[
    {
        "id": 216072,
        "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-2002",
        "page_number": 371,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "305\n\nMason that 'You [Mason] have been left at Chinkiang not because you have been overlooked, but because you have shown a particular proficiency in acquiring the Nanking dialect, and I did not wish to interrupt these studies by transferring you to another province. It is also important for me to train certain men in the intricate business of Transit Passes40 peculiar to Chinkiang alone, and I have been pleased with your mastery of this branch of our work'.\n\nFor the next couple of months Mason's name crops up in some dozen or so of Hart's letters, usually towards the end of a letter on, what were to Hart, weightier matters. Such comments included 'The Yamen finds \"Mason Affair\" very handy: it can now return the Legation fire neatly after last summer's bombardment sustained for the riots, etc.\n\nMason was brought to trial in the British Supreme Court before the British Consul-General and the Shanghai Settlement's Chief Judge, N J Hannen, on 29 October 1891, charged simply with the illegal possession of dynamite to which he pleaded guilty. Although he had declared before and after the trial that he was a member of the Gelao Hui, had acted to further its plans to overthrow its government, and had personally brought the dynamite into China with unlawful intent, these facts were not mentioned at the trial nor did the Chinese government produce any evidence. The Chinese Legation in London later exerted pressure to demand that Mason, on his release from prison in Shanghai, be tried in Hong Kong on charges of crimes and conspiracy against the Chinese state. Mason was, however, not tried again.\n\nHart, at one point, refers to Mason's comrade Croskey who Mason himself mentioned in his \"Confessions\" as a spy, put there by the Customs Service to watch Mason and who, according to Mason, betrayed and ruined him. In practice Croskey had been promoted from the outdoor staff to the indoor, and then posted to Zhenjiang. Mason somewhat naively explained his plans and plots to Croskey shortly after they met, and Croskey informed his boss in Zhenjiang who in turn asked Croskey to learn more about Mason's plan. Croskey resigned from the Service in the November 'on Sir Robert Hart's recommendation'. Croskey, according to Hart, was a promising young American citizen, a grandson of the first Sir Thos. Bazley, a Manchester MP.41",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216081,
        "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-2002",
        "page_number": 380,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "314\n\n32T. Adkins joined the China Consular Service in 1854 and was the first Vice-Consul in Zhenjiang, being posted there in May of 1861, preceded by an assistant, Phillips, in February who had been sent to the ruined city to set up the Consulate in a ruined temple. Within a week of Adkins' arrival, he had moved the Consulate a mile down river to safer accommodation away from the Taiping fighting. He remained there, on an island, living a monotonous life alone as Phillips had been transferred elsewhere. He left Zhenjiang in poor health in February 1865 after serving there for three and a half years to return to the UK.\n\n33 This was the Cantonese title by which the bandits were known. In Mandarin it would be Shiwu Zi† £ 'The Fifteen Sons'.\n\n* Parker E.H. John Chinaman and a few others: John Murray: London: 1902\n\n35 Robert Anderson Mowatt, former consular official: acting Chief Justice and Acting Consul-General Shanghai, April - October 1891.\n\n* The Elder Brother Society (Gē Lǎo Huì): a secret society sworn to overthrow the Imperial government, the foreign Manchu Qing dynasty and replace it with a Chinese emperor.\n\nMesny's son would have been about six at the time of this story, whilst his only other child, his daughter, had not yet been born.\n\n**Mason, C. W. (1924) Chinese Confessions. London: Grant Richards Ltd\n\n\"Fairbank, Bruner and Matheson, ed (1975). The I.G. in Peking: Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press\n\n* Transit Passes are discussed in a separate chapter below.\n\n4\n\nAccording to Mason in his Confession, Croskey had told him that Croskey's father was an English baronet in business in Vancouver and his mother a Spanish Creole of San Diego in California.\n\n42 Parker, E.H. (1903) China Past and Present: Chapman and Hall Ltd: London\n\n\"Cook, Christopher (1982) The Lion and the Dragon - British Voices from the China Coast: London: Elm Tree Books.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]