[
    {
        "id": 214602,
        "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-1999",
        "page_number": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "Being chairperson of the Activities Committee is a demanding position and we thank Valery Garrett for her considerable effort and for a job well done. We also thank her Committee comprising the Reverend Carl Smith, Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, as well as May Holdsworth, Sarah Parnell, Peter Stuckey and Jason Wordie. Others who have helped with the organising of activities include Stephen Selby, Michael Broom and Arthur Hacker. A vote of thanks is accorded to all of them.\n\nProjects and other activities\n\nAgain our Society has been involved in various ways with projects and other activities which sometimes amount to a form of community service. For instance, over the summer we pieced together information for Mrs Victoria Brown of Australia. She was trying to trace details about her great-grandmother, Mrs Miranda Main (née Mann), who served as a school principal in Hong Kong at the end of the 19th and early in the 20th century. When Mrs Brown visited Hong Kong in October of last year, together with Mr S T Chiu of the Antiquities and Monuments Office, he and I showed Mrs Brown the old school building at 136 Nathan Road where her great-grandmother had been principal. Also, RAS members David Clinton and Dr Gillian Bickley met Mrs Brown and provided her with useful information.\n\nWith the help of Council member Tim Ko, we also provided information regarding bullet and shrapnel marks on a wall on Lower Stubbs Road where a great deal of fierce fighting took place when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941. In another case a lady in England, Frances Howell, was trying to trace details of her relatives who lived in Shan Dong Province and Hong Kong.\n\nAgain, in response to a letter in the press, information was provided for a relative in England regarding Lieutenant Henry Dallas who died in Hong Kong in 1844. Information was obtained regarding both the grave and a monument on the wall inside Saint John's Cathedral up until World War Two.\n\nAlso, our Branch was invited to send a representative to make its views known to a government working party which was looking into the subject, 'Conservation and the Natural Environment.' This is the\n\nxvi",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216217,
        "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": 516,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "450\n\nwas not possible to erect a replacement plaque in the cathedral. The authorities concerned would not permit it.\n\nAnother interesting case was that of a clock made by Douglas Lapraik in Hong Kong in the mid 19th century. This story has been written up by the enquirer, Dr Peter Hansell, and an account is published in this volume of JHKBRAS,\n\n*\n\nOther enquiries have included a request from a family member about Thomas Child Hayllar who was Attorney General in Hong Kong in the middle of the 19th century. On similar lines, Francis Howell was also enquiring about family members named Eckford who worked in China and Hong Kong during the past two centuries.\n\nOn another occasion we received an enquiry from a HKBRAS overseas member for information about what appear to be bullet marks on the low boundary wall which runs along the east side of lower Stubbs Road. Although they were probably caused by machine gun fire during the attack by the Japanese, in December 1941, we have not been able to glean any detailed information about the actual incident.\n\nAnother enquirer, an academic living in New Zealand, wanted to know whether there were any roads, buildings or any monuments at all in Hong Kong in memory of Nurse Edith Cavell. She was executed by the Germans in Brussels, on 12 October 1915, for assisting Allied prisoners escape. As far as we know there is nothing erected in her memory in Hong Kong.\n\nA gentleman from Britain wanted to learn more about his maternal grandfather who joined the colonial service in 1910, whereupon he was posted to Hong Kong and subsequently to Canton to learn Cantonese. During the run-up leading to the Sun Yat Sen Revolution, probably in May or June of 1911, the group of Hong Kong cadets was accosted by over-zealous Chinese officials. One of the cadets then drew his revolver and shot an official. The British gentleman has said that, according to family lore, his grandfather, Samuel Burnside Boyd McElderry, was able to calm the situation and talk the group out of the encounter. In spite of searches at the Hong Kong Public Records Office (who were extremely helpful) and elsewhere, no information has been gleaned about this incident.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]