[
    {
        "id": 208494,
        "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-1978",
        "page_number": 218,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ngilded roundels and a scholar's cap. He is clean shaven and holds a short-handled round fan in his left hand. His wife is dressed in faded robes and is bareheaded. Both have strong faces, probably adequate if not good likenesses. The images are about 12 inches high.\n\nMalacca too, has strong Fukienese connections, and again I would expect this couple to have been of Fukienese origin.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nOctober, 1979\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nMARBLE HALL*\n\nMarble Hall was a very fine private residence in Conduit Road, Hong Kong, built by Sir Catchik Paul Chater. It has since disappeared, but the photographs which this note supplements reveal how imposing and sumptuously furnished a home it once was.\n\nThe owner\n\nSir Paul Chater, born on 8 September 1846 of Armenian parents from Calcutta, arrived in Hong Kong in 1864. His career began in a bank, but he soon went into business as an exchange and bullion broker and later ventured into various successful commercial enterprises. He established the Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company, having been authorised by two ordinances in 1884 to construct piers and wharves in Victoria harbour, and was a co-founder (with Jardine, Matheson & Co) of the Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Co Ltd (now better known simply as \"Hong Kong Land\"); later he formed the Hong Kong Mining Company to exploit deposits of iron ore in the New Territories and operated coal mines in Tonking. He was a public-spirited gentleman who initiated the Praya reclamation scheme in 1887 and campaigned vigorously for acquisition by Britain of the territory where he later discovered iron. Chater served as an unofficial member of the Legislative Council for nearly twenty years, elected to that position by his fellow Justices of the Peace, and was one of the first unofficials to be appointed to the Executive Council.\n\n*Plates 24-32 illustrate this Note,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212305,
        "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-1990",
        "page_number": 247,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "224\n\ntwelve o'clock gun firing is due to the liberality of Mr Magniac (a partner) of Messrs. Jardine Matheson and Company, who, when the Home Government ceased to provide this small return for the heavy Military Contribution forwarded annually from this Colony, purchased a gun, etc. and had it fixed up at Messrs. Jardine's, where it is fired daily.\n\nAlthough their gun is still at East Point, not far from where Jardine's started trading in 1841, their head office moved to Central District as long ago as 1864. It has been said there is not one field of commerce in which it does not hold a prominent position and its 'tentacles' extend to interests in many other firms.\n\nHong Kong Land\n\nThe Colony's leading businessmen have usually had considerable interests in land, and it was thus fitting that two of them, Paul Chater (later Sir Paul) and James Johnstone Keswick, should be prime movers in the Hong Kong Land Investment and Agency Company which was incorporated in 1889. The latter, as Taipan of Jardine's, following in the footsteps of his great-uncle William Jardine, was also founding chairman of Hong Kong Land. James was the first of six Keswicks, spanning five generations, to hold the position.\n\nThe company soon began buying sites and erecting office buildings. Between June 1904 and December 1905 it erected Hong Kong's first 'skyscrapers', five major buildings each of five or six storeys, which dwarfed the two and three-storey structures surrounding them.\n\nHong Kong Land acquired Humphrey's Estate and Finance Company, which owns residential property in Mid-Levels, in 1972, and for 14 years 'Land' had a controlling interest in the Dairy Farm, Ice and Cold Storage Company. Today, the latter is once again an independent public company. In its centenary year Hong Kong Land owned some six-million square feet of commercial space of which five-million is in the so-called 'Core Central' area. The firm has been described as \"... perhaps the most valuable property company in the world and certainly in the region ....\" Whether this is true is not known. Certainly, today, some Japanese companies hold considerable interests in real estate on a global scale.\n\nL",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]