Old Hong Kong-2 — Page 272

T. H. WHITEHEAD

It is a common complaint in these days that unofficial members of the Legislative Council are little more than a sop to public demand for representative government and that they rarely voice opinions contrary to government policy. That may be quite unjust, but true or not, the charge could never have been levelled against the Hon. Mr. T. H. Whitehead, for many years unofficial member of the Council.

It should be sufficient to say that Mr. Whitehead earned the approbation of Mr. Fraser Smith, one-time editor of the Hongkong Telegraph, for in those days, any man who won praise from the vitriolic owner-editor of the Telegraph was certainly in the front line of reformers.

I propose to devote at least two articles to Mr. Whitehead. The first is published below,

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Mr. Whitehead served an apprenticeship of four years in the office of a firm of solicitors in Scotland, from 1867 to 1871, and this was followed by eighteen months' experience in a mercantile office in Liverpool, from 1871 to 1873. He joined the London office of the Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China in 1873 on probation for service abroad and was appointed an Assistant Accountant in the Bombay Office in September 1874. He was transferred to the Calcutta agency in 1875, and from there, in that autumn, to the Bank's Shanghai Branch. He was promoted Accountant and transferred to the Bombay agency in 1877, and remained there through the crisis which followed the collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank until the Spring of 1880, when he was appointed Agent at Hankow. He was transferred to Japan in August 1880, to open a new agency of the Bank at Yokohama.

In the Spring of 1881, he was appointed temporarily to the Shanghai Branch, and from there to Hankow Branch for the tea-season. In that autumn he was transferred to the Straits and had charge of the Singapore Branch until March 1882. After that, he was for a short period at Saigon, then in charge of the Hongkong Branch during April-May, and of the Foochow Agency until August 1882, when he went home on furlough via America, and reported on business to his London office. He returned from Europe on October 18, 1883, and continued in charge of the Hongkong Branch from that year until 1902. He was elected by the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce to the Legislative Council in 1890 and would have completed his second term of office in the Council in September 1902. He was mainly responsible for getting up the Petition from the Ratepayers in Hongkong to the House of Commons, asking for reforms and a system of representative government. He was entrusted with the Petition, while on furlough to Europe in 1894-95, and addressed the Colonial Party on the subject in one of the Committee rooms on the House of Commons in March 1895. He had several interviews with Lord Ripon, then Secretary for the Colonies, and advocated Hongkong's cause in letters to the London Times.

In February 1895, he read an important paper on "the critical position of trade with silver-using countries" under the auspices of the Royal Colonial Institute, and before resuming charge of the Hongkong branch in the autumn of 1895, he was sent on a mission to North China and Peking, which lasted several months. In September 1898, Mr. Whitehead proceeded to Eastern Siberia on vacation but on arrival at Vladivostock, he was asked by the Directors to return to the agency of the Bank in Japan. He returned to Hongkong in February 1899 and after inspecting the Bank's branches in North China in the Spring of 1900, went Home overland through Siberia and by the Great Trans-Siberian Railway.

The Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce appointed him one of its delegates to the Fourth Congress of the Chambers of Commerce of the Empire, held in London in June 1890, but as he was delayed by the shallowness of the water in the Amoor and Shika rivers, he did not arrive in London until July.