[
    {
        "id": 206326,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 143,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n137\n\nto be the richest man in Hong Kong. When Ho Tung retired as chief compradore to Jardine, Matheson's in 1900, Ho Fook succeeded him. Ho Fook's assistant was Ho Kom Tong, another of Ho Tung's brothers. The members of the District Watch Committee were members of a small circle of businessmen, often related through ties of blood or marriage. When the Tai Yau Bank was established in 1914 with a paid-up capital of $6,000,000, the proprietors were named as Lau Chu Pak, Ho Fook, Ho Kom Tong, Lo Chung Shiu and Chan Kai Ming. Lau Chu Pak was compradore to A. S. Watson and Co., chairman of the Po On Commercial Association and chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce; Chan Kai Ming was manager of the Opium Farm; and Lo Chung Shiu, assistant compradore to Jardine, Matheson and Co., was Ho Fook's brother-in-law. All were or became members of the District Watch Committee.\n\n22 T. C. Cheng writes that Wei Yuk 'was very much concerned about law and order among the Chinese masses because in those early days riff-raff and political refugees from South China continued to come into Hong Kong. Thus it was at his suggestion that the District Watch Force was founded in 1888. Mr. Cheng appears to be mistaken about the date and is no doubt referring to the ordinance of that year, no. 13 of 1888 rather than to its proper date of origin. Wright and Cartright, Feldwick, and Professor Woo all state that the Committee was formed on Wei Yuk's suggestion. See: T. C. Cheng, 'Chinese Unofficial Members of the Legislative and Executive Councils of Hong Kong up to 1941', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 9, 1969, pp. 17-18; Arnold Wright and H. A. Cartright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Treaty Ports, London, Lloyd's Greater Britain Publishing Co., 1908, p. 109; W. Feldwick, ed., Present Day Impressions of the Far East and Prominent Chinese at Home and Abroad, London Globe Encyclopedia Co., 1917, p. 576; Professor Woo Sing Lim, The Prominent Chinese in Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Five Continents Book Company, 1939, p. 4.\n\n23 Unfortunately all the records in the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs were destroyed or lost during the Japanese occupation and hence anyone trying to reconstruct the history of the District Watch must work mostly from scraps of information found in government publications, newspapers, books.\n\n24 My guess is that a large number were traditional Chinese merchants from the Five Districts operating on a relatively small scale. The Committee after 1891 represented the views of a more westernised and modernised elite with a knowledge of modern business techniques and modern financial manipulations. Dr. Ho Kai, for example, played the stock exchange with great success and speculated in many fields, particularly land development. He was, properly speaking, a financier although his occupation is often given tout court as lawyer. He had also qualified in medicine at Edinburgh but gave up the practice of medicine soon after his return to Hong Kong in 1882 because of Chinese resistance to western medicine.\n\n25 In 1903, for example, the Committee opposed the re-introduction of the night-pass system but suggested other remedial measures (see Index to Correspondence (General Register) 1894-1904, Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1909, p. 100). In 1909 'at the request of the District Watchmen Committee, children who are hawking without a licence are on their first offence sent to the Registrar General who cautions their guardians. This procedure seems to have proved effective in each case' wrote the Registrar General in 1909. It is worth noting that both Registrar General and Committee wanted to end the night-pass system and were opposed by the Captain Superintendent of Police, who was unsuccessful. As for hawkers, very few Chinese regarded them as a serious menace although colonial administrators",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212617,
        "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-1991",
        "page_number": 171,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "151\n\nalong the dismantled track ran no trains, under whose wheels we could get our dummy mines, as we had been able to do in Burma where the alarm created by their noisy, if harmless, explosions had often confused the Indian engine drivers.\n\nThe magistrate was helpful: he devoted two days to tramping round with us from village to village, until we could decide where accommodation for the school might be most suitable; and he promised to build a short length of road to connect the village finally selected with the motor road so that our lorries could drive right up to the door. The village was some miles outside a small country town; I shall call it Chin Ya, the Golden Duck.*\n\nNew Year's Eve fell while I was making these investigations. The local general, with that consideration which is the charming mark of Chinese breeding, fearing I should be lonely, invited me to dinner. Since arrival in the 3rd War Zone I had asked to be kept informed of any parties of foreigners escaping from Shanghai, but no news of any escapes had come through. It was accordingly with the greater pleasure, as we were sitting down to dinner, that I was surprised by the entry of a tall bearded figure, wearing a long Chinese gown, and heard myself addressed in English. He was the first foreigner to escape from Shanghai, an American, Mr. Hawkins, the manager of one of the branches of the big American bank which had offices in China.\n\nHe told us his story while we ate our dinner. Having only just returned from leave in the States, he was staying at an hotel, which happened to be near the Bund. Early on the morning of December 7th he was wakened by the sound of gunfire. He went out to investigate and found that Japanese destroyers were sinking H.M.S. Peterel in the Whangpoo River just off the Bund. He realised that war must have broken out and dashed round to his bank to 'phone his manager. He then returned to his hotel, packed a small bag, got into his car, and drove out to the stables in the western suburb, where a friend kept two ponies which he had permission to ride. He saddled the ponies, and riding the one while leading the other, passed through the gate at which a Japanese sentry stood guard where the road crossed the barbed wire barrier surrounding Shanghai. The barrier had originally been put up by the foreign troops holding the\n\n* It is in the Tianmushan mountains, near the border of Chekiang and Anhwei, near the country town Anchi",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 213060,
        "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": 128,
        "title": "RAS-1993",
        "content_text": "108\n\n85 An observation which lends some support to this view is that of Hill, that the American women missionaries came from a conservative Protestant tradition, and did not share the egalitarian view of the 'women's movement'. See Patricia R Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985), pp. 33-5.\n\n86 Dr Mitchell was married to Dr. Isabella Little, of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission in Macao, in January, 1906. His wife died of typhoid at their posting, Poklo, in May, 1909. Dr Mitchell was transferred to Hong Kong at the end of 1909, initially for six months, to help Dr Gibson, 'to prevent the risk of a breakdown'. See LMS Box 16, 1905-06 No. 290, Dr. Mitchell to Mr Cousins, 11 August, 1905; LMS Box 18, 1909 No. 313, Dr. Gibson to Mr Cousins, 13 May, 1909; LMS Box 18, 1909-10 No. 316, Mr Clayson to Mr Wardlaw Thompson, enclosure: Urgency Resolutions of DC, 28 January, 1910.\n\n*7 See, for example, the biography of Lady Clara Ho Tung, whose identification, though Eurasian born, was Chinese. Irene Cheng, Clara Ho Tung: A Hong Kong Lady, Her Family and Her Times (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1989, paperback), p. 133.\n\n88 By 1890, in all schools under the Education Department, girls made up 32 per cent of enrolments. See G.B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong, 2nd edn (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 240.\n\n89 LMS Box 18, 1910 No. 319, Dr Sibree to Dr. Thompson, 26 September, 1910.\n\n90 LMS Box 22, 1922 No. 385, Mr Pearce to F.H. Hawkins Esq., 2 May, 1922. To what extent Dr Sibree's views were coloured by her father-in-law is unknown. Rev. C.H. Hickling was a critic of the LMS work in Hong Kong, particularly of the medical mission work, which he considered redundant. See LMS Box 19, 1913 No. 340, C.H. Hickling to Mr Lenwood, 8 July, 1913. He stated:\n\nmedical mission work is argued 1) as a pioneering agency to break down prejudice & 2) to introduce modern & humane Medicine & surgery. The Hongkong medical work is superfluous now for either purpose. The direct evangelistic work is of the most puny order. Dr. Gibson knows comparatively little of the language - so transfer would not be hard.\n\nand concluded:\n\nIf LMS work in HK & Canton were dropped & Poklo handed over to the German Mission which is working all round it, I believe that Christian enterprise would suffer to an infinitesimal extent for a year or so & after that not at all. The HK Hospitals would be locally supported as now & worked with Western trained medicals.\n\n91 LMS Box 19, 1913 No. 340, Dr. Gibson to Mr. Lenwood, 18 June, 1913.\n\n92 Paterson, op. cit., p. 111.\n\n93 LMS Box 18, 1920 No. 319. Dr. Mitchell to Rev. G. Currie Martin, 1 September, 1910.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302",
        "rank": 0
    }
]