[
    {
        "id": 212317,
        "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": 259,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "236\n\nThe Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Company Limited\n\nThe supply of ice for the preservation of food is obviously important in the tropics. George Wingrove Cooke, correspondent for The Times, in 1857 provided a vivid picture:\n\nIn Hong Kong and Shanghai, a dinner table in the summer season is a melancholy spectacle of spoiled food. The creatures to be eaten were necessarily killed the same day, and the tough tissues are as hard as death stiffened them.”\n\nIn the 1850s, large expatriate households often owned at least one cow, and a block of ice bought from George Duddell prevented the milk from going sour. The selling of ice was one of the earliest trades in Hong Kong, and the first consignment of ice was imported by Jardine's in 1843. The Ice House Company was established in 1845. The price fluctuated depending upon the season and the demand and varied, in 1849, from three to six cents a pound. The ice was stored in a specially constructed building at the corner of Ice House Street at the southern side of Queen's Road. Importers often lost money. Although the Tudor Company imported ice from North America in the early days, by the 1870s ice manufacturing apparatus was shipped into Hong Kong, and, in 1874, the Hong Kong Times reported the ice making establishment at East Point was completed. In 1881, the Hong Kong Ice Company was founded with its headquarters at East Point.\n\nLater the Hong Kong Ice Company was taken over by Jardine's, although Butterfield and Swire was the first company to diversify into selling Australian butter, and, later still, frozen foods including poultry, pigs, and the provisioning of ships. B&S was also the first to sign a contract to supply the armed forces. The frozen food business was taken over from Butterfield and Swire, by Dairy Farm, in 1904.\n\nDairy produce\n\nIn those early days milk was obtained from native buffaloes and a few sickly cows. Then, John Kennedy, a veterinary surgeon who died in 1902, imported cows from Britain, and, in 1880, the dairy (established 1856) stood next to the Horse Repository close to where the Peak Tram is now situated in Garden Road. At a time when expatriates",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213204,
        "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-1994",
        "page_number": 26,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "As a chartered monopoly the East India Company had the right to exclude British subjects who were not members of the company from residing permanently in China. Their presence was tolerated for only the few months of the trading season. Consuls representing a foreign country could claim exemption from this rule. In 1783, John Reed was commissioned as head of the Austrian Imperial Factory at Canton - the trading establishments were called factories. He had been born in Britain but subsequently became a naturalised subject of the Austrian Emperor. Another Englishman, a subject of Austria, arrived in Canton in 1787, carrying a certificate of naturalisation from Austria. There was, however, a dispute about the national status of Edward Watts and the British East India Company demanded he leave at the end of the trading season, but he stayed on for several more years ignoring the attempt to get rid of him.\n\nDaniel Beale, a British subject who had been in the employ of the East India Company, in 1787 was appointed the Prussian Consul at Canton. This post was held by subsequent partners of the firm of which Beale was a member. The firm eventually became Jardine, Matheson and Co. The present Rua Pedro Nolasco da Silva in Macao is called by Chinese Bak Ma Lo, or in translation White Horse Road. Father Manuel Teixeira, the Macao historian, states that the white horse was on the Prussian flag which flew over what was then No. 1 Rua Hospital, a building occupied by Jardines for some years.\n\nIn the lists of residents on the China coast published in the Chinese Repository and the Anglo-Chinese Commercial Directory, the first name I have identified as German is Edmund Mueller in 1835. He was from Hamburg but arrived at Canton from Manila. He became the editor of the Canton Press, holding this position from 1836 to 1844. In the latter year he went into trade at Macao. He appears to have left China by 1847.\n\nGustav Christian Schwabe is listed as a German residing at Canton in 1837. He had arrived from Calcutta in November 1836 and sailed for Manila in October 1837. The firm of Sykes, Schwabe and Co, which later became Boustead and Co., had its head office at Liverpool with overseas branches at Singapore, Manila and Canton. Mr. Schwabe was manager of the Liverpool office from 1845 to 1853. He then returned to China to head the firm of G.C. Schwabe and Co. at Shanghai. This firm was dissolved by lapse of time in 1859 and was succeeded by Bower, Hanbury and Co, Shanghai.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]