[
    {
        "id": 213215,
        "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-1994",
        "page_number": 37,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "16\n\nKirchmann transferred his tavern to Silbermann. The Land We Live In passed through a succession of proprietors with German, Jewish or Polish sounding names, Gustav Neubrunn, Moritz and Adolph Freimann, Bernat Cohen, Moses Tchetchilnızkı and lastly David Freeman. The Tavern was closed in 1912. The licensees of two other establishments suggest Jewish proprietorship: The Central Hotel, 1890 to 1906, Isaac Samuel Greenstein, 1907 to 1912, Ichel Gruman; and the Globe Hotel, 1894 to 1909, Isydor Silbermann, the nephew of Tevil, Ephraim Fischel Zellermayer 1910, and Adolph Weingarten 1911 and 1912. Both the Central and the Globe were closed in 1913.\n\nMrs. Petersen and the German Hotel Trade\n\nIn 1911 Frederich Reichmann, a German national, sought an interim injunction from the court to restrain Mrs. Uschmann and her husband from operating the Station Hotel in Kowloon. Mr. Reichmann charged that Mrs. Uschmann had broken a contract they had signed in November 1909, when he purchased from her for $30,000 her interest and good will in the Oriental Hotel on Queen's Road Central. The contract contained a clause preventing her from conducting in Hong Kong the business of innkeeping, publican or restaurant. The purpose of the clause was to prevent her from attracting to a new establishment the German trade. A summary of evidence presented in court provides information on the background of both the parties in the case. Mrs Uschmann claimed in her defence that the good will of the Station Hotel was the property of her husband, Robert Albrecht Uschmann, and that she was only his assistant. She had been connected with establishments licensed to sell spirits for some twenty or twenty-five years. She became the proprietress of the Thomas' Hotel on the south side of Queen's Road between Ice House and Duddell Streets. The hotel when she took it over had become bankrupt and was closed. No good will went with the transaction. Mr. O E. Owen, then proprietor of the Grand Carlton Hotel, but a former employee of Mrs. Uschmann in 1904 when she and her former husband, Mr. R.A. Matthaey, were operating the Occidental Hotel in Kowloon, stated to the court that it was his opinion \"that the Station Hotel would compete with the Grand\" (Mrs. Uschmann had changed the name of the Thomas' Hotel to the Oriental Hotel and Mr. Reichmann, in turn, had changed it to the Grand Hotel) because of her \"long association with the hotel business and her intimate knowledge of the German community.\" In fact, \"The German customers used to call her 'Mother' as a pet name\" (HKT 6 June 1911).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213217,
        "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-1994",
        "page_number": 39,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "18\n\nbegan her long association as the wife of Mr. Petersen, the proprietor of the German Tavern.\n\nAfter his death she was left with several small children and by the year 1904 was married to R.A. Matthaey. He became bankrupt in February 1907, having operated the Occidental Hotel in Kowloon since 1904. His wife in October 1907 opened the Oriental Hotel on Queen's Road in the building formerly occupied by Thomas' Hotel. By November 1909 she had become Mrs. Uschmann.\n\nMr. Reichmann must have lost his case against Mrs. Uschmann as from 1911 to 1914 R.A. Uschmann was the licensee of the Station Hotel at Nos. 11 and 13 Nathan Road. The hotel was closed during the war but in November 1919 Mrs. Louisa Jane Stewart Brown applied for a spirit licence. In 1921 her name is replaced by Mrs. A.B. Sanderson Smith. A summary of the history of the Station Hotel was published in the South China Morning Post at the time of its closure in 1931. The proprietors Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson Smith closed it at the end of March after it had been in existence some twenty years.\n\nTwo houses on Nathan Road were occupied as residences when purchased by the Procurator of the Dominican Mission in 1908. In the following year Mrs. Uschmann established a boarding house. Then an annex in the rear facing Hankow Road was purchased by the Dominicans. Mr. J. Sanderson Smith arrived in Hong Kong in 1921 and married Mrs. Uschmann. In my opinion, the account is incorrect in stating he married Mrs. Uschmann. I conclude from the evidence presented above that he married Miss Petersen, the daughter of Mrs. Uschmann.\n\nMr. Reichmann, though he lost in his attempt to stop competition in the German hotel trade, continued offering hospitality to them until the outbreak of the First World War. Before that, he had applied for British nationality but he had not yet received it. In considering the treatment to be given to enemy aliens, the Provost Marshall recommended that special consideration be given to Mr. Reichmann. He had been a valuable source of information to the British military authorities and was considered to be of value in keeping tabs on what was happening in the German community. However, events overtook the recommendation as soon after, almost all the Germans in the colony were either interned or deported. (CO129/413 - information from Provost Marshall regarding Germans on List, 8 Oct. 1914) The list of spirit licensees for November 1914 states that Mr.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]