[
    {
        "id": 206011,
        "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-1970",
        "page_number": 91,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "86 \n\nA. D. BLUE \n\n1860's, cannot have been much worse than those experienced by contemporary European emigrants to America and Australia; and may have been better than those experienced by many thousands of Irish emigrants to America during the famine years of 1846-48. In her book \"The Great Famine\", Cecil Woodham-Smith gives horrifying details of the sufferings of these unfortunate people. Two of the most tragic cases concerned the British ships Larch and Virginius, which left Sligo and Liverpool respectively for Quebec at this time. Of the Larch's 440 passengers 108 died at sea, and 150 of the remainder were landed sick; while of the Virginius' 476 passengers 158 died at sea and 106 of the remainder — including the master and mate — were landed sick. At that time American ships were superior to British, and their fares were higher than on British ships, because they applied the Passenger Acts more strictly. Also during this same summer of 1847 German ships were constantly arriving at Quebec with hundreds of healthy, robust, and cheerful passengers. It was surely a mastery of British understatement for Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to write that \"the desire to reach America being exceedingly strong, many emigrants are content to submit to very great hardships during the voyage\". Nor is it to be wondered that fully 90% of these emigrants later crossed over into the United States, among them the father of Henry Ford. The greatest hardships during the famine emigrations took place on ships chartered by landlords anxious to clear their estates of impoverished tenants, and some of the worst cases are said to have involved Lord Palmerston's own tenants. Lord Palmerston, who was Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister for most of the 1840's, and prominent in the campaign against the African Slave Trade, probably knew little about his tenants' misfortunes, in itself one of the most telling indictments of the Irish land system. \n\nIn all the long period of Chinese emigration and until the early years of the 20th century, very few Chinese women emigrated, a factor which has had an incalculable effect on South-east Asian history. It is said that the Chinese authorities, while comparatively lax in preventing the emigration of men, took great precautions to prevent women emigrating, and it was not, for instance, until the mid 1920s that the authorities in Hainan Island allowed women to emigrate. A Chinese woman was a rare sight in the streets of Bangkok until about 1910, but within twenty years",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213132,
        "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-1993",
        "page_number": 200,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "182\n\nhave some to sell. Fruit was sold on street, but was not always available.76 Occasionally, however, a mountainside villager might bring in a load of the little bitter mountain larch berries in the autumn, or rose-myrtle fruit, and the lowland villages sometimes had Wong Pei or Lung Ngan. Ginger flowers in the summer, from the lowland villages, and New Year Bell-flowers and other New Year plants from the mountainside villages, were also traded.\n\nThe full-time, professional, hawkers were of two types: those who normally traded in the town, and those who normally traded from the town through the surrounding villages. Within the town, there were a few permanent cooked-food hawkers who sold fried noodles - often dogmeat noodles - from charcoal stoves carried through the streets. These hawkers sometimes carried their wares through the nearer surrounding villages, as well. There were a few knife-sharpeners who worked in the same way. There were also a few sweet sellers who hawked sweets through the town and the nearer villages: these were mostly connected with the sweet-shops in the town.\n\nThere was only one good well in the town, outside the Upper East Gate. Within the town there were a number of small backyard wells, but these were polluted and brackish. They were not fit for drinking from, and were used for getting washing water. However, the wine-makers in the town used these backyard wells for the water they made their wine with. The shopowners did not, usually, draw their own drinking water. A number of women from the nearby villages made a living by drawing water and carrying it around the town, selling a load for a few cash. These women were called \"Water-women\" (水婦).\n\nWithin the market district there were a number of full-time hawkers who carried wares from the town around the villages. These did not usually carry general goods, nor did they usually fulfill orders from villagers unwilling to go to market. 'Anyone who wanted something had to walk to town to get it: there was no other way, no-one would carry anything for you.\" However, there were things which the ordinary village woman could not carry, and these were brought by the hawkers. Thus, every family needed a few large, heavy, earthenware water-pots and rice-jars. These were cumbersome and awkward even to lift, let alone carry over the mountains, where a single slip would cause them to smash. Hawkers brought these, and similar wares, around the villages. Wares unavailable",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    }
]