[ { "id": 206743, "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-1973", "page_number": 20, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "14\n\nH. A. RYDINGS\n\nbut moved with it to Morrison Hill where it reopened on 1st June, 1843. As already mentioned, he went home in June, 1845. This was because of the illness of his wife, who died on the journey (5). More details of Dr. Hobson's career may be found in a biographical sketch by Dr. K. C. Wong (6). It is interesting to note that prior to his return to China in 1847, Hobson married Mary, daughter of Dr. Robert Morrison, at Bath. Hobson's successor as Secretary, George K. Barton, was a partner with Thomas Hunter in the Victoria Dispensary. This also had premises in Macao, where Hunter was located. James H. Young was the junior partner in the Hongkong Dispensary in Queen's Road, the others being Peter Young (afterwards Colonial Surgeon in succession to Francis Dill on the latter's death in 1846), Samuel Marjoribanks (who was at Canton) and K. M. Kennedy. Dr. Young resigned as Treasurer and from membership in November 1845. Lastly Henry Holgate, according to Eitel, was appointed Colonial Surgeon in August 1841 by Sir Henry Pottinger, but his appointment was subsequently disallowed by the home Government, and his name does not appear in the official list of holders of that office. He presumably remained in Hong Kong in private practice (8).\n\nThese, then, were the men who guided the China Medico-Chirurgical Society during its brief existence. Of the six, Drs. Tucker and Dill died before the end of 1846, and Dr. Hobson had gone back to England, whilst Dr. J. H. Young had resigned.\n\nThe China Medico-Chirurgical Society came into existence at a meeting held at the residence of Dr. Dill on 13th May 1845, attended by eleven \"Medical Gentlemen of Hongkong.\" The objects of the Society were set out as\n\n\"1st—The bringing into more intimate intercourse [of the] Medical brethren in China, for the sake of giving and receiving information on Medical and Surgical subjects;\n\n\"2nd—The formation of a Library, where all the best periodicals and the most valuable standard medical works of the day can be had;\n\n“3rd—The discussion of topics relating more particularly to the diseases prevalent in China, and to the Native Materia Medica.\"\n\nThe annual subscription was $12. The Committee consisting of the three officers and three other members was to be elected half", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211460, "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": 176, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "152\n\nyears later, Maternal Grandmother had her third child, a son, who died in infancy in China when he and Mother were taken there for a visit.\n\nMother was a very good-looking woman. She had rather large eyes, well-formed features and a fair, pleasant face. Her hair was dark and very fine, a characteristic she had inherited from her father, who, she said, had hair of silk and skin that was fair, smooth and hairless. There was an air of gentility and femininity about her. A modest, humble and friendly person, she made friends easily and always avoided conflict. She formed strong and lasting friendships with many who found in her an understanding and sympathetic confidante. Because she was a fine seamstress, many sought her help in cutting or sewing their Chinese clothes. Mother never lost her sense of pride, even though early years of poverty left their mark on her to save and deprive herself for that \"rainy day\" which never came. She was a pessimist, always anticipating disaster, and consequently was cautious and conservative, often warning us, \"Walk with hand holding onto a wall\".\n\n—\n\nBeneath her soft appearance, however, Mother was a person of strength. She dominated our early lives and we submitted whether we agreed with her or not, due to an ingrained sense of respect for our elders. It was not until I was nearly 30 years old that I began to exert myself and this resulted in a few emotional confrontations. Because it was felt that education would cause daughters to become too independent and also too old to be sought after as wives, Mother was allowed only a few years of schooling. On the other hand, because Hakka (**) parents saw the advantage of a good education, some of Mother's Hakka schoolmates went on to become teachers or prominent citizens. One of them was Mrs. Samuel Young and the other was Mrs. How Fo Chong, wife of a minister and daughter of Lee Toma. From these early associates, Mother learned to speak the Hakka dialect fluently.\n\nBright, alert and curious, Mother had a great thirst for knowledge and never hesitated to ask when she did not know. With added guidance from Father, she could read and write both Chinese and English better than many Hawaiian-born Punti girls of that era. She would tell us stories about the heroic deeds of old, about which she had read in such Chinese classics as The Three Kingdoms and The Dream of the Red Chamber. Even up to a year before her death, she left evidence of having used", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211464, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "156\n\nmore emancipated, she underwent surgery several times for a uterine tumor, for hemorrhoids, for a gastric ulcer and gallstones, and finally for intestinal obstruction at the age of 79. She was fortunate to come under the care of excellent surgeons Dr. Wah Kwai Chang, Dr. Samuel Yee, and Dr. Livingston Wong. And Dr. Richard Chun treated her for many years for hypertension and a bad heart.\n\nI do not think that Mother had ever worked through her feelings of repeated separations and losses. At the tender age of 16, she became separated from her family by marriage, only visiting once or twice a year, although Kaneohe was only about 12 miles from Honolulu. The death of Grandmother Jong in 1907, the departure of Grandfather for China in 1909, never to return, the gift of Me Yuk to First Paternal Uncle Chan before she could walk, her death at five years of age, and Grandfather Jong's rejection of Mother when he learned that she had embraced Christianity and wrote that he had lost his daughter — all these increased Mother's feelings of loss. When I was growing up, I would sometimes come upon her with tears in her eyes. Although it troubled me, I never thought to ask her the reason and I was too young to understand and to give her comfort. These experiences no doubt coloured her outlook on life, for whenever any of us left home, she would cry and worry unnecessarily. Oddly her fears were often confirmed.\n\nMother was never pressured by Father to become a Christian. An elderly Chinese Bible woman, whom we addressed as \"Fourth Aunt\", would visit us in Iwilei, talk with Mother, and teach Ruth and me to sing \"Jesus Loves Me, this I know\" in Chinese. At Christmas \"American\" ladies would come by and give us cornucopias filled with candy. We still have a booklet from them, pasted with pictures of Bible stories and a photograph of Central Union Church on its cover. I used to look at the pictures over and over again, and was particularly struck by a picture of a boy lying on the ground and a woman sitting beside him in a prayerful attitude with her face turned towards Heaven. I later learned that it was Ishmael and his mother in the desert after Abraham sent them away.\n\nIn 1911 when we moved to our home on Board Road, Mother became acquainted with two staunch Christians, Mrs. C. K. Ai and Mrs. Edwin Cooper, under whose influence she became more enlightened and\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211469, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "161\n\nfaith, the Lam Toy's and Lam Quan's, who became our life-long friends. By this time Chinese women were freer to visit with each other, and Mrs. Lam Quan taught Mother how to sew Western style dresses for us children, to bake cakes, to make delicious ice cream (which was a great treat in those days), and to use Western medicine. When Mr. and Mrs. Ai took a trip to China in 1913, their son, Samuel, would often play with me or Helen. One afternoon while he, Mung Yee Yap and I were playing ball, the family dog, tied to a mango tree, bit Samuel repeatedly when he tried to retrieve a stray ball. I stood immobilized and horrified by his screams. He happened to be wearing clothes his friend had loaned him when his head became wet while playing in a stream, and the unfamiliar scent must have provoked the dog. Fortunately his sister Bessie, who happened to come to the front door, rescued him. It was also traumatic to hear Samuel's scream while he was being treated on the back porch by Dr. Francis Wong-Leong.\n\nAmong Mother's non-Christian friends was the first Mrs. Siu Kit who lived in a small lane behind the Dutro's. She had come from China with her oldest child to join Mr. Siu, who ran a butcher shop at the corner of King and Aala Streets. She bore five more children, but the youngest died of whooping cough before he was even a month old. After the death of this infant, Mrs. Siu seemed to have no will to live, and, again, pregnant, became very ill, possibly from influenza. She died in 1919, insisting to the end that Mr. Siu had taken in a concubine in his village. There was no foundation to her accusations, because only after her death did he go to Japan, where he met and married a young girl from the village selected by his family to be his second wife. This second Mrs. Siu also became our life-long friend, who looked upon Mother as a surrogate parent and was always generous and thoughtful. She found the care of five undisciplined stepchildren and seven of her own a difficult responsibility. When the exchange rate was very favourable, Mr. Siu retired to Shekki with his whole family but gradually sent his children, two or three at a time, back to Honolulu. He died during the Japanese occupation of China. Mrs. Siu returned to Honolulu after the Second World War to live with her daughter, Siu Ying Chun, and died in 1985 while on an extended visit in California.\n\nThis was a worry-free and happy period of my life in spite of the fact that occasionally I had a stormy time with Mother, who did not spare", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216477, "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-2003", "page_number": 236, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "186\n\nalthough for the first few years after their wedding, the family home remained in Suffolk while he went to sea. It was in the village of Hoxne that their eldest son Robert Benjamin was born in 1860 to be followed by Emily Ada in 1864. Young Samuel came along in 1866 after the family had moved to Framlingham and was given the second name Cornell. It would appear from an entry in Harriet Plant's New Ladies' Memorandum Book 1829 in which she recorded important family events, that Cornell was a family name, possibly the maiden name of her mother or Samuel's mother. One entry records a visit to Chedburgh, a village in Suffolk, by a Mr and Mrs TH Cornell. Whatever the origin, Cornell was the name by which he was known throughout his life both inside and outside the family. Cornell's younger brother Charles Henry was born in 1870 and it was not long after that time that the family moved to London and into a house in Tottenham. Perhaps this move away from the country into the big city came about as a result of Samuel Plant's promotion to becoming a ship's master.\n\nIn 1881 he was in command of the Iron Ship Reigate, made of iron but powered by sail, for the trade with India. It so happened that the 1881 Census took place on the very day that Reigate was in Middlesbrough when, in addition to Captain and crew, those on board included Harriet Plant, the Master's wife, with Cornell and Charles, the Master's sons, all shown as passengers. But in truth, none of them were passengers - the 14-year-old Cornell had joined the ship for his first voyage while his mother and brother were there to see him off.\n\nThe start of a life at sea\n\nThe Reigate set sail from Middlesborough in early May, 1881 for the long passage round the Cape of Good Hope to Madras with no stops along the way. This was young Cornell's introduction to a life at sea and being a dutiful son, he spent some time every Sunday writing a few paragraphs of a voyage letter to his mother in strong, well-formed copper plate writing. It is a remarkably well written letter for a fourteen-year-old young man that now forms part of the Plant Archive at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Although the letter is in good condition, the writing on one side of the paper occasionally obscures the writing on the other side but it is still clear enough to make a full transcription. The letter is almost 2,000 words long but the following extracts give some idea of the young man who wrote them and the dramatic events that he experienced.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216485, "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-2003", "page_number": 244, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "194\n\nThe move to China\n\nWhether his meeting with Archibald Little in the Oriental Club in London in 1899 was accidental as contended by some, or whether it was arranged by one or other of them is a matter of conjecture. The meeting itself was important to both of them. Archibald Little, an Imperial entrepreneur with an ambition to be the first to establish a regular passenger and steam service in the Upper Yangtse, was back in the UK to supervise the building of a paddle steamer designed for the task. He also needed an experienced and professional river pilot to command it. Cornell Plant needed just such employment. He must have been enthralled by Little's description of the great river, its problems and its dangers. The undoubted difficulties that Plant had overcome on the Karun River were trivial in comparison with the many natural hazards that existed in the Upper Yangtse that some claimed to make it the most dangerous river in the world. The annual snow melt in the high mountains and the seasonal rainfall over the whole area combined to produce variations in the height of water of as much as 150 feet - a scarcely believable phenomenon to a deep sea sailor. Plant was used to rocks, rapids and river water turbulence, but not the standing whirlpools, the moving whirlpools, the sudden holes that appeared in deep water and the rapidly changing nature of the river bed with every new rush of water down the feeder rivers of the great Yangtse Kiang. The talk must have whetted his professional appetite to such an extent that he even joined Little on his trip to Denny's of Glasgow where the new paddle steamer, the Pioneer, was being built. The result of their meeting was that Cornell Plant joined Archibald Little in China and took command of the Pioneer on her voyage up through the gorges, the first truly successful trip by a commercial vessel driven by steam.\n\nPostscript\n\nThis is the story of how Captain Samuel Cornell Plant came to be in China. His career as a trader, river pilot and finally Senior River Inspector of the Upper Yangtse is well covered in the article by AC Bromfield and Rosemary Lee. They also tell of the tragedy that occurred when Captain and Mrs Plant were on their way home on leave in 1921 accompanied by two young Chinese girls they were thought to have adopted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216486, "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-2003", "page_number": 245, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "195\n\n-\n\nCornell Plant died at sea shortly before their ship's arrival at Hong Kong. Alice Plant died a day or so later and they were both buried in Happy Valley Cemetery, Hong Kong. This posed the question what happened to the two young Chinese girls? This is partly answered by an extract from a letter written to Cornell's younger brother Charles by J.L. Smith, the British Consul at Ichang, an old friend of Captain and Mrs Plant:\n\nThe reference to the two girls as \"adopted daughters\" is a mistake. The two girls were waifs bought by Mrs Plant a number of years ago and brought up by her as servants in her own house. They were too young to marry and therefore Mrs Plant was taking them home with her, intending to bring them back at the conclusion of her furlough after which she intended to marry them off and give them a small dowry. They are now being sent back from Hong Kong to Miss Moore of the Church of Scotland (Ladies) Mission here: Miss Moore desires to keep them for four or five years in her excellent girls school so that they can get an education after which she will see that they are decently married off or settled down in some occupation in the same way as Mrs Plant would have done. There is a movement on foot amongst friends of Captain and Mrs Plant to raise a sum of money to meet the expenses that will be entailed in connection with the education, etc. of the girls.\n\nIn the event, some $4,000 was raised by the friends and colleagues of Captain and Mrs Plant to educate the two girls and set them up in life. Although the Royal Library of Scotland has some of the letters sent home by Miss Amelia Moore to the Church of Scotland, no mention has yet been found of the two girls and what happened to them.\n\nThe 30 foot granite monument overlooking the gorges put up in memory of Captain Samuel Cornell Plant show the high esteem in which he was held by his friends, his business associates and the Chinese Customs Service. On his death, tributes were received from the representatives of many countries including France, Japan, and the United States of America. More personal were the feelings expressed in \"Plant the Pilot\" a poem written shortly after his death and the inscription on the silver inkwell presented to him by Captain F Scurr, shortly before his final voyage in 1921 as a small memento of many kindnesses while 'dodging the dragon.' It was all summed up in the words of his good friend of over ten years, the British Consul at Ichang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]