-seven. The other tradesmen include William Boffey [23/2/1], tailor and cutter at Lane Crawford, and William Ross [23/3/8], the manager of the Falconer family��s clock and jewellery store. Ross was a volunteer member of the Fire Brigade and lost a leg in a fire accident. William Porter Moore [23/7/7] from Philadelphia, U.S.A. described himself as a ��tonsorial artist�� and advertised his special Gogo Shampoo made from soap roots found in the Philippine Islands where the inhabitants ��are never found bald and it is quite common to see females with hair five to six feet long��. He opened the first expatriate hair dressing salon by 1867 and then moved into the Hong Kong Hotel. He came to Hong Kong via Shanghai and had been in China nearly thirty-five years when he died in 1896.
The Lower Social Levels
Nine men buried in Section 23 come from among what could be termed the least socially prestigious expatriates. Among their ranks are found officers of the public works department and tavern keepers. It was well understood that
Europeans, who needed a job and could not be fitted in elsewhere because of lack of education or drinking problems would be sent to the Public Works Department. H.L. Mather [23/13/8], lighthouse keeper and John Livesey, the husband of Harriet Livesey [23/8/7], are examples of the lower level civil servants. Livesey was the driver of
the government fire engine and later put in charge
of the gunpowder department. Harriet, his wife, died of smallpox on Stonecutters�� Island aged thirty-five. John Wylie [23/10/1] rose to the rank of inspector of nuisances and would have been
regarded with rather more respect. Wylie then
became ward master at the lunatic asylum. In July
1890, he shot himself at his home in Wyndham
Street. It transpired that he had beaten his wife and locked her in her room and was worried by
his debts of $1,300. His two boys were taken in by the Christian brothers and his
two girls by the nuns at the Italian Convent.
Although the tavern keepers were still near the bottom of the social pile, men like Louis Kirchmann, C.F. Petersen and George Snelling were making good money catering to the demands for alcohol. But the demon drink took its toll. For
example, in 1881, William Payne, an ex-sailor who ran a coffee lounge gave way to
intemperance ��indulging in spirits to an inordinate degree��. On Saturday night he
fell or slid halfway down a flight of wooden stairs in his house. A sedan chair was
called to take him to hospital, ��but when the coolies saw the state of their intended
fare, they hurried off and left him lying on the footpath��. He expired shortly after finally reaching hospital. There is no record of his headstone in the Cemetery, so it
is likely that he was buried in a pauper��s grave.18

Chapter 23
Industry at the Turn of the Century
The Metamorphosis of the Merchants
The story of Ernest Deacon [23/4/9] may serve as an introduction to the changes that were taking place in the kind of business transacted by the merchants of the China Coast. It also shows how a family with money earned in the Far East could then climb from relatively humble origins to the heights of squiredom and respectability. Deacon��s grandfather had been a coachman and owner of a line
of horse-drawn carriages that ran between Wiltshire and Newcastle stopping at inns en route to drop passengers off, change horses or rest for the night. His
son, James, set up as a not very successful shipping agent in London and fathered
fifteen children. One son, Ed mund, looked to China and in 1847 began his career
there as a tea inspector for Heard & Co. He was soon trading on his own account
as well as acting for the firm. In 1856 after nine years in China, he was able to retire
aged just twenty-seven with a fortune that enabled him to buy a large manor house in the countryside and live in comfort for the rest of his life. Richard followed his brother into Heard & Co. and he too made a fortune. Albert, the seventh child in the family and third brother to go east, had left school at fourteen. He also acquired his experience in the tea trade at Heard & Co. In 1856, he set up independently as a tea trader in Canton. Like his brothers, Albert retired, aged twenty-seven with his fortune made, to a country estate where he bred shorthorn cattle.

Finally, Sidney and seventeen-year-old Ernest Deacon were sent east to continue to boost the family fortunes. The brothers needed to diversify due to the changing tastes in tea that saw Chinese tea being neglected in favour of Indian tea. They fell back on acquiring agencies for British companies who wished to be represented in China. Among the agencies appearing on the Deacons�� brass plate
over the office door on Shameen Island, Canton, were China Traders Insurance,
the China Fire Insurance, London & Provincial Maritime Insurance, Union Insurance Society and Lloyds. In shipping they represented the P. & O., Ben Line, Castle Line, Canadian Pacific, Boston Steamship and Bank Line among
others. The firm��s newfound prosperity had little to do with tea. Sidney became wealthy and popular in Canton society. His five-hundred-piece dinner set, with the
Deacon coat of arms engraved on every piece, attested to his elevated social and
financial position. Yet life became too much for him and he took a gun and shot
himself in his bedroom aged only thirty. This left Ernest Deacon junior to carry on the family name. He remained a senior partner for fourteen more years with a total
of service in the company of twenty-nine years. He finally caught dysentery from
drinking contaminated water at the age of forty-six and was sent to Hong Kong
to be nursed where he succumbed on 1 July 1890. His death ended the Deacon family��s association with a firm that was until recently still trading in the territory.
The Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Company
In the boardroom of the Hong Kong & Whampoa Dock Company, matters at
the turn of the century did not proceed with proper trust and respect between the directors and the shareholders, who had good reasons to suspect that the
directors were lining their own pockets at the shareholders�� expense. By 1901, the
shareholders had had enough of the company��s profits being siphoned off to be
used for the benefit of the old boy network of expatriate directors.
Their arcane methods of accounting successfully hid the leakage of money that the shareholders rightly thought should be used to increase their meagre dividends. Their shortcomings were highlighted on the pages of the Hong Kong Telegraph by Robert Fraser-Smith. Out of 530 shares, 102 were owned by the increasingly wealthy Chinese, and more belonged to members of the minority groups which included the Portuguese, the Jews, the Eurasians, the Parsees and the Indians. It was time for a takeover and who was better qualified to take it over than Sir Catchick Paul Chater [11B/10/1]. His name was put forward as chairman by his great friend and admirer, the Eurasian Sir Robert Ho Tung [11B/13/2]. But at first he refused
to take on the company, perhaps because of the overwhelmingly expatriate make-up of its board. However with the encouragement of Robert Shewan and J.P. Braga, his unofficial secretary, many of whose descendants lie in Section 11B, Chater accepted and remained a director
of the Dock Company for the next twenty-five years up to the time of his death in 1926.
Electricity Comes to Hong Kong
The Hong Kong Electric Company
During these years, two separate companies brought electricity to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Electric Company started generating in December
1890 on Hong Kong Island and has done so continuously ever since. The two
prime movers behind this company were Bendyshe Layton and Henry Liston Dalrymple [37/3/13]. The spread of electricity across the island was excruciatingly slow. But Dalrymple had that confident, gentle and reassuring way that could cajole shareholders into the patient wait for dividends that was necessary for the
young industry. Each year he took the shareholders into his confidence, explained
the problems, extolled the excellence of the management and somehow kept them on his side. Sir Catchick Paul Chater was also a director of the Electric Company

throughout the first thirty-seven years of its existence. Chater identified a site for the first generator in Wan Chai in the place where the colony��s first cemeteries
had stood, by then a bleak and forlorn wasteland. He had learned from an inside source that the government proposed to move the remaining monuments to Happy Valley and liberate the land for building purposes. He was quick to
seize the opportunity. In 1897 the purchase was made and, almost immediately
afterwards, Chater sailed for London to accompany the dispatch that put forward his big reclamation scheme to the secretary of state.
China Light and Power Company
Thus by the early years of the twentieth century, talented and skilled entrepreneurs who had adopted Hong Kong as their place of abode were taking up positions at the head of a number of industries. One of these was the Scot, Robert Shewan [12A/3/14], who was the son of the captain of the Lammermuir, one of Jardine, Matheson & Co.��s tea clippers. Shewan was likely to have been born in Shanghai.
He joined Russell & Co. in 1881 aged twenty-one. By 1895, he had organized
a buy out of Russell & Co. and renamed the company Shewan, Tomes & Co. It was one of the biggest companies in Hong Kong, typically beginning life as

23.4. The cement works, Kowloon Bay, 1890�V1900. (By courtesy of Dennis G. Crow.)
an exporter of tea and silk and changing over the years to become involved in Green Island Cement, China Light and Power and shipping insurance. This
company registered the China Light and Power Syndicate in 1900 with a capital of $200,000. Shewan shared with Sir Catchick Paul Chater the vision of making
Kowloon into a residential and industrial hub and he was determined that it should have its own source of electricity. He was already chairman of the Green Island Cement Corporation and a director of the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank.
The problems of running a successful company based on newly invented technology in a distant place were huge and not helped by the inexperience of the directors. By 1911, of the sixty-eight thousand inhabitants of Kowloon, a mere five hundred had signed up to have electricity installed in their homes. In 1932 Shewan retired briefly to his native Scotland, but he felt homesick for Hong Kong and soon returned. In February 1934, fifty-three years to the day after Shewan had first disembarked from the Yangtze, he was found dead in the garden of No. 2, Conduit Road. Aged seventy-five, he had fallen out of the window. That block of flats is still said to be haunted.
A handful of businessmen who had made Hong Kong their home pushed ahead with developing the infrastructure of the island and made possible the later expansion of industry here. The most important was undoubtedly Sir Catchick Paul Chater but he was helped in his enterprises by such talented men as Robert Shewan and Henry Dalrymple Liston, Sir Robert Ho Tung and later the Kadoorie brothers, Elly and Ellis.
Dairy Farm Company
Dr. Patrick Manson, one of the leading general practitioners in the colony, was very aware of the dangerously unsanitary conditions under which the milk supply had been produced in Hong Kong. He may also have been spurred on by the death of his four-and-a-half-year-old son, Alexander Livingston Manson [26/8/6]
in May 1887. In his first memorandum on the proposed company, he stated:
From the hygienic point of view the milk supply of a community is second in importance only to its water supply�K. Unfortunately, in consequence of the epidemic among the cows which the very inadequate, unreliable and exceedingly expensive milk supply has hitherto had to submit to, it seems likely to give out altogether and there is every prospect of a milk famine. This is a serious matter �K especially for young children and the sick, for whom
milk is the principal and often the only food and indeed the staff of life.1
Manson managed to interest a distinguished coterie in his prospectus including Sir Catchick Paul Chater, Phineas Ryrie, Granville Sharp and two other well-known
businessmen, W.H. Ray and J.B. Coughtrie. The first octagonal cow sheds built
for Dairy Farm and now used by the students of the Academy for Performing Arts were erected near Pokfulam village and a herd of eighty cows brought.
By the end of December 1887, the Dairy Farm Company was already presenting its first annual report. Sadly, the directors had nothing good to report.
Many of the first batch of cows had died. Experience was needed to overcome problems connected with herding, feeding and milking the cows and the bottling and sale of milk which would take time to iron out. Yet another Aberdeen man
from a well-known farming family was found. James Walker arrived in 1890 to
become farm manager and stayed to serve the company for thirty years. Dairy Farm also attracted the able and long-term service of Malcolm Manuk who became the company secretary. He was an Armenian, educated in Calcutta,
who came to Hong Kong aged eighteen, spent a short time in the post office as a clerk, then in a bank and finally joined Dairy Farm in 1906, where he stayed until his death from meningitis in 1932. Manuk had many interests. He travelled
widely and was the leader of the Hong Kong Theosophical Society. He was a keen Volunteer and a first-class rifle shot. He also rode to hounds at Fanling and became a member of the Jockey Club. Manuk managed to scale the ladder of expatriate society and not long before his death was elected a member of the
Hong Kong Club. While Manuk himself was cremated, his immediate family have
contributed some of the best kept and most striking headstones to the Cemetery, among them his sister, Sophie Manuk [7/8/15], and his sister-in-law, Mary Manuk [7/8/18].
The Railway Comes to Hong Kong
Few who have travelled on the Kowloon to Canton Railway can have imagined the huge problems posed by the twenty-two miles of track across the New
Territories to Lo Wu which necessitated the building of fifty bridges, five stations and five tunnels. The actual construction began in August 1907. Problems were
soon encountered, particularly in finding workers willing to blast and dig out the tunnels. Feng shui beliefs meant that the Chinese were unwilling to work underground, so miners were brought out from England. However, it was recorded that this first batch proved to be so unsatisfactory that within a few months they had to be sent home. A new crew of Italian tunnel workers was recruited from a Yunnan project. Again problems arose. The men were working in waterlogged conditions and malaria was wiping out the crews. On a doctor��s advice, all the Italians working on the Beacon Hill tunnel were housed high up on the hillsides and a ropeway was built to slide them gently down to work each day. The tunnels had mostly to be carved out of the granite rock and it is said that 250,000 pounds of explosives were used. The Beacon Hill tunnel was lined with ten million bricks which were made alongside the track by coolies from India.
Coal had to be imported so that the bricks could be baked over fires in the Indian
fashion. The line of the railway was the subject of endless disputes since the local villagers viewed it as a feng shui nightmare, challenging the natural order of
things as it pushed its way in a straight line relentlessly through the rice fields of the valleys. As chief engineer Frank Grove said in a paper delivered in 1913: ��The
local committees, aided by a ragged mob of truculent peasants, obstructed and interfered from the beginning of operations almost to the end��.
The track was opened by Sir Francis Henry May on 1 October, 1910 with the Lo Wu to Canton section opening about a year later. But this was a time when China was in a state of upheaval and civil disorder was rife. Bandits and marauders claiming the title of revolutionaries were unable to resist the lure of the rich travellers passing in trains near their remote settlements. The train was held up several times in the first few months on its 111-mile run to Canton. But it was not until 1916 that the railway was hit really hard. On the Chinese side of the border between Nam Kong and Sun Tong where the track made a wide turn, two whole sections had been ripped up:
The train was instantly derailed and two third-class front carriages with a full load of passengers overturned. About one hundred robbers were lying in ambush�K. They calmly went through the whole panic-stricken mob of
passengers, taking money and valuables amounting to $10,000.2
An American Pentecostal missionary, Elmer Hammond [16B/7/5], and two Chinese in the front carriage were crushed to death when the carriage slammed into the engine.
The chief engineer Frank Grove was succeeded by William Murray Stratton [18/4/11] from Edinburgh. During the 1925�V26 anti-foreign boycott
in Canton, he personally drove an engine crowded with European women and children to Hong Kong with some women swinging from the footplates.3
Chapter 24
The History of the Freemasons in Hong Kong
1845�V1860
The Freemason symbol of set square and dividers is found throughout the Cemetery from the earliest graves right through to the present century. About eighty headstones in the Cemetery are adorned with the Freemason symbol and furthermore a large number of the men buried in the Cemetery were masons but did not choose to proclaim the fact on their headstones. It therefore seems
appropriate to outline the history and influence of the movement in Hong Kong. The first recorded activity of the Freemasons was in April 1845, only three years
after the island was formally ceded to Britain. By June of the same year, the Friend of China reported:
The Masonic Brethren in Hong Kong have obtained a charter and formed in the colony a new lodge named the Royal Sussex�K. It promises to be a strong and highly successful lodge. It has already enrolled the names of many
influential members of the community.1
The first master was J.H. Cook, paymaster of the hospital ship HMS Minden, suggesting that early masonry arrived through the auspices of the armed forces. In fact, thirteen of the founding members were from the armed forces, seven from among the merchants, two from the government and two were surgeons. 2 Freemasonry was seen as a charitable organization and the Friend of China dropped a strong hint that ��the benevolent intentions of masonry�� should be directed towards the cause of the merchant Seamen��s Hospital. Among the earliest masons buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery are three of the founding fathers, Nicolay Duus [20/7/1], a merchant whose mother lodge was at the Cape of Good Hope, Peter Harrison Spry [9/17/15], paymaster to the HM sloop Wolverine, who acted as inner guard in the first meeting but died early on, and James F. Norman [9/2/6] from the Royal Artillery who was a commissariat

assistant storekeeper. Other early members included, in order of joining, William
Franklyn, the general storekeeper, John Pope [9/16/14], clerk of works for the government and Alexander Lena, the Italian assistant harbour master.3 T.A. Gibbs, merchant of Gibbs & Co., made a room available in the Gibbs godown.
In December 1845, Samuel Rawson was elected master and installed ��in ancient form, the ceremonial being conducted in a very impressive manner��. Thirty-
two members and guests then sat down to the first recorded Masonic banquet.
Rawson, a leading merchant of the company, Fox, Rawson & Co., had purchased
Marine Lot 42�V43 at the very first land auction and built a godown and house, and
was very active in early Hong Kong society.4 By 1846 the number of masons had grown so fast that they were able to open a second lodge, Zetland Lodge, so called in honour of the then grand master of English Constitution, the Earl of Zetland.5
The difference in wealth between the members of the two lodges can be seen in their respective donations in 1847 to the Fund for the Relief of the Destitute in Ireland and Scotland. The Royal Sussex contributed 570 pounds sterling whereas
Zetland Lodge only managed 220 pounds.6 In the years 1846 to 1851, Hong Kong faced a period of decline and Royal
Sussex Lodge, which had opened so auspiciously, was now finding it difficult to
hold meetings. So many of its merchant class members had removed to Canton that the lodge decided it would transfer its sittings to that place. This news was regarded as ��pregnant proof of the general desertion of Hong Kong and the removal of many of its principal inhabitants to Canton��. 7 Meanwhile in Canton,
the first Armenians to join a lodge, Peter Seth and M. Agabeg and perhaps the
first Jew in the Far East, David Sassoon, joined respectively in 1854, 1855 and 1858. Zetland Lodge, which remained in Hong Kong, being the second and less
influential lodge, had to some degree lost its position in society. The merchants
kept their ties to Royal Sussex Lodge and attended meetings in Canton, while Zetland Lodge in Hong Kong was left to be run by second rank civil servants and
professionals and suffered a sharp decline. A.L. Inglis, assistant harbour master and the designated next master, left to try his luck in the goldfields of California in
1851 and the possibility of closing down was even discussed at a lodge meeting, but the decision postponed for a year. Meanwhile Rawson stepped into the breach as master and travelled to Hong Kong from Canton to take each meeting, no mean feat when the time then taken to make the round trip and the dangers from piracy are taken into account.
Freemasonry in Hong Kong was portrayed from the early days as a patriotic organization closely allied to the establishment and the Protestant Church. The Friend of China, in an article in October 1853, described how such well-known
figures as the Duke of Wellington and George Washington had been masons. 8
The national anthem was sung and the Queen toasted at all banquets. The lodge was attractive to lonely men far from home as a place where they could fraternize, eat and drink together. It provided camaraderie, a ready-made social circle and support and financial help in an emergency. Part of its appeal may have been because it gave its members a form of insurance in a far-away place where disaster
or disease could strike without warning with devastating effects. John Wright, the post office clerk, was initiated into the lodge in February 1850. He described how, in September of that year, the lodge made a collection to pay the fare so that T.W. Marsh, Wright��s colleague in the post office, could travel back to England
by the P. & O. liner. Marsh was secretary of the lodge but had fallen seriously ill. Sadly, he died soon after reaching England aged only twenty-six. In December
1850, Wright attended the annual Masonic banquet and described the good
fellowship enjoyed, perhaps rather over-enthusiastically:
At six-thirty p.m. forty members sat down to an excellent dinner �X the room
nicely decorated with flags and evergreens �X an hour or so saw us all talkative
and a little excited with the wine decanter in great requisition �X fruit on the table �X the Queen��s health drunk with all honour and sundry other national toasts for England and America �X Ladies�� health proposed and drunk, when
I broke a glass for the dearies, which caused Mr. Bevan (Senior Warden
and civil servant) to sing out, ��The gent who has broken a glass for the ladies must return thanks on his bare knees��. Of course I did it most willingly for the petticoats and mounted the dining room table amidst the decanters and glasses and shouts and cheers and laughter whilst I mounted on high with a canape in my hand saying something for the �X. Everything went swimmingly till a number of the party left and then commenced a little skylarking. I foolishly vaulted over a small table twice very well but the third time my lame leg slipped and I broke the thigh.
In the following year, William Mercer became master and Wright was made
junior deacon. Mercer had been private secretary to Sir John Davis and later became colonial secretary in Governor John Bowring��s administration. After he was installed, Zetland Lodge seemed to have regained its momentum. In
1853, Wright assisted at the initiation of Captain Henry de Castilla, Dr. William Harland and William Tarrant, the editor and proprietor of the Friend of China. Then in January 1853, he helped when Prince William of Hesse and Dr. William
T. Bridges, the acting colonial secretary took their first degrees. E.J. Eitel was able to say in his book Europe in China: ��The growing popularity of the Masonic fraternity, (which gave its first ball on Feb. 1st 1853) served to contribute some powerful elements of social reintegration�� and on the following page, ��Masonic pursuits were popularized by the elaborate solemnity of laying the foundation stone of the Masonic Hall under the direction of the Provincial Grand Master ... of British masons in China��. 9 The procession left from the old lodge rooms in Queen��s Road for the new site on Zetland Road led by Robert Goodings, the keeper of Victoria Gaol and the tyler of the lodge, with drawn sword, followed by the band
of the 59th Regiment. Then came the banner of the Royal Sussex Lodge, followed
by fellow crafts and master masons walking two by two and the secretary, holding
the Book of Constitution on a cushion. The officers, bearing the columns, plumb
rule, and level, and the treasurer, holding the Volume of Sacred Law, flanked by the stewards, came next, followed by the band of the U.S. Navy SS Susquehanna and the banner of Zetland Lodge. A cornucopia of corn and ewer of wine was then borne by the past masters and they were followed by the senior warden with the plans of the new lodge building and the inscribed plate. The senior deacon brought
up the rear with the trowel and mallet. When they reached the site, the plate with
its inscription together with coins of British currency and a copy of the Hong Kong Register containing a programme of the day��s events were soldered into a hollow in the foundation stone just before HMS Cleopatra signalled midday: ��As the bells proclaimed high noon, the upper stone descended to its place and was properly adjusted, �X the band playing God save the Queen��. The provincial grand master,
Samuel Rawson, was presented with an exquisite silver epergne worth $80, by
which gift he was so overwhelmed as to be rendered speechless, ��overpowered and obliged to sit down��. 10 The morning��s events were followed by a ball. John Wright commented in his diary: ��All the masons looked remarkably well in their aprons and
different badges of office. It is said to have been the best ball given in Hong Kong��.
The new building nicknamed the Bungalow was designed by the surveyor general, Charles St. George Cleverly, the senior warden.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the masons of Zetland Lodge came from a variety of less-than-grand backgrounds. The following all proclaimed their Masonic allegiance on their headstones: John Lemon [9/2/7] was a bookbinder, Milton A. Harsant [9/3/10] an employee at Bowra & Co., one of the biggest ship��s chandlers of the day, John Warden Morriss [10/8/5] worked for the German ships�� chandlery run by Frederick Schwarzkopf, who also joined the craft the following year, and William Collins [9/3/11] from Guernsey was master of the sailing barque, Primula. The lodge must have been one of the few places where men could drink and dine on equal footing in a spirit of brotherhood. This spirit of good fellowship struck visitors to the banquets. When about fifty sat down to a sumptuous feast on 30 December 1851 with the American merchant, Sandwith Drinker, in the master��s chair, the guest speaker (himself not a mason) congratulated the lodge on ��the unanimity of feeling so apparent throughout the assemblage��.
1861�V1880
The 1860s saw the consolidation of the Masonic presence in Hong Kong, which by now was reported to be ��very numerously supported��.11 By the end of the decade two new lodges, Victoria and Perseverance, had been added. The bungalow was no longer spacious enough and a new porticoed and pillared two-storey building took its place in 1865. Masons continued to come from a wide cross-section of the community: Isaac McLean [11A/9/5] was a sergeant in the Royal Artillery, Henry Winniberg [40/2/3] the Polish proprietor of the British Hotel, the only respectable hotel in the colony, and Edward Anthony [20/5/2] a storekeeper. Alexander Ross [43/1/4] was a shipwright, Thomas James Record [40/3/3], from Woolwich, London, a moulder in the Navy Yard, and J.W. Cunningham [42/3/13] of Maine, U.S.A., a ship��s pilot. Two masons captained ships, Captain Pladsrud [32/2/10] from Norway and Captain Thomas Austin [38/2/3] of the Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company. One member of the craft was provided with a headstone by the masons: Frederick Plummer [38/2/4] of the Navy Yard must have been a zealous and dedicated member of the craft. His death prompted ��Lodges of Sorrow�� in both Zetland and Perseverance Lodges. His epitaph, Sit lux et lux fuit (There is a light and the light is no more), seems to sum up the appreciation and esteem of his fellow masons.
Freemasonry began to flourish in Hong Kong in the 1870s. The part played by the less influential members during the earlier decades was important in that
the craft membership was widely based, and the members from the lower ranks of
the society had already proved their worth when, in the mid-1870s and early 1880s, the explosion in influence and numbers occurred. The ties between Freemasonry and the Protestant churches were made clear when, from 1875, the masons were
permitted to hold an annual service in the cathedral on the feast of St. John. In that year the Masonic Sermon was preached by the colonial chaplain, Rev. Richard Kidd [8/18/2], who doubled as district grand chaplain of the Hong Kong Lodges.
When he died of dysentery in August 1879, he was described in his obituary as
an ��energetic and enthusiastic mason, ever ready to advise an erring brother and assist him with his purse as far as he was able��. After Rev. Kidd��s death his place was taken by Rev. D.B. Morris, who combined the post of district grand chaplain with minister of the Union Church and Presbyterian churches and chaplain to
H.M. Forces in Hong Kong. Rev. C.G. Booth [8/9/2], who died in 1882, was both chaplain to the garrison and chaplain to several lodges:
On the death of Rev. Gilbert Booth �K Mr. C.P. Chater, Deputy Grand Master, immediately summoned the lodges of the Colony to pay the usual tokens of respect at the grave of the departed brother and the summons was duly attended to by those who received it in time.12
In March 1876, a purely Masonic burial service took place in the Hong
Kong Cemetery. Fifty brethren wearing their aprons and carrying acacia sprays, the Freemason symbol of immortality, followed the coffin of Mr. Estarico to the graveside. The brethren were led to the graveside by the banner of Zetland Lodge draped in black. The Freemasons seem to have been the first recorded organization, not a recognized Christian denomination, to be given the freedom to conduct their own rites at the graveside in this period.
The ball given by the combined lodges in 1874 demonstrated the increasing influence of the masons. It was described in the China Mail as ��probably the most successful gathering of the sort which Hong Kong has yet witnessed��. 13 Its description merited three columns of newsprint, whereas the ball to mark the end of the racing season was only given a quarter of one column. Those present numbered 608, over half the expatriate population, of whom only 108 were women. The China Mail noted with pride that ��Masons at the other ports would be interested in learning how thoroughly the social credit of the craft had been maintained by their brethren in Hong Kong��. The decorating of the ball and supper rooms under the superintendence of Daniel Caldwell was brilliant with a blue and silver theme, and trophies, banners and engravings borrowed from the lodges. The whole affair was under the direction of the district grand master, Theophilus Gee Linstead [8/12/1]. The governor, Sir Arthur Kennedy, and his daughter were received by twenty-four knights of St. John who, with drawn rapiers, formed an arch of steel beneath which they passed. The governor then proceeded up the stairway lined with masons wearing the regalia of their orders, crimson and blue for the royal arch masons and blue and silver for the master masons. The pomp and ritual of such occasions must have enhanced the appeal of the craft in the otherwise rather arid life of the expatriates.
By the 1880s, two chapters, the Royal Arch Chapter and the Rose Croix Chapter had been formed to stand above the lodges. The number of lodges had grown to six including the Lodge of St. John and the United Service Lodge. The seventh, Eothen Mark Lodge, was founded in that year with Sir Catchick Paul Chater as its first master. The establishment of the Lodge of St. John proved controversial. When the petitioners for a new English Lodge were turned down by the district grand master of the English Constitution, they turned to the Scottish Constitution becoming, in spite of a marked absence of Scotsmen among their ranks, the first Scottish lodge in Hong Kong. The man who had fought for the new lodge and for his place as its master was Joseph Moses Emanuel, a Jewish clerk in the shipbuilding enterprise of an ex-ship��s carpenter, William B. Spratt. In 1881 the new Lodge of St. John elected two German tavern keepers to posts in the lodge. Louis Kirchmann [23/10/3] became director of ceremonies and Andreas Wohlters [20/10/9], who ran the Lord Nelson Tavern, was made a steward. The secretary of the lodge was John Livesey, the assistant
engine driver of the fire engine. Unlike Kirchmann and Wohlters, the senior
deacon, junior deacon and tyler were not even accorded the civility of initials
before their names in the announcement of the elected officers, but were listed as
Hayden, Vanstone and Partington.
1880�V1918
The influence of the Freemasons in Hong Kong at the end of the nineteenth century can be judged by the openness of a fraternity that in modern times has earned for itself a reputation for secrecy. Since everyone who mattered was a member, it seemed right and natural that Masonic business was freely reported on by the newspapers. Meetings were advertised, elections results were given together with the lists of officers chosen by the various lodges. For example, in 1881, the Rose Croix Chapter of St. Mary Magdalene included Henry Smith [8/8/2], chief accountant at the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, as first general and Walter Deane, the superintendent of the police, as second general. Lawrence Mallory [7/10/5] and the architect, William Danby [7/10/7] of Danby, Leigh and
Orange, who died in 1908 from injuries received when falling down the granite
steps of the Hong Kong Club, were grand marshals. Mallory was an American
timber merchant from Philadelphia with a timber yard in Wan Chai, who left $3,000 in his will to his Japanese housekeeper. Dr. William Young [23/13/4] was captain of the guard and Dr. Phineas Ayres, treasurer. The solid respectability of this chapter contrasts with the distinctly marginal tone of the Lodge of St. John. It
is not surprising the new upstart lodge ruffled some feathers.
This openness was made easier since the editors of the main newspapers were committed masons. Robert Fraser-Smith [23/8/4] of the Hong Kong Telegraph and N.B. Dennys [18/8/10] of the China Mail both helped popularize Freemasonry by giving it column space. Fraser-Smith��s description of the
Masonic Ball of 1883 was even longer than the description in 1874 and included
the decorations, the supper menu, the programme of dances and the names of the sixty-two stewards. Among these were found the names of the Chater brothers, Major-General Sargent, Hormusjee Mody, who is buried in the Parsee Cemetery, and the leading merchant from Turner & Co., Phineas Ryrie [23/8/6].
As Hong Kong became more cosmopolitan, masonry followed suite. As an example of the varied nationalities and backgrounds of the members, the 1882 list of officers in the Eothen Mark Lodge can be looked at.14 The Armenian Joseph Chater [11B/9/4], brother to Catchick Paul, became master and the post of senior warden was given to the American, Lawrence Mallory. The junior warden post went to a Welshman from Abergele, Edward Hughes [7/10/9], a broker and auctioneer who had been in Hong Kong for thirty years when he died from typhoid fever in 1911. Paul Jordan [7/10/4], the nephew of the Chater brothers, was secretary. The junior overseer post went to a Berliner, Erich Carl Georg [7/10/8], who had been a member of Siemssen��s until 1887, when he formed a partnership with Edward Hughes. By the time of his death in 1911 he had become president of Club Germania and secretary to the Stockbrokers Association. A Jew, A.N. Judah, was the organist. Catchick Paul Chater [11B/10/1] achieved the rank of district grand master for Hong Kong and Southern China in February 1881 aged only thirty-five and was to remain in that post until 1909. According to the China Mail:
His Masonic career speaks trumpet tongued in his favour. It is seldom the fortune of any man to attain such widespread and genuine popularity �X his high honours were bestowed by the unanimous desire of every lodge of Freemasonry in the Colony.15
In a place where gatherings were fraught with rivalries, Sir Catchick Paul Chater guided the craft through the inevitable squabbles and kept the ideal of brotherly love to the fore of the movement. It could be suggested that his own upward path in the colonial society may have been eased by his standing in the movement and the contacts it gave him at all levels of the society
Even as the movement expanded and drew into its ranks more influential men, it continued to recruit men whose social standing was less exalted and to elect them as officers. It seems that masonry did not succumb to the social pressures of the time by becoming an exclusive organization but continued, perhaps in part due to the machinations of men like Joseph Emmanuel and the Lodge St. John, to draw on experienced men from the lower echelons. To these men, membership of a lodge was a mark of respectability and proof that they were moving up in society and this group was more likely to display the Masonic emblems on their headstones.
During the third quarter of the nineteenth century, three men were buried by their lodges and the size of their monuments shows the importance of their contribution to the movement. The first member is Daniel Caldwell
who died in 1876 and about whom much
has already been written. The second is Henry Smith [8/8/2] of Victoria Lodge. From 1866 to the time of his death in June 1882, he worked for the young Hongkong & Shanghai Bank where he was promoted from assistant to chief accountant. According to his obituary he was ��the soul of good nature and kindness and popular with all classes��. The third monument belongs to ��the late worshipful brother��, J.W. Croker [20/6/2], buried
in 1896 by the members of St. John��s Lodge ��as a token of affectionate regard and
approbation of his long and faithful service to the Lodge��. Croker was an engineer
who began his career in Hong Kong in 1872 as foreman engineer of Novelty
Ironworks. After working as engineer on Captain Sands�� Patent Slip, he joined
Hong Kong and Whampoa Dockyard. From 1886 onwards, he was back at the Novelty Iron Works as manager to George Fenwick.
The only group in Hong Kong who adamantly refused to allow its members to belong to the organization was the Roman Catholic Church. As early as January 1856, Grandpre, who was assistant superintendent of the police and a mason, was refused permission to marry Ann d��Almeida of Singapore. Her father also happened to be a mason. The China Mail reported: ��Mr. Grandpre was not inclined to renounce either his masonry or his marriage��. He therefore married according to the rites of the Protestant Church. A similar situation provoked a strong outburst against the Roman Catholics. In February 1884 the Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company steamer, Yotsai, commanded by Captain John Hoyland [23/12/5], was on trial after renovations and a small number of well-known persons had been invited aboard for the trip. At two p.m., while
the passengers were enjoying liqueurs on deck after their tiffin, the boilers blew
up with such force that they cut the steamer in two. The scholarly antiquarian, Polycarpo Andreas da Costa [8/3/3], who was the secretary of the Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company, died in the accident and was refused burial in the Catholic Cemetery on the grounds that he was a practising mason. The matter was raised in the Legislative Council and strong disapproval was registered, coupled with queries as to whether the government should continue to support Roman Catholic schools. Da Costa��s funeral service was conducted in the Hong Kong Cemetery according to Masonic ritual. Almost all those mentioned as on board at the time of the explosion, including the captain, John Hoyland and three expatriate officers, George Frizell, George Pinker and William Scott [8/3/2], who died in the accident and share a monument, were Freemasons. The self-exclusion of most Portuguese Catholics from Freemasonry in Hong Kong possibly led to them being thrown back onto the resources of their own community. It is interesting to speculate to what extent the Portuguese community was held back from promotion to higher positions in business and the civil service because they followed the dictates of their religious leaders. They certainly missed out on an important source of networking and support.

The first Chinese to be initiated into a lodge in Hong Kong may have been
Chan Tai Kwong. He died in 1882. He had met the bishop of Hong Kong in
England in 1849 and came to Hong Kong under the patronage of the bishop

who appointed him assistant tutor at St. Paul��s College.16 The next Chinese
masons were Sir Kai Ho Kai and Wei
Yuk who were initiated in October 1888
and February 1889 respectively. Their
standing in Hong Kong��s society could not be questioned since they had both served on the Legislative Council. Ho
Kai��s brother, Ho Wyson, joined three months later. Both Ho Kai and Wei Yuk
took an active part in the formation of the University Lodge. Chinese would-be initiates were, however, frowned on and
in 1899, in reply to a query in Ars Quatuor Coronatum, Brother O��Driscoll Gourdin [7/9/3] made clear the general feeling when he said:
24.4. Monument to Polycarpo Andreas da Costa, d. 24.2.1884.

Grand Lodge is (as you are of course aware) strongly opposed to the admission of Chinese into Freemasonry, and though we have the misfortune to have one or two of such nationality attached to one of our lodges, their number is not likely to increase.
It would be many years before the climate of opinion changed enough to allow the Chinese to enter the craft in a spirit of equality. By the late nineteenth century, the symbol of Freemasonry was common on headstones in the Cemetery. The turn of the century probably saw the movement
in Hong Kong at its apogee. During these years, two governors, Sir William Robinson (1891�V98) and Sir Henry Blake (1898�V1903), were masons and staunch supporters. Sir Henry had been a past master of Sussex Lodge No. 359 in
Jamaica and district grand master of that island. The celebration of half a century
of masonry in Hong Kong in July 1895 was a great occasion and a grand ball
was given with an attendance of between eight and nine hundred. Interestingly the masons at this time temporarily stopped sending their contributions to the Masonic funds in Britain. A great deal of anger had been roused when the Masonic Girls�� School in England refused a place to the daughter of Alexander Falconer [23/13/3], second master of the Central School and a past mason of
twenty years�� standing, who had died suddenly in June 1893 of heart disease. It
was decided then that the support of the Hong Kong and South China Masonic Benevolence Fund should henceforth be given to children educated in Hong
Kong at the Diocesan Boys�� and Girls�� Schools. A significant step away from the mother country had been taken and a vote of confidence given to Hong Kong as a
place to settle and raise children. The fact that the Freemasons could sustain their craft so successfully over
this period of more than fifty years, when many societies languished and faltered,
is not easily explained. Perhaps the concept of ��brotherhood��, promoted as one of the key doctrines of the society, allowed men to trust one another across some of the boundaries of nation, class and language. Perhaps too, the lack of wives and female company contributed, since lonely men far from home were more in need of fraternity and support. The trust that grew up among the brethren might have oiled the wheels of commerce in China where every treaty port had its lodges. It is easy to visualize partnerships being formed and money secured to be invested in new ventures during and after the dinners at Zetland Hall.
Chapter 25 The Chinese Buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery
The Chinese represent a small but especially important minority group in this Cemetery. It is tantalizing and sad that so few could be identified but, among
those who were are some significant names. Between the dates of 1891, when
the first Chinese as far as can be ascertained was buried in the Cemetery, and
1970, when this study ends, approximately 197 Chinese found their permanent resting place in the grounds. These include 71 men, 96 women and 30 children.
Besides these are a small group of eight mysterious marker stones, some of which are painted white and used to mark boundaries. They have Chinese characters inscribed on them, indicating that they were used originally as headstones. The characters are old and difficult to read, but it would be interesting to know to whom these old stones engraved with Chinese characters belonged and whether other Chinese Christians whose stones have disappeared were buried in this manner.
Chinese Women Married to Europeans
The first Chinese, by a few years, to have been found in the Cemetery is Wong
Humby (���a�� ) [29/1/22]. She departed this life in January 1891 aged forty-two years. Wong was married to John Humby, who joined the police in 1865 and was later picked for the superior naval yard police force. In 1872, Humby bought
the British Tavern, changed its name to the Empire Tavern and successfully
applied for a spirit licence. He continued as proprietor of the tavern until 1891.
He was obviously considered respectable because his name appeared in the jury
list for most years between 1871 and 1881. After the death of their mother, his two
daughters, Margaret and Mary Ann, were placed in 1881 and 1884 respectively
in the Diocesan Orphanage. Wong Humby was buried in the Cemetery before
Major Henry Knollys visited and wrote: ��No natives are allowed inside so, leaving
our rickshas at the gate, we pass into the peaceful solitary groves��. 1
It is possible that a number of Chinese wives in this category go unrecognized, especially if they are recorded with Christian names and their husband��s surname and no Chinese characters have been added. This is the case for example with May Rapp [12/9/4], but in this case there is proof that she was Chinese. In the nineteenth century, Chinese wives of the European settlers were not usually buried with their husbands or even mentioned on the inscriptions. Hee Mong Banker (�^���� ) [1/3/6] and Mary Ayou Caldwell (���T�� ) [23/4/1]
were among the exceptions in that they were given their own monuments. Hee
Mong Banker came from a very different layer of society from Wong Humby. She was the respectable widow of William Swallow Banker, a merchant from Newchwang, and when she died in 1906 aged sixty, she was commemorated by
her son with an imposing angel standing on a plinth. Mary Ayou Caldwell, who
died in 1895, also achieved status and respectability in the course of her long and
tumultuous life which has been already described in an earlier chapter. One other enigmatic headstone deserves a mention. A-Kuk Takyan [34/1/8], who died in
1895, may have been a ��protected woman��. Her headstone has been erected ��by her friend, H.R. in affectionate remembrance��. She died in August 1895 and her
epitaph is: ��Sheltered and safe from sorrow��.
Chinese Women Married to Chinese
The lives of the individual Chinese ladies buried in the Cemetery remain almost entirely shrouded in mystery. These wives of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Chinese Christians would have led quiet, house-bound lives, disabled by their small feet from walking far abroad, and by custom from appearing in public. That these wives were often treasured and respected

25.1. Headstone in memory of Wong Humby, d. 1891, the first known Chinese to be buried in the Cemetery.
in the family circle is shown by the size and ornamentation of some of their monuments. Those in the Cemetery seem to fall into three groups depending on how traditional the families into which they had married were.
The first and most conservative group of six have no personal names engraved on their inscriptions. They are only recorded by their own family name and the name of the family into which they were married, for example Lam married to Wong family (�����L�ӧg ) [2/4/16], or in one case merely Wife of Chun (�����P�� ) [31/4/20]. Their monuments vary from the totally Chinese in imagery and style to the conventionally Christian.
The second group of twelve consists of wives whose names are given but about whom, as with the first group, nothing else is known. The earliest is Chau Yau Kam (�����P�� ) [34/1/26] born in Canton who died in 1894, aged thirty-seven. The daughter of another, Chow Chung Shee (�P����� ) [1/2/5], who died in 1906, was responsible for erecting her headstone. This is surprising when such tasks usually fell to the lot of the male members of the family. One of the grandest monuments in the Cemetery belongs to Lau YiWan (�B���� ) [6/3/27] who married into the Wang family and died in 1908.
The last group of six names contains those
more Westernized women who had Christian
names. Among these are Mary Hung [5/1/33] who died in 1897, Margaret Jane Heang

25.2. Photograph of an unknown Chinese lady whose identity on the inscription is given as Zhang, consort and mother, Xu Clan, d. 1924.

25.3. Monument in memory of Lau Yi Wan married to Wang family, d. 1908.
[5/3/44] who died in 1899 and Bessie Ting [16/1/7] who died in 1908. Perhaps
they were the wives of returnees from the United States or Australia.
Chinese Men
One particular monument can be taken as an introduction to this section. Its tall spire and gothic features stand out in the far distant corner of Section 1 and it clearly demonstrates the dilemma of Chinese Christians when they approached death. It must have been a terrible wrench for such men to realize that they would not be remembered down through the generations in their clan hall, with their name inscribed in the clan book and the customary rites performed in their honour on the appointed days. Being a Chinese Christian must have engendered some of the same feelings as being exiled, even when conversion was willingly embraced. The inscription on the tomb of U Pun Cho (�E�Y�� ) [1/2/17] is the longest in the entire cemetery and reflects a little of this feeling. Those who erected this monument wanted to record some of his family history for posterity which they
rightly feared would otherwise be lost. U Pun Cho died in 1905 aged thirty-seven
and, judging by the size of the monument, must have been a successful merchant. According to the inscription, he had wanted to be a scientist but, when his father��s younger brother died in Hong Kong, U Pun Cho had to take his place in order to support the family back in the clan village in Xinning County, Guangdong. His family, which was originally from a more northern district of China, could trace its history back to the Song dynasty.
Among the Chinese buried in the Cemetery, two groups seem to emerge. The first group includes nine men and three women who demonstrate their allegiance to the Ching dynasty by the addition of the characters, Wong Ching, or by the use of imperial (probably bought) titles on their inscriptions. This is in contrast to the second group who show no particular allegiance to the Chinese empire.
By far the most influential man to include
Wong Ching in his inscription was Fung Ku Shau (���j�� ) [1/3/18], comprador of the National Bank of China, who died
in 1906. He was the son of Fung Ping
Shan, alias Fung Po Ha alias Fung Chew,

25.4. The imposing monument in memory of U Pun Cho, merchant from Xinning County, d. 1905.
one of the founders of the Tung Wah Hospital. In the 1870s he was comprador
to A.H. Hogg, whose baby daughter Eleanor Hogg [20/15/3] is also buried in the Cemetery; but he later became comprador to the Chartered Mercantile Bank. Fung had been educated at St. Paul��s College and was a close friend and a
classmate of Ng Choy (Wu Ting-fang), the first Chinese barrister. Fung helped
to start the Po Leung Kuk in order to assist those women and children who had been kidnapped and brought to Hong Kong for immoral purposes. He came from Tung Kwun and was one of the signatories of a petition to the government to try to prevent the kidnapping of females from that district. Two members of the group, Yeung Woi Chun (���פt ) [1/4/11] and Bessie Yeung (����h ) [26/5/5] , both came from the same village as Sun Yat Sen, Cui Heng village in Xiang Shan District, and they would have known each other��s families. The other supporters of the Ching dynasty include Leung Kin Shan (�簷�� ) [16/6/3] who was one of the bidders for the opium farm in 1909. 2 The ladies include Chow Chung Shee (�P����� ) [1/2/5] and Wong Sau Ngai (���q�� ) [5/1/38], who came from Macau and whose gravestone is entirely Chinese in design and imagery, and lastly a certain Chen married to Wan (�Ū����Ӯ��H ) [16/1/6] who was also the possessor of an imperial title. Her husband may have held a post in the civil service as her headstone is of a standard government type.
Civil Servants
Among the civil servants are the two Ng��s, probably brothers who both worked many years in the magistracy, Ng Kwai Shang (�d�� ) [4/20/10] and Ng Ping Shang�d�̥� [5/3/43] . There was also Wong Wing Ho (���ïE ) [16/4/14]
(Huang Yong Hao), who died in August 1909. Ng Kwai Shang entered government service aged only fifteen in 1873 and remained there for twenty-eight years, rising to the rank of second clerk in the magistracy in 1889 and living in Wellington Street. After retiring from government service, Ng became secretary to the chief manager of Wing Kee, a leading Chinese company. He must have also been involved with the German firm, Carlovitz & Co., because in 1895, when the
company celebrated its fiftieth-year anniversary, he was selected as spokesman
for the Chinese. Ng died suddenly in November 1900 having attended the office
the day before. According to his obituary, Ng was educated at Barcelby College,
India and, on his arrival in the colony in 1875, he could neither read nor write Chinese and had to be provided with a Chinese teacher by the authorities. Wong Wing Ho was appointed clerk and shroff in the registrar general��s office in 1892.3 He was said to be the son of Wong Shing, the well-known deacon of the Chinese
congregation of the London Missionary Society, who managed the London
Mission press and was a pioneer of Chinese journalism, and also the first Chinese in 1858 to be included in the jury list. Wong Shing had graduated from the first
class of the Morrison Education Society School. Another Chinese who cast his lot with the colonial government was Tsoi
Yeuk Shan who came from the Heung Shan province of Guangdong. By 1897 he was second Chinese clerk and interpreter in the registrar general��s office. He was made a British subject in 1900. His five-year-old son, Tsoi Pui Kwong [41/1/3], died in 1901. The inscription makes it clear that the family was Christian: ��From
thy parent��s arm / Borne to Jesus breast / Now above all harm / dear child sweetly rest��. After the New Territories had been handed over to the British and the
local people ��pacified��, Tsoi Yeuk Shan accompanied Colonial Secretary Stewart
Lockhart through the territory as his interpreter. He was also the specialist within the government on triad societies. He later went into business. There seems little doubt that conversion to Christianity helped provide that bond of trust between the races, which otherwise was lacking, and helped to speed promotion.
Professionals and Businessmen
It is interesting to note the arrival in Hong Kong of a university graduate, Rev. Walter N. Fong (�K�بO ) [1/2/3], from the United States, with his American
wife, Emma E. Howse. Fong, who came from Guangdong, was the first Chinese to graduate from Stanford University, California in 1896. Earlier, Fong had
become a Methodist preacher after studying for the ministry at the University of the Pacific. According to the New York Herald, it was during these years
that Walter Fong helped to organize the Hung Chung Hui Society. With its
headquarters in New York the society worked towards the overthrow of the Ching dynasty.4 He resigned his post as instructor in the University of California
to become principal of the Li Sing Scientific and Industrial College and thus to
strengthen the education of young China and further reform in that country. This
college was founded with a grant of $50,000 in memory of Li Sing, the founder of the well-known Li family. In the address at the first speech day and prize giving,
it was said that the only way to raise China from her low industrial condition was to educate her sons in modern science and industry, training them to use their hands as well as their brains. According to the Hong Kong Telegraph, the college had experienced teething problems and, of the more than seventy students who enrolled, only thirty-five remained to take the final exam. 5
Fong died in May 1906 aged forty. The
second teacher buried in the Cemetery
in 1908 is Lau Hon Chun (�B�~�� )
[1/6/2], superintendent of the South China Academy, a private school at
No. 7, Bonham Road where science
was also taught. The unfortunate Lau was killed in a laboratory experiment that went wrong.
One early Chinese doctor came to Hong Kong from China. Dr. Chung King U(�鴺�� ) [2/7/5] was trained in the medical school in Tientsin, which opened in 1881 under the patronage of the reforming viceroy, Li Hung Chang. Dr. Chung was appointed in 1890 as staff surgeon of the newly opened Alice Memorial Hospital. By 1898, he was teaching a course on minor surgery and bandaging at the Chinese College of Medicine. In 1902, he became resident surgeon in Western medicine at the Tung Wah Hospital. He must have resigned due to ill health, as his resignation was received by the government the day after his death in 1902. Dr. Chung��s sister, Chung Foong Ching (���M) [34/2/22], may have accompanied him to Hong Kong. Hers is one of the earliest Chinese headstones, dating from 1894.
A small Latin cross commemorates a baby, Tso Kai [26/2/8], who died in 1908 aged six months. He was the son of Tso Seen Wan, a Chinese solicitor ��highly respected among all sections of the community��.6 Tso Kai��s mother, Alice Suffiad, was the daughter of Mahmood Ben Suffiad, who had worked in the colonial secretary��s office for twenty years. Tso Seen Wan��s uncle, Tso Aon, had entered the service of the superintendent of trade as early as 1834 and, when the British moved to Hong Kong, he had become responsible for all the Chinese staff working there, as well as serving as comprador to the treasury. Tso Aon��s father, Chow

25.5. Monument in memory of Dr. Chung King U, d. 24.11.1902.
Yik Chong, was an important and influential merchant in Macau who had been
knighted by the Portuguese government and made a member of the Portuguese
Legislative Assembly. Tso Seen Wan was sent to Shanghai and Cheltenham
College in England for his education, and then set up the law firm, Tso and
Hodgson. He was on the board of the Tung Wah Hospital and was present at
the coronation of Edward VIII as one of the representatives of the Chinese, and
from 1929 to 1937 was a member of the Legislative Assembly. Tso was also one of
the mostly English-educated signatories of the petition to found a school for upper class Chinese children based on public school principles. The petition was agreed to by the government and led to the founding of St. Stephens Boys�� College in
1903 and St. Stephens Girls�� College in 1905. He is further mentioned as one of the
Chinese who gave generously to the endowment fund set up to meet the costs of founding Hong Kong University.
An impressive monument, whose cheerful imitation flowers are changed with great regularity by some of his descendants, stands in remembrance of a man who must have been among the first Chinese dentists in Hong Kong.
Chu Sien Ting (�}���F ) [4/19/3] died in July 1912 aged fifty-eight. One of the largest monuments in the Cemetery commemorates the death of Yeung Shi (����) in 1901 and Woo Pak Pang (�J�ʪB ) [16A/7/1] in 1908. They were the wife and young son of Woo Hay Tong. Mr. Woo was a successful businessman who
founded the Tung On Steamship Company. He also acquired two steam ships which were run in direct competition with the Hong Kong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company.
Members of the Early Christian-Educated Group and Associates of Dr. Sun Yat Sen
Two men buried in the Cemetery and a third, whose son is buried there, were among the very early converts of the London Missionary Society, and part of the influential Chinese Christian community. They were Wei On (���w ) [6/3/25], Wan Tsing Kai (�ŲM�� ) [4/19/2] (1832�V1915) (Wen Qing-xi) and Kwan Yuen Cheung (������) [2/10/9] (1832�V1912). Wei On was the son of Wei Akwong, who
originally came from a village near Macau where his father had been comprador to two American merchants. After his father��s death, the family fortunes nose-
dived. Wei Akwong, as the youngest of ten sons, was turned out of the house to find his own living and had to resort to begging on the streets of Macau until he
got a job as a servant in a Portuguese household. He left this job because of the bad treatment he was subjected to and luckily then found a patron, Rev. E.C. Bridgman, who rescued him and sent him to Singapore as the first scholar of the Morrison Education Board. Akwong became comprador of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China. He held this position for more than
twenty years and was a leading member of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee and was on the jury list from 1864 to 1875. He died in May 1878 leaving fifteen boys and ten girls, the offspring of two wives and five concubines. Wei Akwong��s eldest son and Wei On��s brother was the well-known Wei Yuk, or later Sir Boshan Wei, who was one of the first three Chinese to be sent overseas to Scotland for
his education. He succeeded his father as comprador and was a member of the
Legislative Council from 1896 to 1917. He was knighted in 1919. Wei On was
educated at Cheltenham College and then at Christ Church College, Oxford. He was a fine athlete and won first prize in the inter-public schools gymnastic competition. He became a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature in
England and the Supreme Court in Hong Kong. Wei On died in May, 1907 aged forty years. A small headstone close to the monument commemorating Wei On is said to have belonged to Wei On��s mother, one of the two wives of Wei Akwong.
Among this important group of Christian Chinese are the friends and co-revolutionaries who supported Dr. Sun Yat Sen and worked with him for the overthrow of the Ching dynasty. Sun Yat Sen arrived in Hong Kong in about 1883 where he met, and for a time lived with, Rev. Charles Hagar, the American Baptist Missionary, who baptized him in late 1883 or early 1884. When attending Sunday services at the Union
Church conducted by Rev.
and as a member of the circle of Chinese Christians, Sun Yat Sen would have made friends among this group which would have included
Wan Bing Chung whom
he had previously met in the
United States. Wan��s father,

25.6. Monument in memory of Wan Tsing Kai, d. 1915.
Wan Tsing Kai (�ŲM�� ) [4/19/2], was one of the earliest Chinese Christians in Hong Kong. He came to Hong Kong in 1854 from the Toi Shan district of Guangdong
and was by trade a carpenter. He was among the first ten converts of the London Missionary Society and a devoted follower of Rev. James Legge. Wan was
baptized in April 1864 and was ordained a deacon of the London Missionary
Society in 1872. He went on to acquire property in the form of shops in Hong Kong��s Chinatown. Wan was very interested in evangelistic work in Hong Kong
and was one of those instrumental in founding the To Tsai Church and the China Congregational Church. The latter was said to have been built on property owned
by Wan, and was also said to be the church in which Sun Yat Sen was baptized and where he lived for a time on the first floor. Wan was naturalized as a British subject in 1900.7 His rise in wealth and status is a good example of how conversion to Christianity could materially increase the upward mobility of a Chinese in
Hong Kong. His son, Wan Bing Chung, had been sent to the United States in 1873 at the age of twelve to study under the auspices of the Chinese Educational Mission. On his return, he taught for a time at the Central School. Wan Bing
Chung��s first wife was Nieh Ping Kwan (����� ) [5/3/37] (Kwan Yuet Ping) whose brother, Kwan King Leung, entered the Hong Kong College of Medicine at the same time as Sun Yat Sen. They lived together in the same dormitory
and became close friends. Nieh Ping Kwan died in 1898 aged thirty-three and is
described on her headstone as an exemplary Christian who had been for eleven
years president of the Chinxiang Women��s Temperance Union and translator of
the Christian Temperance literature. Wan Wai Hing (�ź��y ) [1/5/1], the son
of Wan Bing Chung and Nieh Ping Kwan, died in 1907 aged eighteen and is also buried in the Cemetery. It was probably through Wan Bing Chung that Sun Yat Sen met his secretary, Soong Ching Ling whom he married in 1914. Wan had
befriended her father, Charlie Soong in America. A closer connection was formed
when Wan and Soong married two sisters from the Christian Ni family from Yuyao. In 1926, a younger Soong daughter, Soong Mei Ling, married Chiang
Kai-shek. So it seems as if the events taking place in and around church attendance
and time spent in the United States had an important influence on Sun Yat Sen
and his outlook. From among this like-minded group of Christians, Sun Yat Sen found some of his closest friends and allies. Kwan Yuen Cheung (����� ) [2/10/9], the father of Nieh Ping Kwan,
Wan Bing Chung��s first wife, was an elder in the To Tsai Church. He came

from a Christian family based in Panyu in Guangdong. His first job in Hong Kong was working in the printing press of the
Ying Wah College set up by the London
Missionary Society. There he won the trust and regard of one of Legge��s European
colleagues who taught him the Western
techniques of dentistry. Kwan started to
practise in Guangzhou in 1870 but returned
to Hong Kong where he became the first registered Chinese dentist. He is celebrated as the founding father of Chinese dentistry. Kwan Yuen Cheung met his wife, Li Shi (���� ) [2/10/9], at the house of Mary Ayou, the wife of Daniel Caldwell. Li Shi, who came from Nanhai, had lost her entire family during the disturbances caused by the
uprising of the Red Turbans and had fled to
Hong Kong where she was taken in by the Caldwell family. Besides giving birth
to fifteen children, many of whom became doctors, Li Shi worked as interpreter, or perhaps head nurse, at the Alice Memorial Hospital and taught in Ying Wah College. Kwan Yuen Cheung and Wan Tsing Kai count among the six men who
have been named the elders of Hong Kong. Sun Yat Sen often spent his free time at the home of the Kwans and considered them as godparents. The Kwan��s daughter-in-law, Emma Lee Kwan (Li Kam Ngo) (����Z) [2/2/22], the wife of Sun��s classmate, Kwan King Leung, was from Hawaii and was introduced to him by Sun Yat Sen. Kwan King Leung became a well-known doctor and established the Chinese Medical Association in Hong Kong.
Hung Chuen Fook (�x�K��) (1836�V1904) and Yeung Ku Wan (������) (1861�V1901)
Even more closely connected with the revolution are two men who now lie at rest in the Hong Kong Cemetery. The first of them, Hung Chuen Fook (�x�K��) [2/4/28] (Hong Chun Kui), was a nephew of Hung Hsiu Chuan (Hong
25.7. Monument in memory of Kwan Yuen Cheung, d. 1912, and his wife, Lai A Mui, d. 1902, early Christians and close associates of Sun Yat Sen.
Xiu Quan), the king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Hung had joined the Taiping Rebellion when young and was given the title of King Ying for his achievements in the field of battle. On the capture of Nanking by the Imperial forces, he fled to Hong Kong and joined the crew of a European-owned ship as cook. He returned later to Hong Kong where he worked as a Chinese herbalist. Hung was introduced to Tse Tsan Tai by Tse��s father and
in 1899 he offered his services to the cause of the
republican movement. Tse Tsan Tai wrote in his Secret History of the Revolution that he ��had considerable military bravery and experience in
the army of his uncle�K. We decided to place the
task of organizing and recruiting the fighting force in the hands of Hung-chuen-fook��. 8 In this way Hung was chosen to be chief military organizer of the League of Patriots and was given the task of testing their arms and ammunition. He did this on the slopes of Castle Peak where Li Ji-tang owned the farm now known as the Red House and open to the public. Li was the son of the wealthy businessman, Li
Sing, and the death of his father had enabled him to contribute $500,000 to the
revolutionary cause. Hung led the forces of the Republic under Sun Yat Sen in its second attempt to capture Canton. After this attempt to seize Canton in January
1903 was betrayed and aborted, a number of revolutionaries were arrested. Hung
shaved his head and escaped to Singapore in disguise. He later returned to Hong Kong to reorganize the men and make another attempt but, soon after his
return, he fell ill and died in January 1904 aged sixty-eight. Hung must have had a charmed life, escaping first in 1864 from the massacres of the Tai Ping rebels and then again in 1903 from the disastrous attempt to oust the Imperial government in
Canton and establish a revolutionary foothold in China. It seems incredible that one Hakka man buried in the Cemetery could have played a major role in two such momentous movements in the history of China.
The second man took an even more prominent part in the revolutionary movement and as a result of his role was murdered. Yeung Ku Wan (������ ) [4/16/3] (Yang Qu-yun) was born in Hong Kong in 1861. His father, a Fukienese

25.8. Headstone in memory of Hung Chuen Fook, a Taiping prince, d. 1904.
by birth, came to Hong Kong from Penang.
Yeung Ku Wan became a trainee mechanic at
the Royal Navy shipyard and learned English by night. After an accident led to the amputation
of one of his fingers, he became a student at St.
Paul��s College and went on to become a teacher in St. Joseph��s College. After further experience as a clerk, he became assistant manager to
David Sassoon & Co. In 1890, with fifteen other
men including Tse Tsan Tai, Yeung founded the Furen Literary Society or Society to Study Science and Renovate Society. The society acted as a political forum for the promotion of
anti-Qing ideas. In 1892 Yeung met and teamed up with Sun Yat Sen and in 1895 together they
formed the Revive China Society or Xing Zhong Hui with Yeung as chairman. By March 1895 the
society was planning action and had raised three thousand men to capture Guangdong and set up a revolutionary base there. The discovery of the plot led to its cancellation and the loss of forty-eight lives. Yeung was forced to
flee to South Africa.
In 1899 Yeung Ku Wan met Sun Yat Sen in Japan and gave up his position as chairman of the society to Sun. In 1900 the two planned to stage a further uprising in Huizhou. The uprising failed due to inadequate support at a crucial stage and the revolutionaries were forced to disperse. It was thought in China that Yeung, who was teaching English in Hong Kong at that time, was still president of the revolutionary society and had been responsible for the uprising, so a death warrant was issued against him. At 6 p.m. on 10 January 1901, a gang burst through his front door in Gage Street. Yang was shot in the head and chest and by the next day he was dead. The gang escaped under cover of the darkness. Had Yeung Ku Wan not been assassinated, the course of the revolution in China might have taken a very different turn. His friends and relations, including Tse Tsan Tai, erected the monument in the Hong Kong Cemetery, but significantly no name or inscription can be found on the plinth. It is thought that while secretly sympathizing with the revolutionaries, the Hong Kong government did not want to antagonize the Chinese Imperial government.

Sir Kai Ho Kai
Towering over the other Chinese present in the Cemetery in terms of service to
Hong Kong and influence on Hong Kong affairs is Sir Kai Ho Kai (��� ), K.T.,
C.M.G. [8/4/4]. He qualified first in medicine at Aberdeen, Scotland and at St. Thomas�� Hospital in London, and then in law at Lincoln��s Inn. Ho Kai was born in
March 1859, the son of Rev. Ho Fuk Tong, who had come to Hong Kong with Rev.
James Legge from the Anglo-Chinese College in
Malacca. Ho Fuk Tong became the first Chinese
pastor to be ordained in Hong Kong and gave valuable service to the London Missionary Society. He was not only a man of God who could read the gospels in the original Greek and Hebrew, but also a remarkably good businessman. Ho Kai
was admitted to the Central School in 1870 at the
age of eleven and left at thirteen for schooling in England where he studied medicine at Aberdeen
University. While in London studying (for a
second degree) law, in December 1881 Ho Kai met and married Alice Walkden who lived in
25.10. Monument in memory Blackheath. In the next year, the couple returned of Sir Kai Ho Kai, d. 1914 and
to the East. Back in Hong Kong after ten years his first wife, Alice Walkden, d. 1884.
spent in England, Ho Kai found that his Western
style of medicine was unacceptable to the Chinese and turned to law for a living. Alice tragically died of typhoid fever soon after giving birth to a daughter after only three years of married life. Ho Kai subsequently married an American Chinese, Lai Yuk-hing, and fathered ten sons and seven daughters.
In 1890, Ho Kai became an unofficial
member of the Legislative Council and continued as one for fourteen years. He supported Sun Yat Sen and wrote extensively on the need for reform in China. His writings were never as influential 25.11. Photograph of Sir Kai Ho
Kai. (By courtesy of Ko Tim-
as they might have been, perhaps because of Ho
keung.)


Kai��s close links with the colonial powers. His ventures into the property market
with his partner, Au Tak, did not bring in the expected profits, but they did leave
behind a name for the future airport, Kai Tak. Ho Kai received his knighthood in
1912 for his services to the public, but retired soon after due to ill health and died in July 1914 at the age of fifty-five. Besides funding the building of the Alice Memorial
Hospital, his contributions to the founding of Hong Kong University were substantial. Ho Kai died, not only intestate, but also penniless, leaving nothing but the furniture in his house and some law books. The government was asked for
help and Sir Francis Henry May agreed to provide tuition fees for five sons.
Overseas Returnees
One final group of Chinese represented in the Cemetery are the overseas Chinese
who returned from abroad and, perhaps due to their exposure to European cultures, found Hong Kong a more congenial place to live and do business than China. One of the earliest of these was the Fukienese Choa family who had lived and traded in Malacca for more than five generations. An early member of the family had been given the title of Captain China by the Dutch and when, on the arrival of the British, almost all such titles were abolished, he was allowed to keep
his due to his great influence over the Chinese community. Choa Chee Bee and Choa Leep Chee (���ߧ�) [16A/4/12], his nephew, had both benefited from the
English-language education they received in the Straits Settlement. Chee Bee��s wealth was derived from the sugar trade and real estate. He
came to Hong Kong in 1874 as comprador of the new Wahee, Smith & Co. Sugar Refinery on the site of the defunct Mint, staying on after the bankruptcy of some partners led to the sale of the refinery to Jardine, Matheson & Co. His will showed that when he died in 1900, he owned eighteen houses, two in Malacca,
four in Macau, and six each in Canton and Hong Kong. Choa Leep Chee joined his uncle in Hong Kong when he had completed his education in Singapore.
He obtained a post in the China Sugar Refinery Company and by diligence and
perseverance won promotion, until he too became comprador and chief of the
Chinese staff. After the death of his uncle, Leep Chee inherited his estate. He was
one of the few Chinese to live in the Mid-Levels at Burnside, in Robinson Road
where, in 1905, he won the prize for the best kept private garden in the colony. He
was a prominent member of the Chinese community and on many committees, including those of the Alice Memorial Hospital and the Nethersole Hospitals,
and he contributed very generously from his own funds to the relief of the
victims of the terrible typhoon of 1906.9
He was survived by ten children and his descendants include such well-known names as Dr. Gerald Choa, C.B.E., J.P., former director of the Medical and Health Department in the government and founding dean at the faculty of medicine of the Chinese University, and Dr. George Choa, president of the Hong Kong Medical Association.
A number of Chinese who made their homes in Hong Kong came from Australia where the white Australia policies made it impossible for the Chinese immigrants to lead a normal family life. They brought with them the capital and business know-how that helped to enrich the territory. Typical examples were the two brothers,
James Gocklock and Philip Gockchin, founders of the Wing On Department
Stores which has recently celebrated its centenary.10 The brothers arrived
in 1907 and opened their first small store on Queen��s Road. By far the most
imposing monument in Section 1 belongs to the Leong family and incorporates twelve family members. The father, Rev. Leong Ong Tong (��w�� ) had been
associated in 1867 with the London Missionary Society School in Wan Chai. His name can be seen in the 1867 Blue Book as the main teacher of forty pupils. He is next heard of at Castlemaine, Australia, where in 1872 he was a probationer of the Wesleyan Church, being ordained in 1876. By 1893 he was back in Hong
Kong. Four of his children studied at the Diocesan Home and Orphanage, and his elder daughter, Millie, became assistant mistress at the Central School for Girls. The Leong family lived in Robinson Road, Mid-Levels and were among the earlier families who mixed socially with the Europeans and attended certain expatriate functions.
The Ahwee family, founded in Hong Kong by Albert Ahwee [16B/1/1] and his wife Marie, is another well-known local family which returned from overseas

25.12. Monument in memory of Choa Leep Chee, d. 1909.
to settle and make their fortunes in Hong Kong, intermarrying with the Kews and Ablongs from Australia. As a young man, Ahwee is said to have been one of a group of Chinese which left Hong Kong in May 1884 for Kingston, Jamaica. He served as translator for the group and operated a provision store there. He returned to Hong Kong and acquired land in Kowloon where he kept a herd of cows. From this small enterprise grew the Kowloon Dairy which is still a large
and profitable business. Ahwee himself was one of the victims of the great fire at the Happy Valley race track in February 1918. An intriguing monument belongs to Edith Marshall [16/1/5]. Edith, who died in 1908 aged twenty-eight, was the beloved wife of Ching Johnson and is described on her headstone as ��a native of Trinidad��. This grave is tantalizing for all the things that it does not say; for instance whether Ching was a returnee from Trinidad, how he met his wife, and
how he had made enough money to afford the beautiful carved angel guarding his
wife��s grave. Members of many of the above returnee families married Europeans and it is not really possible to draw a hard and fast line between them and the Eurasians discussed in the next chapter.
Chapter 26
The Eurasians
During the first three decades of British rule, the Eurasian minority, almost all of whom were born to Chinese mothers and European fathers, fell through the cracks that separated the races. They were for the most part brought up by the mothers�� family and disappeared into the Chinese population. Almost nothing was done for such children, although the need for some kind of action was occasionally recognized. In 1850, Rev. Moncrieff, tutor of St. Paul��s College, called for the education of Eurasian children, while at the same time calling them ��A much neglected, but promising class, the offspring of sin��. 1 In March 1855, the editor of China Mail wrote:
There is a rising generation of mestizos, to whose numbers officials have largely contributed and who, if not trained to usefulness, will swell the ranks of our dangerous classes; though by proper management and the appropriation of a portion of the ample revenues of the Colony �K these half castes, as well as the less fortunate of the pure breeds, might not only grow up creditable members of the community, but with qualification for public service about which the Government professes to be very solicitous, we mean the facility in speaking Chinese as well as English.2
But with the exception of a passing mention of a Gage Street child with fair, curly hair, who went by the name of Charley and had been abandoned by his father, a Captain James, not one Eurasian name emerges in the earlier periods.3 Charley��s European colouring aroused a degree of guilt among the expatriate community.
By 1865, the number of Eurasians had grown considerably. In the Treaty Ports of China and Japan, the authors could now say: ��A large number of those of mixed blood have however been born here and regard Hong Kong as their home in every sense of the word.��4 Generally they were still left without resources or education and
disappeared into the general Chinese population. In 1870, in a letter in the Daily Press, about the proposed registration of European births, it was asked:
How, Sir, does Mr. Ryrie propose to distinguish European Children? Is the term to include half-castes, of whom there are a fair number born here, I believe? Certainly if there is to be registration at all, this class ought to be included, because �K it is very desirable that there should be a record of such children as they are peculiarly liable to be left destitute by persons leaving the Colony.5
As late as 1879, Sir John Smale, the chief justice, wrote:
No-one can walk through some of the bye streets of this Colony without seeing well-dressed Chinese girls in great number whose occupations are self-proclaimed, or pass those streets, or go into this Colony without counting beautiful children by the hundred whose Eurasian origin is self-declared. If the Government would enquire into the present condition of these classes, and still more into what has become of these women and their children of the past, I believe that it will be found in the great majority of cases the women have sunk in misery, and that, of the children, the girls that have survived have been sold to the profession of their mothers and that, if boys, they have been lost sight of.6
The usefulness of the Eurasian community could only be tapped if young Eurasians were given the opportunity to complete the kind of education that would equip them with the skills necessary to join the workforce. The founding of the Central School and the Diocesan Schools and Orphanage made possible the
rise of the Eurasians in the territory. When the Diocesan School came into being in 1869, one of the objects was stated as being: ��to receive or place children or both
sexes, sound in body and mind, of European, Chinese and half-caste parentage��. 7 This concept of an institution where Chinese, mixed blood and European children could be educated together could be seen as revolutionary at that time. It
is not surprising that Sir Robert Ho Tung, who was among the first generation
of Eurasians to attend school, so revered Frederick Stewart [23/5/7], his teacher at the Central School, that he paid for the erection and upkeep of Stewart��s
headstone. In 1901 the registrar general reported that:
the number of Eurasians was ascertained to be 276. This is 5 less than in 1897. The large majority of Eurasians in this Colony dress in Chinese clothes,
have been brought up to live in Chinese fashion and would certainly return themselves as Chinese.
This may have been due to the low social standing of Eurasians who adopted the
European way of life during these years. By 1911 the census officer claimed that
those who actually returned themselves as Eurasians diminished every year. 8 By the late Victorian days, a more damaging concept of the dangers of racial mixing, perhaps sparked by Darwin��s theories, had taken a hold. It was believed that the mixing of blood across the racial divide would lead to human beings who were
physically and morally flawed and mixed marriages were strenuously discouraged. A writer publishing in 1909 shows clearly the general feelings of the English
towards those with mixed blood ancestry: ��Occasionally a Eurasian stouter than either European or Chinese and whose blood kinship neither boasts of, with hair hanging loose, passes by to the unheeded shame of the foreigner��.9 European employees of the government who violated the colonial etiquette by interracial marriage jeopardized their careers and risked social ostracism.
It took a brave couple to fly in the face of such prejudice. Not only were they
at risk but their children��s future would also be put in jeopardy. This hardening of attitudes can be seen in the case of W.J.B. Fletcher [7/2/4]. He had joined the China consular service at the age of twenty-one and was considered a highly
promising second assistant when, in 1908, he was discovered spending his home
leave in Hong Kong with his Chinese wife, May Tsoi Yan Siu [7/2/4]. The
resulting memo to the foreign office stated that the marriage was an unfortunate
example of the way in which lonely and remote posts tended to produce a degree of degeneration and that, by his marriage, Fletcher had lost caste in the eyes of the British in China to such a degree that his usefulness would be seriously impaired. A confidential circular was sent out strongly reprobating marriages to Chinese women as detrimental to the public interests and reiterating that permission must be sought. Not long afterwards Fletcher was pensioned off and became professor of English at Sun Yat Sen University in Canton. Yet only fifty years earlier, the Chinese wife of the consul, J.A.T. Meadows, had gained acceptance and his marriage to her had not impeded his progress in the consular service.10 Furthermore, May, Fletcher��s wife, who is buried with him in the Cemetery, was from a respectable family and well educated unlike Meadow��s wife.
Another example of the way cross-cultural marriages were now viewed involves Thomas Edwards, the man who married Alice Catherine, the fourth daughter of Jens Anton Ahlmann and Ng Ah Mui. Edwards�� father, Francis
Ebenezer Woodruff, while working for the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs,
had fallen in love with and married Teng Kwei Yin, the daughter of a mandarin.
Their son, Thomas Edwards, was placed in the Diocesan Home by his father.
Woodruff��s parents back in America objected so strongly to the marriage that they had refused to allow their grandson to be called by the family name of Woodruff,
so instead he was given the surname Edwards.11
One example from the Cemetery can be quoted, illustrating perhaps the problems of a Chinese woman left behind by her European partner to bring up her mixed-blood baby alone. Willie [41/3/6] died in 1898 aged one year and eleven months. His mother��s name was given as Ah Choi (�Ȥ~ ) and his father��s name, which is given phonetically in Chinese characters, reads as ��Geor Si Lok Hat��(���h���^ ). It almost certainly refers to George Lockhart, a native of Glasgow, who arrived from San Francisco in 1852 and worked as chief engineer on the P. & O. ship, SS Formosa. The Chinese inscription would seem to indicate that Willie��s father had already left the colony when he was buried. Ah Choi must have been a practising Christian or the baby could not have been buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery. One must sympathize with the predicament of other Chinese mothers who were left to deal with all the worries of bringing up their ��half-castes�� in an unforgiving society. These women were usually absorbed back into their own family circles where the children grew up speaking Chinese and imbibing Chinese cultural values. The offspring generally used their Chinese names, lived by Chinese customs and, if successful, would join the Chinese Club, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and take part in the running of the Tung Wah Hospital. One small Eurasian, Hung Pik Ann (�x���C ) [26/1/13], who died in 1889 aged five years, was the daughter of Hung Kam Ning, also known as Henry Graham Anderson. He was one of the four prominent Eurasians who, in 1929, set up the Welfare League, the first foundation to come to the aid of needy Eurasians. The inscription on Hung Pik Ann��s headstone is interesting in that it begins with the characters, ��Wong Ching��, showing her father��s Chinese leanings and his feelings of loyalty to the Ching dynasty.
But by the early twentieth century, Eurasians were also viewed less favourably by the Chinese community. Racial nationalism was one of the Three Principles of the People as stated by Sun Yat Sen, who, when he made his appeal to the emerging national consciousness, realized that there was a strong current of prejudice against foreigners.12 This had been sparked by the territorial aggressions and racial humiliations to which the China had been subjected by the Europeans and Japanese. With the high levels of prejudice against Eurasians, it was difficult for the off-spring of mixed marriages to find partners willing to marry them, except among their own community, or by, in their turn, becoming ��protected women��. For example the two eldest daughters of Jens Anton Ahlmann, Ah Mui Atkinson [245/6/2] and Ah Peng Atkinson [24/6/3], whose lonely graves lie in a section otherwise given over to soldiers, were the protected women respectively of a Hughes and a Perkins and Ah Peng is said to have later become the protected woman of a Sassoon.13
Those Eurasians who used Chinese names and lived according to Chinese cultural norms considered themselves to be socially more distinguished than the Eurasians who used their English names. The Gittins family can be used as an example of one of the most respected families of those who used their English name. Henry Gittins (alias Hung Tsin) [12A/3/13] entered the Diocesan Boys��
School & Orphanage as a boarder in 1877. At the age of fourteen in 1885, he
became a student teacher in the school and was taught to play the organ by Mrs. Piercy, matron and wife of the headmaster. At sixteen he left school and went
to work in A.S. Watson. In 1899 he joined the Hong Kong Cotton Spinning Weaving and Dyeing Company becoming paymaster and later accountant. He joined Jardine, Matheson & Co. and worked there until his retirement in 1935.
Gittins was a keen church-goer and served on the Council of St. Paul��s and St. Andrew��s churches and supported the Chinese YMCA. He was a Freemason
for some fifty years and was district grand organist from 1916�V30. He and his wife Dorothy had eleven children, four dying under the age of five. Dorothy, another of Jens Ahlmann��s daughters, had married Henry at the age of fifteen. In spite of
the Gittins family attaining a position of obvious respectability, it was said that Sir Robert Ho Tung was reluctant to give his consent when his daughter Jean asked his permission to marry Billy Gittins, one of Henry��s sons.
The story of Sir Robert Ho Tung (��F ) [11B/13/2] and his brothers is relevant here and interesting.14 Their mother, surnamed Sze, was rumoured to have been from a wealthy family. Her brothers are said to have gambled away the family fortune and then sold their sister ��down the river��. The Ho Tungs�� father was the Belgian commission agent and merchant, Charles Henry Bosman, by whom Sze had six children. Bosman is said to have returned to Europe in 1868
leaving his Chinese family destitute in one room fighting over whatever scraps of
food were to be had and in winter over the few blankets. Rescue was provided by a rich merchant of the Nam Pak Hong who incorporated Sze into his household
as an official concubine and bought a house for her children. Robert Ho Tung,
born in 1862, being the oldest male in the family and therefore head of the family, must have had the main responsibility for caring for his siblings and making decisions on their behalf from the age of eight or nine. He spent some years in a vernacular school where his intelligence must have made him stand out as, at the age of twelve, he was one of the youngest to gain entry to the Central School
in 1873. Ho Tung went to Canton to
sit an examination for entrance to the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. He was the youngest and only successful candidate and began work at a salary of
$30 per month.
In 1880 he joined Jardine Matheson, later becoming an assistant comprador and then comprador. He then resigned his place in Jardines in favour of his brother, in order to concentrate his energies on building his own commercial empire. He became a substantial landowner in Hong Kong and Macau. Ho Tung was the founder and first president of the Chinese Club and then in 1921 was appointed honorary adviser to the president of the Chinese Republic. In 1932 he was made an officer of the French Legion of Honour. At one time he was director or chairman of eighteen leading companies and the largest shareholder in the colony. He was knighted by George V in 1915, at which time he adopted the English name, Robert, and changed his surname to Hotung. He was the first man with Chinese blood to be allowed to live on the Peak and his influence in the colony was immense. Hotung married two Eurasian cousins as equal wives, first Lady Margaret (���q�^ ) [11B/13/1] and later, when it was realized that no children were forthcoming, Lady Clara. Sir Robert��s entry in Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong begins with these words:
No nationality has done more towards furthering the colony��s prosperity than the Chinese, the original owners of the island, and no man among the Chinese has borne his part in local, commercial and social life with more conspicuous ability, or with greater credit to himself and his nationality than Mr. Ho Tung, J.P.

26.1. The memorial to Sir Robert and Lady Margaret Ho Tung, d. 26.4.1956 and 2.7.1914 respectively.
In spite of his pale skin, blue eyes and red hair, Sir Robert Hotung chose to live the life of a Chinese gentleman. He invariably dressed in a black silk Chinese gown, satin slippers and a black skull cap. He is said to have only converted to Christianity on his deathbed so that he could be buried next to Lady Margaret who had predeceased him by a few years. Near to Lady Margaret Ho Tung lies a small Chinese grave in which is interred her faithful mui-tsai and loyal companion for forty years, Miss Au Shing Cheung (�Ϧ���) [11B/12/2].
Hotung��s second brother, Ho Fook, followed his lead into Jardine,
Matheson and took over as chief comprador in 1900. The third brother, Ho Kom
Tong, was equally successful. He first worked as clerk in a shipping firm and
then as translator/interpreter in the office of the registrar general. After a stint in a law firm he too became comprador for Jardines. He had interests in the cotton
business and in rubber plantations in Malaya. He went on to become chairman of
the Tung Wah Hospital and a director in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce.
These very successful Eurasian brothers all found their wives among the Eurasian community, as did their sons, linking their family name to the Choa��s and Zimmern��s
among others. Ho Kom Tong was the first Eurasian to live in the Mid-Levels. He
increased his standing and that of the Eurasian community by building a private
cemetery, the Wing Yuen Cemetery, at Pokfulam, for the burial of family members
and of other Eurasians approved by a committee made up of family members. Ho Kom Tong had twelve concubines whom he housed on Conduit Road and a total of twenty-three children, thirteen sons and ten daughters.
Buried in the Cemetery is a representative of another well-known Eurasian familiy. Chan U Hon (�����~ ) [34/2/25], the son of Chan Kai Ming (���ҩ� ),
was killed in 1893 aged
seven years. According to the story told by a descendant, U Hon was see-sawing with a cousin on a plank over the sill of a third-floor window when someone entered the room. The cousin jumped guiltily off the see-saw leaving U Hon to fall to his death in
26.2. Headstone in memory of Miss Au Shing Cheung, loyal the courtyard below. The companion of Lady Margaret.

sad little monument was erected by his grandmother, most likely the ��protected woman�� of the Russell & Co. merchant, George Bartou Tyson. The father of Chan U Hon, Chan Kai Ming, studied at the Central School and then stayed on as pupil teacher rising to second assistant master in 1881. He then taught in
the police school, before becoming third clerk in the police magistracy. In 1909,
Chan Kai Ming left the government to become secretary of the opium farm. His name ��need only be mentioned to recall his long standing connection and intimate knowledge of the opium trade��. He also became a director of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and director of the Tai Yau Bank. He was also active on the fund-raising committee of the University of Hong Kong. He died aged sixty
in 1919 at his house in Caine Road and was buried in the Eurasian Wing Yuen
Cemetery at Pokfulam.
Several well-educated and Westernized families of returnees seem to have lived in the Mid-Levels and mixed rather more freely with the Europeans including the Kews, the Ablongs and the already mentioned Leongs. Robert Akid Kew and his Australian wife, Sarah Honoria Whiteley [6/5/20], arrived in Hong Kong from Maryborough, Australia in 1884 and enrolled their sons in Queen��s College. They had eight children and no less than thirteen members of the Kew family are buried in the Cemetery. Many of them were successful. Charles Kew for example entered the Chartered Bank where he soon became confidential secretary to the manager. He later started his own business and was said to be handling 30,000 pounds sterling worth of Yunnan tin a day. His brother, Joseph, by 1902 was manager of the Hong Kong Steam Waterboat Company. One other Australian returnee, Otto Kong Sing [16B/2/1], who had qualified as a solicitor in Australia and practised successfully in Hong Kong, had a Western or Australian wife, but it was very unusual at that time for a European
26.3. Small memorial in memory of Chan girl to marry a Chinese. The exodus from U Hon, d. 14.10.1893.

Australia helped to create a Eurasian middle class that gained a certain degree of acceptance in the colony.
Even so, in the early years of the twentieth century, the taboos against mixed marriage were as firm as ever. Vaudine England put the general view in her autobiography of Noel Croucher:
The eligible bachelors of the empire who, though happily consorting with non-European women, could not contemplate marrying an ��oriental��. Mixed marriages were greeted with shock if not outrage by both Chinese and English communities, and terminated a young man��s climb up the social hierarchy.15
The Hong Kong Cemetery houses about 140 known graves belonging to members of the Chinese community and probably more unknown. They include six members of the Gittins family, five Halls, the descendants of Stephen Hall alias Sin Tak Fan, five Randalls, four members of the Jex family, four Rapps, four Grieves, three Zimmerns and so on whose interconnected families represent
the flowering of what some may see as true Hong Kong belongers.
As the war memorial in the Kowloon Cricket Club shows all too clearly,
members of these families proved their loyalty to Hong Kong in the Second World War by joining the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps and fighting and dying
in defence of their homeland. So many Eurasians had joined the Volunteers that
George White suggested the formation of a Eurasian company. He was backed in
this by a group of classmates from the Diocesan Boys�� School. The suggestion was
adopted and No. 3 Machine Gun Company was first mentioned in the Volunteer Yearbook of 1935.16 It was also picked out for special praise by General Maltby in the Dispatches of 29.1.1948. ��I should like to place on record the superb gallantry of No. 3 (Eurasian) Company at Wong Nai Chung Gap��. A number of Eurasian
volunteers were interned in Sham Shui Po Camp. Arthur Gillard [12A/3/12], for example, a warrant officer in the Volunteers, became the camp gardener and managed to grow tomatoes from the seeds carefully extracted from a tin of
Delmonte tomatoes. His efforts may have helped to save the lives of some of the
unfortunate prisoners.17 Charles Simon Rosselet [27/3/13] was another prisoner who was sent to Japan with Billy Gittins and John Shea.
While their husbands were in prisoner-of-war camps, some of the wives saw
out the war in the Stanley internment camp. Among these were Mabel Hall (nee Gittins) and her two boys, Marie Fincher, the wife of Teddie Fincher [12A/11/5] and Jean Gittins whose husband, Billy, died in Japan. Other internees at the Stanley camp included two members of well-known Eurasian families, James Arthur Kew [7/2/3] and Rose, nee Ablong [7/2/3], his wife. Rose also lost a brother, Alfred Ernest Ablong. He was divisional A.R.P. warden for North Point
on the night of 19 December when the Japanese invaded and was killed by sniper
fire. Arthur Kew joined Hutchinsons after the war and went on to manage a group of their companies.
War-time evacuations and postwar travel led to a dispersal of the previously close-knit Hong Kong Eurasian community, but those remaining families who stayed in Hong Kong are still quietly prospering.
Chapter 27 Other Nationalities: The Japanese and Russians Buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery
Japanese Graves
It may come as a surprise that the number of Japanese graves in the Hong Kong Cemetery is approximately 465, compared to the Chinese graves which number
about 197. The Japanese have a long history in Hong Kong. As early as 1845,
Japanese were recorded living there, mostly the survivors of shipwrecks. Japanese sailors were not able to return to Japan due to the Sakoku policy adopted by the Tokugawa shoguns. It was feared that returnees would contaminate Japanese society with un-Japanese ideas and beliefs such as Christianity and foment dissension if allowed back into the country.
Adonia Rickomartz was one such sailor whose curious story lies behind the simple granite headstone commemorating two young Japanese/German infants, Maria Lucy Rickomartz [9/11/2], who died aged two and a half years, and Lucy, aged ten months. The date of their death is difficult to read on the faded
stone but seems to be May 1850. The father, Adonia, as he was christened, was one of a group of Japanese sailors who had been rescued from a shipwreck and brought to Macau, where they were converted to Christianity by the missionaries,
William Wells and George Tradescant Lay. In exchange for lessons in religion
and English, the sailors taught the missionaries to speak Japanese.1 These lessons
stood Wells in good stead when he accompanied Commodore Matthew Perry
as interpreter on his famous expedition to open up Japan to American trade. The missionaries had hoped the sailors would spread the gospel back in Japan, but in 1836 failed in an attempt to repatriate them. Back again in Macau, Adonia became
the servant of Rev. Karl Gutzlaff, took him to Hong Kong, and taught him how
to work as a compositor, producing the Christian tracts that Gutzlaff used to distribute through his Chinese Union. In Hong Kong, the missionary introduced Adonia to a German lady called Rickomartz in want of a husband. On marriage

27.1. The headstone commemorating the 27.2. The inscription on the headstone infant daughters of Adonia Rickomartz, commemorating Maria Lucy and Maria Lucy (d. 5.22.1830) and Lucy (d. Lucy Rickomartz. 23.11.1848).
Adonia took his wife��s name. By 1859 they had had four children, two of whom died young and are buried in the cemetry. After the death of Gutzlaff, Adonia went
to work as compositor for the Friend of China. In 1858, Mrs. Rickomartz teamed up with a Mrs. Jurgens from Hamburg to open a millinery and haberdashery establishment on Queen��s Road. Sadly, in the following year a fire destroyed
their business and after auctioning off the fire-damaged stock, Mrs. Rickomartz