[
    {
        "id": 214307,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 165,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "129\n\na few wavered in the face of student rioting they all stood firm and Sowerby's tense moment passed.\n\nIn 1935 he was elected president of the North China Branch of the RAS until illness forced him to resign in late 1940. He was also elected honorary director of the Shanghai Museum, one of the major activities of the RAS, an office he held until 1946. The RAS had a new building in the early 1930s and the China Society of Science and Art of which he was president was incorporated into the RAS with all its funds and interests passing to the RAS.\n\nLife in Shanghai was quite busy what with his business company directorships and his membership of several councils including the Foreign Residents' Association and the British Residents' Association of Shanghai.\n\nHe and Clarice lived in comfort in Shanghai with their collection of Chinese pottery and porcelain and all their books on China until her death in May 1944. These were all donated to the Heude Museum in Shanghai before he left China in 1946 and placed into a large room named \"The Sowerby Hall.\" During the first part of the Japanese occupation he and Clarice were granted exemption from internment and were allowed to remain at home categorised as sick and elderly. However, after Clarice's death he was taken into an internment camp where he became so ill that he spent the last eight months of the war in hospital. He was fortunate in that his belongings were safely stored with friends.\n\nHe remained on in Shanghai for a further year, enjoying his garden and studying animals, insects and flowers. Then, in the autumn of 1946 he brought Alice Cowens, the nurse who had cared for his brother in France, out to Shanghai where they were married and left for England. They stayed in London for some months, through the bad winter of 1946-7 and after a short trip around parts of England they decided to retire to Washington DC, partly because so much of the material he had collected during his expeditions in China was kept there but mainly because he thought that it would be better for his health.\n\nThen a problem arose. Though his wife as a British citizen could stay, he had been born in China and the quota for that category to settle in the States was\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 214314,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 172,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "136\n\nI am grateful to the Reverend Carl Smith for the following information:\n\nAn announcement from a China mail of 1925. Married, at Shanghai, yesterday, Miss Clarice Sara Moise, to Mr. Arthur de Carle Sowerby, publisher of the China Journal of Arts and Science. Will of wife, Clarice Clara Sowerby, probated in Hong Kong in 1948, written in Shanghai 1933, in favour of her husband Arthur de Carle Sowerby of Shanghai, and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby. Sister, Nina Ethel Moise. Will of Sowerby himself: Arthur etc., probated in Hong Kong, 1955, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, scientist, at present residing at Fairfax Hotel (?), 2100 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC. Wife, Alice Muriel Sowerby. If predeceased, sister-in-law, Nina Ethel Moise, 6485 San Marco Circle, Hollywood, to receive half; and son, Arthur Mesny de Carle Sowerby, to get the other half. Will written 7th November, 1949. A death record of Arthur de Carle Sowerby, 16th August 1954.\n\nCarl Smith also commented that it was known that Sowerby had children (sic) by a Chinese woman. It would appear that most expatriates in Shanghai were unaware of Sowerby's first marriage in Tientsin to William Mesny's niece, Mary Anne, and that the reference to the 'children by a Chinese woman,' remembering that Mary Anne's mother had been Chinese, suggests that Sowerby's first marriage had been quietly 'forgotten.'\n\ni The bandits were referred to as the Ko-lao Hui, the Elder Brother Society, an old powerful secret society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch'ing government and punishable by death. Their gangs robbed and killed far and wide as well as causing trouble with their inter-gang feuding.\n\nii The British Residents' Association was formed in 1931 to enable long-term residents to have a say in the running of the Concession. At about the same time, in order to support the authorities in the Concession following the recent troubles and crises, a body known as the Shanghai Fascisti was organised, and led for a while by Sowerby. The Fascists at this time were regarded by many as an honourable force against encroaching communism.\n\niii John Mesny died in 1884 in Hankow leaving a widow and eight children, all under the age of sixteen.\n\niv Davidson-Houston, JV: Armed Pilgrimage : Robert Hale Ltd : London: 1949\n\nv Journal of Oriental Studies Vol. II. No. 1. January 1955 [University of Hong Kong]",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    }
]