[ { "id": 207011, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "\"OH FOR THE JOYS OF ENGLAND\"\n\nLT. ORLANDO BRIDGEMAN'S LETTERS FROM CHINA AND HONG KONG, 1842 - 1843\n\nROBIN MCLACHLAN*\n\nLieutenant Orlando Bridgeman was a minor participant in British activities in China in the early 1840's. Mention of this quite unimportant subaltern is not likely to be found in any of the dozens of histories and memoirs narrating the First Anglo-Chinese War and the early years of Hong Kong. However, Orlando Bridgeman has left us his own personal record of his sojourn in the Far East in the form of several entertaining, if somewhat illegible, letters preserved in the archives of the Nottingham County Record Office.1** His correspondence home provides the rare opportunity of seeing what life could be like in the Far East for a very homesick and bored young British officer on his first overseas service. The impression that Bridgeman gives of life in China and Hong Kong is quite different from the more romantic and adventurous picture provided by more experienced and hardier souls. For Bridgeman, his time there was little more than an adventure in misery.\n\nLimited biographical information on Orlando Bridgeman can be gleaned from Hart's Annual Army Lists and Burke's Peerage.2 His full name was Orlando Jack Charles Bridgeman; he was born in 1823, the younger son of Captain Orlando Henry Bridgeman (1794-1827) and his wife, Selina. Both parents were the children of British aristocracy; his father was the third son (of four) of Baron Bradford and his mother was the daughter of the Earl of Kilmorey. The careers of the four sons of Baron Bradford comply with the popular stereotype of careers followed by the sons of eighteenth and nineteenth century British nobility. The eldest son, of course, succeeded to the family title; for the second, third and fourth sons there were careers in the navy, army and church respectively. Following their schooling at Harrow, both Orlando Jack Charles Bridgeman and his brother, Francis Orlando Henry, followed their\n\n* Mr. McLachlan is a member of the Department of Far Eastern History at the Australian National University.\n\n**The notes to this article will be found at the end.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207012, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "BRIDGEMAN'S LETTERS FROM CHINA AND HONG KONG\n\n77\n\nfather's footsteps and entered the army by purchasing commissions, the usual practice then. Our Orlando, (the name has been a popular choice with the Bradford Bridgemans since the seventeenth century) purchased a commission as an ensign in the 98th Regiment of Foot on July 2, 1841.3 Within six months, Orlando Bridgeman and his regiment were on their way to the war in China. In March of 1843 he was promoted to lieutenant.\n\nThe letters Bridgeman sent home were addressed to his sister, Selina, who at the time of writing was travelling the European continent in the manner of the fashionable young lady of her day. Only nine of the letters have survived, seven of which were sent from China or Hong Kong; the other two letters, which were also the first two, dealt with the voyage out to China via the Cape of Good Hope. Judging from the contents and dates of the letters it is quite possible that more were sent but have since been destroyed or lost. As one would expect in letters between brother and sister, much of the correspondence deals with family affairs, the condition and whereabouts of mutual friends, Selina's travels on the continent and like matters. After discussing such affairs, Orlando would then go on to recount to his sister details of his life in the not so mysterious and rather boring orient.\n\nSoon after his arrival in China, Bridgeman and his regiment took part in the expedition up the Yangtze to Nanking. His only letter about the war, written sometime in August, records its successful conclusion.\n\nYou can have no conception of the general joy this affords. We are all very seedy. I myself am done up. The 98th are landed and have been for some time, and are encamped near the city of Nankin, more to recruit our health than anything else, as we have been suffering a good deal. Now that it is all over, I do not mind telling you all about it. We have had cholera very badly in the Regt. On our first landing to attack Tsing-kiang-foo* it attacked us and in less than three weeks we lost over one hundred men. Many others are still very ill from the effects of it and the regt. is a mere skeleton from the number of sick in hospital. We were only able to land three hundred and fifty strong. Do not let this frighten you or my mother, as all is nearly over, and the men are fast getting strong.4\n\nChinkiang,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207018, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "BRIDGEMAN'S LETTERS FROM CHINA AND HONG KONG\n\n83\n\nThere is a gap of several months between the second-last and last of Bridgeman's letters. The last letter was written on October 29, 1843 following his release from hospital where he had been ill with dysentry.23 He told his sister that he was still ill and very weak, but (perhaps on account of illness) he was coming home—at last.\n\nLittle information can be found on Orlando's subsequent life and career. We know that he continued with the 98th Regiment as a lieutenant until sometime in 1845, when he was transferred to the 11th Regiment of Hussars (Prince Albert's Own).24 Undoubtedly to Orlando's delight, this regiment was stationed in England, first at Newbridge and then at Coventry. Bridgeman served as a lieutenant with the 11th Hussars until sometime in 1847 when he appears to have quit the army.25 From 1847 until his death on October 4, 1913 at the age of ninety, he seems to have led a completely obscure life.26 The 1914 edition of Burke's Peerage described him as a “late” lieutenant in the 11th Hussars, a post he had held almost seventy years before. He died unmarried,\n\nReading Orlando's letters today one is inclined to picture him as something of a whining prig who found cause for complaint with everyone and everything. At his best, one might be charitable and describe him as retiring and sensitive. With his concern for the effects of the noon day sun and his distaste for unnecessary perspiration, he certainly was not suited to the rigorous and hard life of punitive expeditions in an expanding empire. Neither did he desire to join the rowdy drinking of his fellow officers, but preferred the company of his singing canaries. A Flashman he was not. Or was he? As with any historical document, one must keep in mind for whom the documents were written, in this case a sister. What sort of letter did he send his brother Francis, a captain in the 45th Regiment? We will probably never know, but one hopes that he told his brother that he joined Captain Balfour's farewell party, for a cup of tea at least.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214838, "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-1999", "page_number": 253, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "220\n\n[Chusan]: \"We have allowed people to take away their property and then follow after it,\" he complained. \"So here we are, having captured a large and wealthy town in a deserted place, and unable to get for our money even a little tea, sugar or common oil of the coarsest quality; and we cannot get a labourer to work for us out of the thousands that were here a month ago. I presume such a thing was never before heard of in the annals of war.\"34\n\nKidnapping and the Maltreatment of Prisoners\n\nOne feature of War as waged by the Chinese was deprecated in the strongest terms. This was what they saw as the despicable and underhand practice of kidnapping and killing unwary soldiers and camp followers. Lieutenant Oughterlony styles it “a system of warfare, if the term may be so applied, so repugnant to the feelings of civilized nations.”35 It was especially so for those whose friends were its objects.\n\nWriting to his sister, Lieutenant Orlando Bridgeman of the 98th Regiment, recounted a near successful attempt near camp in Chusan upon two brother officers who had unthinkingly gone too far into the country. What \"pity\" he felt for the Chinese on account of their heavy losses in battle was now lost, he said, \"since they proved so dreadfully treacherous\" with their kidnapping on Chusan.36 It was the same at Ningpo. As many as 40 men were abducted in the later stages of its occupation, by means of offering them the potent native liquor and women.37\n\nNeither were civilians to be spared. W. C. Milne, the missionary referred to above, was afterwards told that he himself had been the subject of such a plan in the spring of 1842, and in recounting this added that, “If I mistake not, it was (and I may add is now) the only effective plan the Chinese adopted for annoying their foreign aggressors.\"38 Ouchterlony, too, styled it \"an effectual method of annoyance.\"\n\n1139\n\nIndeed, kidnapping had been official policy since the early period of the War, encouraged by a widely distributed placard and a published scale of monetary rewards, beginning with the Plenipotentiary himself, Captain Elliot.40\n\nThe harsh and inhumane treatment, and worse, inflicted by", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 } ]