104
H. J. LETHBRIDGE
recommend that the remedy for Hong Kong destitution be left in the main to private charity and to private effort, but that the Government should do everything in its power to organize by law private charity which may then be supplemented by State aid.25
The government's main contribution was the burial of defunct paupers and the shipping home of destitute British seamen. As Dr. Eitel concluded in 1880, all that the law offered European destitutes was 'fine or imprisonment, with or without hard labour'.26
The Europeans who worked as overseers in the dockyards, factories and other industrial enterprises, the ships' captains, mates and engineers, all led more circumspect lives in their Kowloon terraced homes than the soldiers, sailors, and merchant seamen. They looked down on the destitute, improvident, or wandering portion of the European community with all the fierce contempt of the British lower middle classes. Their values were those of the skilled mechanics and clerks of Greenwich, Woolwich, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. Their wives entertained other wives and their families to high tea, the table set with fish-paste sandwiches, jellies, custards and cakes; they attended religious services regularly, though usually at a nonconformist chapel, and if Scots, at the Presbyterian Union Church. Their children went to the Kowloon British School (for foreign children only).27 They looked forward to retirement, a pension, and return to the homeland, having bettered themselves in the colonies. They formed the elite of the European lower classes in Hong Kong; but they were excluded, nonetheless, from the grander world of Taipan, administrator, and professional man.
The question why lower class Europeans came to, or remained in, Hong Kong is not difficult to answer. Some, such as beachcombers, were at the end of the line, at the end of their tether; they were trapped there (temporarily at least) by poverty, circumstance, and character. Soldiers, sailors and merchant seamen were transients or temporary sojourners; and the decision to come to Hong Kong was made not by them but by their superiors. Inspectors, supervisors and overseers stayed in Hong Kong primarily because most experienced a degree of upward mobility. They formed an intermediary class—an amorphous middling class—between the Chinese masses and the Taipans and officials. In Hong Kong, they were no longer at the bottom of the pecking order. Some, of course,
104
H. J. LETHBRIDGE
recommend that the remedy for Hong Kong destitution be left in the main to private charity and to private effort, but that the Government should do everything in its power to organize by law private charity which may then be supplemented by State aid.25
The government's main contribution was the burial of defunct paupers and the shipping home of destitute British seamen. As Dr. Eitel concluded in 1880, all that the law offered European destitutes was 'fine or imprisonment, with or without hard labour',26
The Europeans who worked as overseers in the dockyards, factories and other industrial enterprises, the ships' captains, mates and engineers, all led more circumspect lives in their Kowloon terraced homes than the soldiers, sailors, and merchant seamen. They looked down on the destitute, improvident, or wandering por- tion of the European community with all the fierce contempt of the British lower middle classes. Their values were those of the skilled mechanics and clerks of Greenwich, Woolwich, Portsmouth, and Plymouth. Their wives entertained other wives and their families to high tea, the table set with fish-paste sandwiches, jellies, custards and cakes; they attended religious services regularly, though usually at a nonconformist chapel, and if Scots, at the Presbyterian Union Church. Their children went to the Kowloon British School (for foreign children only).27 They looked forward to retirement, a pension, and return to the homeland, having bettered themselves in the colonies. They formed the elite of the European lower classes in Hong Kong; but they were excluded, nonetheless, from the gran- der world of Taipan, administrator, and professional man.
The question why lower class Europeans came to, or remained in, Hong Kong is not difficult to answer. Some, such as beachcom- bers, were at the end of the line, at the end of their tether; they were trapped there (temporarily at least) by poverty, circumstance, and character. Soldiers, sailors and merchant seamen were tran- sients or temporary sojourners; and the decision to come to Hong Kong was made not by them but by their superiors. Inspectors, supervisors and overseers stayed in Hong Kong primarily because most experienced a degree of upward mobility. They formed an intermediary class—an amorphous middling class--between the Chinese masses and the Taipans and officials. In Hong Kong, they were no longer at the bottom of the pecking order. Some, of course,
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