[
    {
        "id": 206521,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 69,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n63\n\nOn 16 April Lockhart returned to Taipo and in the presence of the General Officer Commanding, Major-General W. J. Gascoigne, and about 500 men, he hoisted the British flag and then read the Order-in-Council and Convention. The territory was now formally occupied. There had been some resistance from the people and from those living in the Sham Chun area. Lockhart had been asked to return to Hong Kong to attend a meeting of the Legislative Council but in a minute to the Governor he stated: 'I have consulted the General Officer Commanding, who thinks it very desirable for many reasons that I should remain here. I am of the same opinion, so propose to remain.'22 Since the situation was still unsettled, the Governor concurred with Lockhart's proposal and Lockhart stayed behind with the troops, accompanying them on a long sweep through the New Territories to make the British presence known.\n\nLockhart and the troops led by Lieutenant-Colonel The O'Gorman pushed on from Taipo on 18 April to Shek Kong; from that village they passed through Kam Tin, Yuen Long, Ping Shan, Sheung Shui, Fanling, and arrived back in Taipo on 27 April. The O'Gorman reported: \"To the Honourable J.H. Stewart Lockhart, C.M.G., Colonial Secretary, is due the admirable results that have been attained in the Civil Administration of this Territory during this brief state of turmoil; his measures have been taken with great energy and ability and in a manner that, long experience has shown him, were suitable to the occasion. The result has been a most complete success. Only those on the spot can realise the amount of labour and care he has devoted from early morning to late at night to the discharge of these trying duties. A most hearty co-operation has existed throughout between us and no difference of opinion on any one point has arisen.'23 The Secretary of State, Joseph Chamberlain, in a despatch to the Governor, commented: 'without wishing to undervalue in any way the services rendered by others, it is evident to me that much has been due to the energy of Mr. Lockhart, and to his local knowledge.\"24 Lockhart remained in the New Territories until July 1899 in order to start the civil administration. The headquarters of the new administration were fixed at Taipo. He was assisted in his task by C.M. Messer, a cadet officer, Ts'oi Yeuk-shan, First Chinese Clerk, and two Chinese assistants. The problems he had to face were at first formidable.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209211,
        "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": 114,
        "title": "RAS-1981",
        "content_text": "100 \n\nCARL T SMITH \n\nA resolution was proposed and seconded that the mui tsai system be abolished. The Chairman ruled it out of order as the meeting had been called to consider the advisability of establishing a society for the protection of servant girls. At the conclusion of the meeting a resolution to form such a society was passed. It was duly organised as the \"Society for the Protection of the Mui Tsai,\" \n\nFormation of the Anti-Mui Tsai Society - September 1921 \n\nThe group that had proposed a resolution for abolition regarded the new society as the vehicle of the elite establishment composed of past and present Directors of Tung Wah Hospital, members of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Kaifong leaders. The abolition group was made up of members of the churches, the YMCA, the YWCA and labour unions. They believed the Protection Society would advocate palliative measures only and not get at the root of the problem, therefore they were determined to organize another group to be called the Anti Mui Tsai Society. An organization meeting was held in September 1921 and a public manifesto was published a month later under the names of the Society's Provisional Executive Committee. \n\nThis document was divided into sections dealing with (I) the inherent evils of the system, (II) reasons for abolition, (III) the system not being charity, (IV) the futility of reform by persuasion, and (V) tentative proposals to effect abolition. \n\nThe document argued that the basic evil of the system was that the treatment and status of the servant girls were similar to that of slaves. Like slaves 'they were bought with money,... exploited without reserve, not paid for labour and can be resold”. The only difference between a slave and a mui tsai was that a slave served for life and his descendants inherited his status, while the servant girl received her freedom on reaching the usual age for marriage. \n\nAs reasons for its abolition the manifesto declared the system to be injurious to public morality, subversive of righteousness, and injurious to national prestige. On the last point reference was made to the fact that the 1918 Peace Treaty included the International Labour Convention in which the contracting nations agreed to endeavour to secure fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children. \n\nOne of the principal arguments used by those who wished to continue the practice was that it was charity. It benefited a child who",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211360,
        "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-1988",
        "page_number": 76,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "Introducing a motion for the adoption of the recommendations of the sub-committee, Mr. Bowley stated that in the Peace Treaty then under discussion provisions were made for an International Labour Convention and for a League of Nations. In the proposals for both organizations the welfare of women and children were dealt with. Appended to the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with the Labour Convention was the affirmation of the principle of an eight hour working day and a forty-eight hour week.\n\nMr. Bowley reminded the Board that the matters being proposed were on the agenda of the Labour Convention which was to be held in Washington, D. C. in the United States in October 1919. These developments had a particular meaning for Hong Kong as a British outpost in the East, for if Hong Kong took action as a part of the British Empire it might influence “our neighbouring allies' China and Japan, both of whom were parties to the Treaty and who had accepted both the League of Nations and the Labour Convention.” He continued. “If Hong Kong, China and Japan are to be included in the comity of nations on equal terms, it behoves us and our neighbours to consider these questions very carefully”.\n\nHe contrasted the absence of factory legislation in Hong Kong with Britain where such legislation had been gradually developed and enforced over the past eighty years. One reason for the difference between the two places was that Hong Kong until only recently had not been much of a manufacturing centre, but now there were many new factories. \"The time has come\", he said, \"when some, at least, of most of the elementary principles of the Factory Acts should be introduced into the Colony”. The experience of England had been that factory legislation had to be related to provisions for education and it would be difficult to apply the same laws to Hong Kong if there was no movement at the same time toward compulsory education, but since the Sanitary Board had no jurisdiction over education, the committee had concluded that it was impossible to prohibit employment of children even of the tenderest age, for it was better for children to be occupied with light tasks with their parents than playing in the gutter. Moreover, the criminal law contained provisions for the punishment of parents or masters and mistresses who ill-treated or neglected their children or child servants. So until something was done about universal education, the present measures were as much",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213560,
        "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-1995",
        "page_number": 156,
        "title": "RAS-1995",
        "content_text": "125\n\nFinally, for English sounds with no corresponding Chinese sound, diacritics are placed alongside the Chinese characters, based on the methods employed by Qian Long in his Manchu dictionaries of the Chinese minority languages.\n\nThe resulting transcription is as accurate and consistent as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Added to this, the translations of Chinese words and phrases are precise and accurate. The American source of Tong's English clearly shows through.\n\nMuch of the material is in the form of extended dialogues covering domestic and trade matters: thus the reader is in the position of being a \"fly on the wall\" during trade negotiations for teas and fabrics in the mid nineteenth century. This in itself is a valuable historical and linguistic resource. But in addition, obviously added as an afterthought, texts in small Chinese characters are included in whatever space is free on each page of dialogues. These texts are the Pidgin English equivalents.\n\nNow you can see what a goldmine this source is: we have extensive recordings of Pidgin dialogues set down by a rigorous and talented linguist, together with their colloquial English and Cantonese equivalents.\n\nThe Chinese Characters used to record the pidgin are not those used to transcribe the standard English. They are taken from a very limited stock of colloquial Cantonese characters: about one hundred are used altogether, as compared with well over five hundred characters and variants used in the main text. This reduced character stock may be the ones used in the original \"Devils' Talk\" pamphlets, which had attained the status of convention (which, as we shall illustrate they still do).\n\nThis is the source which we shall use for our general description of China Coast Pidgin.\n\nWe think it was the demise of employment of Chinese servants among European families which has made pidgin die out in Hong Kong. The Pacific war and the influx of Filipino immigrant labour have done for Pidgin what the mammals did for the dinosaurs. Reading the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]