[ { "id": 206967, "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-1974", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "32 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nnot on his side. He had come to Hong Kong with an express aim - to obtain cash. His design was to persuade Hong Kong merchants to invest heavily in the exploitation of the territory he claimed to rule as soi-disant King of the Sedangs, a title he had assumed in June 1888 with the passive assent of an innocent montagnard people. There were rich men in Hong Kong - speculators, gamblers, risk-takers - and Mayréna hoped to interest them in the mineral wealth and natural products of his new kingdom. Thus he assumed that meeting Sir William and Lady Des Voeux at Government House would vouch for his respectability and provide an entrée into the social enclosure of the rich European merchant class. \n\nMorès, on the other hand, had no such motivation. He was in Hong Kong with William Van Driesche, and an engineer, a M. Thorel, en route for Tonkin. His visit to Hong Kong was an accident. The Calédonien, the ship he boarded at Marseilles, berthed at Saigon and Hong Kong but not at Haiphong, so Morès was forced to travel on to Hong Kong and transfer to another ship for Haiphong, the entry port for Hanoi and the Red River basin. He was in a hurry and bent on business. Hence he stayed in Hong Kong for only a week, leaving on 29 November by the small German steamer, the Clara. It was during this week that the alleged duel between the two adventurers took place; but to explain why they had both wandered into the East and why they clashed, we must first examine their previous careers. \n\nMarie-Charles David de Mayréna16 \n\nThe future King of the Sedangs was born into a bourgeois milieu at Toulon on 31 January, 1842. His father was a commander in the French navy, who died when Mayréna was a child so that he was reared entirely by a complaisant mother. He failed his examinations for the Ecole navale in 1857 but joined the Sixth Dragoons in 1859, transferring to the Spahis de Cochinchine in 1863. He served in Indo-China until 1868, when he resigned and returned to France. His career so far had been unremarkable. \n\nThe next year he married a colonel's daughter; but little is known about the marriage and it seems likely that they soon separated or divorced. Mayréna was a great womaniser. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and he was recalled to the colours and procured the rank of captain. In February 1871 he was awarded the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209290, "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-1981", "page_number": 193, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "BRO TSUNG LAI SHUN IN MASSACHUSETTS\n\nIn Gratton and Ivy's History of Freemasonry in Shanghai and Northern China is an account of the formation of Union Lodge No 1951 EC of Tientsin. The first two paragraphs read:\n\nFreemasonry in Tientsin commenced its official life with the formation of this Lodge, and until the year 1902, it was the only Lodge working under the English Constitution. It is therefore the senior Lodge in Tientsin and its members have always taken a prominent and active part in the work of the Craft. In the early days it was no uncommon thing for the members residing in Taku, and Tongku to saddle their ponies and ride to Tientsin especially to attend the Lodge Meetings. In those days railways and Banks in this area were non-established, and the firm of Messrs. G. W. Collins and Co., were for years the Lodge bankers.\n\nThe first meeting of the Lodge was held on the 7th January 1881, in the hall of the English Methodist Mission in Taku Road. Bro. A. B. Menzies, P.M. Doric Lodge, No. 1433, E.C. being in the Chair, Bro. J. Innocent, Newall Lodge, No. 1434, E.C. Acting Senior Warden, Bro. J.M. Moore, Doric Lodge, No. 1433, E.C. Acting Junior Warden, Bro. C.A. Schultz, Tuscan Lodge, No. 1027, E.C. Acting Senior Deacon, Bro. James Stewart, Tuscan Lodge, No. 1027, E.C. Acting Junior Deacon, Bro. T.G. Downey, St. John's Lodge, No. 34, U.S.A. [probably of Baltimore, Maryland] Acting Inner Guard, and Bros. G. Von Mollendorff, Germania Lodge, G.C. G.W. Collins, St. John's Lodge, No. 175, S.C. J.J. Hatch, Ionic Lodge, No. 1781, E.C., J.D. Addicks Ancient Landmark, Mass. Const., W. Swain, Ancient Landmark, and Tsung Lai Shun of Hampden Lodge, Massachusetts Constitution,\n\nThis is the only reference in the book to Bro Tsung, and additional information has been sought. Bro Tsung is the first master mason of Chinese race known to have lived in China.\n\nReprinted with permission from Chater-Cosmo Transactions (1980 vol. 2). See also Carl Smith, \"Chan Lai-sun and his family: a 19th century China coast family\", JHKBRAS 14 (1974). - Hon. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210335, "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-1984", "page_number": 306, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "285\n\nwho can wear a colourful ribbon), and for his father and grandfather he applied for 2nd grade titles to be conferred on them.\" His filial piety was difficult to surpass. He died in Vietnam at the age of 73. When his sons and grandsons carried the coffin back to his native village, thousands of Chinese and foreigners, officials and commoners, accompanied it until they reached the ship. There were people crying for him, drawing pictures of him, and writing essays about him. Cities far away, such as Singapore, also had his life-story written in the newspapers with the headline ‘Death of a Philanthropic Gentry' (*). He was really a great man. I am his old colleague, thus, I know all about his personality and activities. Here I cannot give the details, but can only give a general account of him.\n\n“Written in 1904 by Chen chao-ch'ang (陈兆昌), a Tsun Sz (遵司), appointed by Imperial Command an official of the Han Lin Academy, and humbly offered while the writer was in charge of the Shan Hai Kuan area (山海关).\n\nNOTES\n\nEitel, E.J., Europe in China: History of Hong Kong, 1895. p. 311 ff. Ah-lum's wife and children were poisoned, and Eitel clearly had doubts as to his involvement in the crime. The defence of Ah-lum was conducted in a lynch law atmosphere and his arrest and deportation, even though he had been found innocent had, according to Eitel \"reduced (him) from affluence to beggary.”\n\n2 Hsiang-shan T'ieh-ch'eng Chang Shih Tsu-pu (AKA) (Clan Record of the Chang clan of Heung Shan and Fat Shan) (1934). Chi-ching Pu (2) section, Hang Chuang (孝庄) sub-section, pp. 8-9a.\n\n1 According to the Clan record, ancestor Chung-te (忠德) immigrated to Shih-t’ou village (石頭村), eight miles to the southwest of T'ieh-ch'eng (铁城) Fatshan (Foshan) during the latter part of the Southern Sung dynasty. The lineage then segmented into 3 sub-lineages in the 7th generation. The 1st remained in the original settlement, the 2nd moved to Nan-Ping (南屏), and the 3rd to Long-Mei (龙美) in Hsiang-shan (Heung Shan) county. 3 generations later, in the 10th generation, 3 descendants of the 1st sub-lineage emigrated to Ping-Lan (坪兰), Ya-Kang (雅岗) and Wai-chieh-yung (外借涌) in Heung Shan, respectively. Ancestor Ch'un-chen (纯真) of the 10th generation was the first to move to Ya-kang, but the family was not regarded as native to Ya-kang until ancestor Miu-hsien (妙贤) of the 14th generation registered and started a new segment of the lineage (开户立户). Thus, an Ancestral Hall was built in the middle of the Chia Ching (嘉靖) period in memory of him. Ah-lum was of the 18th generation of the Cheung lineage, and the 9th of the Ya-kang segment. He was born in 1828, and died in 1900.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210691, "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-1986", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "25\n\ntenced two soldiers to seven years penal servitude for robbing a man of ten dollars. However in a report to the Governor (Hennessy) he wrote \"if after the circumstances shall be forgotten, say a year after the Regiment shall have left the Colony, you should think it fit to remit any portion of the sentence it might be done”. In another case of robbery in which two defendants were convicted by a majority of the jury of four to three he wrote “I know the Chief Justice has expressed dissatisfaction at verdicts by majorities but the judges have found themselves bound to accept them as conclusive and the practice has been to act on such verdicts. I felt myself obliged to follow such precedents\". He recommended that they be pardoned because a co-defendant who pleaded guilty asserted that they were innocent. In September 1881 the Governor discharged them, and the two soldiers, from prison and was abused by the press for his \"capricious leniency”. (In 1894 an Ordinance provided that a majority of five to two was required in criminal cases). When criticised for hearing proceedings in camera he said \"I mean as long as I sit on this bench to continue to exercise the discretion vested in me by law to hear a case in camera when the ends of justice appear to me to require it, in entire disregard of all obloquy to which it may expose me”. When he ceased to act as Puisne Judge the Chief Justice wrote to the Governor to say that he entirely agreed with the Daily Press that Francis had earned for himself a high reputation for ability and clear-headedness. In addition he was appointed to the Commission of the Peace in 1878, and a member of the Commission to Revise the Laws and Ordinances of Hong Kong in 1887. He was also an examiner of candidates for admission as attorneys both when he was a solicitor and after his call to the Bar. He was never appointed acting Attorney General or Chief Justice, which appointments carried a seat in the Legislative Council (the latter until 1889) and that according to his obituary in the China Mail was a matter of regret to him. The system of acting appointments could have disadvantages as Francis pointed out. In 1885 there was a rumour that the Puisne Judge was going on leave for twelve months and that E.J. Ackroyd the Registrar of the Supreme Court would be appointed to act in his place. Francis wrote to the government expressing the view that officers of the Supreme Court should not be appointed to the bench and that the Registrar was a far more important official than the Puisne Judge. He pointed out that Ackroyd had been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 } ]