[
    {
        "id": 204478,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 110,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES\n\n99\n\nthree districts in the vicinity of Canton the phrase shui shui, tso shui, tsou shui (£££) literally \"sleeping in-come, sitting in-come, walking in-come\" which may be thus explained: the incumbent of the first may go to sleep, whilst his emoluments come rolling in; in the second he may sit still, and his emoluments come rolling in; and in the third he must trot around, but his emoluments come rolling in\".\n\n12 Lockhart calls these officers assistant and deputy magistrates, Papers 1899 p. 191 and so does Consul Allen in his Trade Report for Pakhoi 1896, FO No. 1983, but there appear in fact, to have been no such titles. There were one or two yuen shing (B) in each district styled to ye (*) who were officers of the sixth and seventh rank and were graduates of kam sang (1) degree. These were appointed from Peking and were transferable every three years like the magistrate himself. They were stationed at places in the district and their powers were very limited.\n\n20 He does not mention officers other than those at the two Lantau forts, but there was another fort on Lantau at Fan Lau, still standing, which may or may not have been occupied at this time, and there were posts on Lamma and Cheung Chau officered by shun tei kun (MILF) (information from Mr. CHEUNG Yau (4) of Tai Ping, Lamma Island, and from a list of donors inscribed on a tablet in the Tin Hau temple on Cheung Chau). There must also have been shun tei kun in the mainland part of the district. More information is sought about their stations and their duties. As far as I know, they were military officers of low rank who controlled ten or twenty men in an out-station,\n\n21 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n22 A map showing these divisions, dated July 1899 on the reverse, is to be found in the Registrar-General's Department, in the Supreme Court. It is probably the Map VI referred to on page 192 of the Papers 1899, which was not printed with them. The Councils of the Tung may not have existed in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas. On Lamma for instance the village elders appear to have administered summary justice individually and not in unison. Mr. CHEUNG Yau already quoted, and other gentlemen of similar age, state there was no Council on the island. The map does not assist in this instance, being vague in some details. There were four tung in any district: north, south, east and west.\n\n23 Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home (London, Religious Tract Society, 1912) p. 189 says \"The life of an official in China, if he occupies a high position and rules over a populous district of country, is arduous in the extreme. He knows no hours. His work is never done. He is up before dawn, and official receptions take place in the small or early hours of the morning. The health of many a man is injured by the incessant toil and unremitting anxiety\". He calls him \"often hard worked, harassed with many cares, and loaded with responsibilities\". His is experienced and impartial testimony.\n\n24 Papers 1899 p. 192.\n\n25 Sir Robert Douglas, Society in China (London, Ward Lock & Co., 1901) pp. 120-1 has hard things to say of them. \"The mental activity of these men, not having... any power to operate in a beneficent way,",
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    {
        "id": 205185,
        "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-1966",
        "page_number": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "OLD BRITISH KOWLOON\n\n135\n\n24 With regard to the quantities of firewood brought on foot into Kowloon from as far afield as Sha Tin, see Sessional Papers 1903 p. 209 which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each estimated at 70 piculs (approx. 93 lbs.) as being carried over the hills in 1902. The Sham Shui Po Kaifong, through operating the Mo Tai (A†4) temple's public weighing scales, got its revenue from the vegetable and livestock market there. Much of the produce sold there crossed the harbour to Hong Kong. (See the Registrar General's Report for 1907 in Sessional Papers 1908, p. 194. Other information supplied by elders). I am also informed by Mr. WAI Tau Shue (b. 1885) that in his youth the Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in the Kowloon City market. In each case the proceeds were supposed to swell public funds for charitable work. For social advancement see the career of WONG Lan-shang described in this article.\n\n25 The Third or Kowloon Police Magistrate was not appointed until 1925 (Colonial Estimates 1924-1926). For an example of police assistance in an emergency see the press reports of the two big fires at Hung Hom village on 11 and 16 December 1884 (Hong Kong Daily Press).\n\n26 See Report from the Hong Kong Land Commission of 1886-87 on the History of the Sale, Tenure and Use of the Crown Land of the Colony published in Sessional Papers 1887 pp. XXVI-XXVII.\n\n27 Between 1853 and 1862 the Hong Kong government paid village elders as tepos (18) in an endeavour to enlist their services in the public interest. See G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong 1841-1962, Hong Kong; University of Hong Kong Press, 1964, pp. 37-38. The Colonial Estimates for the period, under Registrar General's department, show that payment was not extended to the elders of the Kowloon villages acquired in 1860.\n\n28 Eitel, p. 160.\n\n29 See, for instance, pp. 8 and 9 and note 40 of my typescript article \"Some villages in the North Western Part of the Kowloon Peninsula in 1898” presented to the International Conference on Asian History held at the University of Hong Kong, August 30-September 5, 1964. See also note 37 below.\n\n30 The temple was re-erected in Shantung Street Kowloon in 1927 on a site provided by Government which also gave a grant of $6,000 towards the reconstruction. The rest of the money required for the new building was supplied by the Kwong Wah (Tung Wah group) Hospital, to whom the management of the temple was entrusted.\n\n31 Shui Yuet Kung (KA) is an alternative name for a Kwan Yin temple. See S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary of the Chinese Language in the Canton Dialect, Canton; Office of the Chinese Repository, 1856, p. 650. See also E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, New York; The Julian Press, 1961, pp. 225-227.\n\n32 See E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese, London; Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920, pp. 196-197, and S. Wells Williams, Tonic Dictionary under p. 308 and p. 581 under A.\n\n33) E. J. Hardy, John Chinaman at Home, London; T. Fisher Unwin, 1905, p. 86. See also W. Stanton, The Chinese Drama, Hong Kong; Kelly & Walsh, 1899, pp. 5-6 for a brief description of the position in \"China and in the villages of Hong Kong\".\n\n34 Robert Morrison, A View of China for Philological Purposes. Macao; Hon. E. I. C. Press, 1817, p. 105.",
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    {
        "id": 205969,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1970",
        "page_number": 49,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "44 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nHong Kong, needless to say, was not Africa, and the Hong Kong cadet did not spend his working life in the bush adjudicating the disputes of unsophisticated natives. He worked mainly, unless one of the District Officers in the New Territories, in a many-layered urban society, in which were to be found a number of extremely rich and some highly erudite Chinese. The population of Hong Kong was related in terms of race, language and culture to that of China, the home of an ancient civilisation; and cadets spent two impressionable years learning the language of that country and something of its splendours, and its miseries as well. I suspect many cadets were deeply impressed by their contact with the culture and civilisation of the Chinese, that a process of 'mandarinisation' often took place, especially among those working in the Registrar-General's Department (the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs) where official documents were published in the same form and style as those of the Imperial Chinese bureaucracy.31 I suggest that cadets were paternalistic towards the local population, but that their paternalism was Confucian in spirit and understood by Chinese. Their background and training, in its historical context made this era of cadets not unacceptable to, though not necessarily liked by, Hong Kong Chinese with memories of the behaviour of Chinese officials across the border. British officials acquired in Hong Kong, then, a gloss from the population they ruled. Sir Frederick Lugard, 'in gentle derision', called cadets 'the twice-born';32 and Reginald Stubbs, on a special mission from the Colonial Office to Malaya and Hong Kong, exclaimed in 1910 that they were prepared to advance claims to act for the Almighty'.33 Exposure to life in an English public school and then to life in an Eastern Colony, led not unexpectedly to this consummation of belief. \n\nThe contribution made by cadets and ex-cadets to sinology and scholarship in general is impressive. One has only to take note of the publications of such officials as Alfred Lister, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, R. F. Johnston, G. R. Sayer,34 S. F. Balfour,35 Walter Schofield,36 Soame Jenyns,37 R. A. D. Forrest,38 and K. M. A. Barnett.39 Many were also members of learned societies; and a substantial number acquired not only compulsory Cantonese but a knowledge of other Chinese dialects, such as Hakka and Mandarin; a few specialised in Japanese; and those who worked in the Police, Hindi or other Indian languages.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205971,
        "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": 51,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "46\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nany interpretation that may be going on'.42 On the other hand, the scarcity of cadets in government caused serious problems at the end of the century. No scheme of localisation, except at the clerical level, had been promoted in Hong Kong; and although Government had been forced, as a result of Sir William Robinson's Retrenchment Committee of 1894, to abolish the post of Clerk of the Councils, one Magistrate and the Superintendent of the Jail, and amalgamate the posts of the Colonial Secretary and the Registrar-General, the number of cadets was still far too small for the efficient administration of even a municipality. Alleyne Ireland, after a visit to Hong Kong at the turn of the century, argued that there was a need for more cadets, and reported that 'no one who has spent four months, as I recently did, in the Colony could fail to be impressed, as I was, with the fact that in the service as well as in the junior ranks of the service there are a few men of the highest ability and usefulness, nor could he fail to notice that such men were few and not many'.43 The reports of the Finance Committee for 1901 showed, moreover, that the attendance included an Acting Attorney-General, an Acting Colonial Treasurer, and an Acting Director of Works. The service of the colony, Ireland adduced, 'has suffered greatly from the evil of acting appointments, and a system should be introduced under which it would not be necessary to transfer so many officials from one department to another whenever a senior official goes on leave'.44 He also pointed out the inadequate size of the Government offices, and 'the employment of a large number of junior clerks, Chinese and Portuguese, at salaries little better than those paid to day labourers'. Ireland, however, did not mention that the incorporation of the New Territories had led to a drain of officials from Hong Kong.\n\nA concatenation of these processes of retrenchment, scarcity of cadets, acting appointments, and ill-paid clerical staff led to a major government scandal which brought to an end in 1895 the career of one cadet, N.G. Mitchell-Innes,45 who had joined the service in 1881, and this scandal led not only to a commission of inquiry but a rebuke from the Secretary of State.\n\nMitchell-Innes' troubles began when Alfred Lister was appointed Treasurer in 1888. Lister, who was also Postmaster General, served for the first six months of the year, but was",
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    {
        "id": 205978,
        "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": 58,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "HONG KONG CADETS, 1862 - 1941\n\n53\n\n19 Sir Francis Henry May (1860-1922), Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Dublin. Hong Kong Civil Service 1881; Captain Superintendent of Police, 1893-1902; Colonial Secretary, 1902-1910; Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of Western Pacific, 1910-12; Governor of Hong Kong, 1912-1919. First cadet to become Governor. Altogether May spent 38 years in Hong Kong.\n\n20 Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938), Educated at Edinburgh University (Gray Prize; prox. accessit., Lord Rector's Essay); Magdalen College, Oxford (mentioned hon, causa Stanhope Essay). Hong Kong Civil Service 1898; Assistant Colonial Secretary, 1899-1904, Transferred to Weihaiwai 1904; Senior District Officer and Magistrate, Weihaiwai, 1906-17. Tutor to the Ex-Emperor of China, 1919-1925. Commissioner of Weihaiwai, 1927-30. Professor of Chinese and Head of Department of Languages and Cultures of the Far East, School of Oriental Languages, London University, 1931-1937.\n\n21 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at St. Paul's School and Magdalen College, Oxford, Hong Kong Civil Service 1899. Clementi, following his uncle and godfather, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, preferred an Eastern Cadetship, and was posted to Hong Kong. Land Officer and Police Magistrate in the New Territories, 1903-6, Clementi had the task of recognizing the land titles of over 300,000 claims. Appointed Colonial Secretary of British Guiana 1913-1921; Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1922-1925; Governor of Hong Kong, 1925-30; Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner for the Malay States 1930. In 1934 Clementi retired on account of ill-health.\n\n22 James Legge \"The Colony of Hong Kong\", China Review, Vol. I, 1872-3, p. 173.\n\n23 Dominions Office and Colonial Office List 1939, p. 624, states: \"The average number of cadets appointed to Malaya and Hongkong during the period of 1919-31 inclusive was between 9 and 10. Since 1931 the average has been 5-8, 6 generally. In 1937, 7 cadets were appointed, and 9 in 1938. There were none appointed to Hong Kong 1937, and only 2 in 1938. The demand for cadets in Hong Kong was always small”.\n\n24 For example, Thomas Sercombe Smith (1854-1937) was appointed a Hong Kong Cadet in 1882. In 1883 he was attached to the Colonial Office for a year; and in 1884, after a brief spell attached to the Colonial Secretary's Office, Hong Kong, proceeded to Peking where he studied Chinese, 1884-6. On the other hand, Arthur Winbolt Brewin (1867-1946), proceeded to Canton in 1888. Brewin, who was educated at Winchester, succeeded Eitel as Inspector of Schools in 1897; became Registrar General in 1901 and retired in 1912.\n\n25 Victor Purcell The Memoirs of a Malayan Official, London, 1965, pp. 108-109. The Index to Correspondence (of the Colonial Secretariat), compiled in 1902 by R. H. Kotewall, has a cryptic entry: \"Cadets studying Chinese in China must reside at a place removed from European social surroundings\".\n\n26 Alexander Grantham Via Ports, Hong Kong, 1965, p. 5.\n\n27 I have been able to discover the schools attended by 64 of the cadets: 52 went to schools listed in the Public Schools Yearbook; the other 12 to small private schools. Two cadets (H. E. Wodehouse and A. W. Brewin), it seems, did not go to a university; five I have been unable to trace; and of the rest - 78 in all — 55 went to English universities (Cambridge 25; Oxford 23; London 4; and one each at Leicester University College, Liverpool University, and Manchester University); 10 to universities in Ireland (Trinity College 8); and 11 to Scottish universities (Edinburgh 6,\n\n-55",
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    {
        "id": 206111,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1970",
        "page_number": 191,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "186\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe small pre-war Yuk Wong (or Jade King) Temple, recently reconstructed, and to some open ground now occupied by a theatrical matshed erected for the Tam Kung festival where Wai Chau and Cantonese opera will be performed for the traditional five nights and four days. This is organised by the people of Ah Kung Ngam, and a small booth on the left-hand side of the road (going in) is plastered with large sheets of orange paper on which the names of all subscribers to this free opera have been written. Up to the war of 1941 and again after the Liberation, up to 13 years ago, my local informants say that puppet plays were held here, but the greater resources of a larger population have now enabled the local people to have opera troupes instead. Both Wai Chau and Cantonese opera are performed, and I was promised the former for the day of our visit.* Among the principal organisers are an old Hoklo fisherman of 75 who has lived at Ah Kung Ngam for nearly sixty years and two middle-aged Hakka men whose families have been settled there for 3-4 generations.\n\nAccording to the old Hoklo fisherman who first came to Ah Kung Ngam about 1911-1912, the Yuk Wong Temple was then 'a broken house with an incense burner'. He goes on to say that it was restored pre-war by a big subscriber.\n\nWalking back from Ah Kung Ngam (and later on, in passing by bus through Shau Kei Wan) the visitor will notice the abandoned quarry sites on the hillsides. The official yearly reports of the Hong Kong Government in the later 19th century (styled Blue Books) show that the Shau Kei Wan quarries were then much more important than any elsewhere on the Island and rivalled those in Old British Kowloon. We note, for instance, that there were 72 quarries operating there in 1872, 49 in 1881, and 51 in 1891.\n\n*The subject of the Wai Chau opera was taken from the San Kuo or Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the most famous novels in Chinese literary history. The episode which was the subject for this particular play, entitled \"An Expedition for Revenge\", can be read in English between pages 597-607 of volume 1 of C. H. Brewitt-Taylor's translation of the novel in two volumes published by Kelly & Walsh, Limited, Shanghai: Hong Kong: Singapore, 1925.\n\n†The old man is right in thinking it was before his time. A list of temples in CSO No. 296/95, an old Secretariat file now kept in the Registrar General's Department, lists three trustees, all named Cheung, for the Yuk Wong temple at \"A Kung Ngam\".",
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    {
        "id": 206310,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1971",
        "page_number": 127,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "The District Watch Committee\n\n121\n\ncorrupt than regular police18: Chinese could at least understand the rationale of the tariff and no doubt accepted it as a normal condition of life in their time.\n\nIt was, however, J. H. Stewart Lockhart19, the occupant of the combined posts of Registrar General and Colonial Secretary at the end of the century, who perceived the strategic importance of a Chinese advisory council for the colonial government and who, at the same time, helped strengthen and expand the network of committees and boards on which prominent Chinese sat. In 1891 Lockhart took a decisive step: he recommended that twelve Chinese gentlemen, including such influential Chinese as Dr. Ho Kai (Ho Ch'i), Wei Yuk (Wei Yü), and Ho Fook (Ho Fu), should be appointed by government to form a far stronger committee20 than the informal body that had supervised the Force since its inception, so as to improve co-operation between the force and the Registrar General's Department. As Lockhart stressed in his report for 1891, 'it is hoped with the aid of the Committee the efficiency of the District Watch will be increased, and that the advice of the gentlemen forming the Committee will be of great assistance to this office in dealing with the affairs of the Chinese community'. The following year he was pleased to note that ‘its advice on several important questions connected with the affairs of the Chinese community has been of great help to this Department'. Lockhart saw the Committee, then, as a key advisory body for his own department and, it follows, for the colonial government in general. In this, it appears, he was strongly supported by the rich compradore, Wei Yuk, an unofficial member of the Legislative Council and a collaborator of Lockhart's. Wei Yuk had urged that a new committee should be nominated and that this reorganised committee should be given official recognition, backing and status.22 I have been unable to ascertain the names of the members of the Committee before 189123 but I suspect that many must have been nonentities in the eyes of the Registrar General and prominent Chinese local worthies and local leaders rather than Chinese conspicuous for great wealth, prestige and power24.\n\nIt is not possible to reconstruct Wei Yuk's reasoning at this date; nevertheless it is plausible to surmise that Wei Yuk understood that the tighter the connection between the Committee of",
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    {
        "id": 206311,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1971",
        "page_number": 128,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "122\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nManagement and the Registrar General's Department, the more influence the former would have within the Chinese community. The Committee would be in a far stronger position to moderate government policies - or at least to influence the Registrar General by a flow of opinion and advice about the wishes of the Chinese than any committee which was remote from government. It seems likely that Wei Yuk, a shrewd man of affairs, understood that once the Registrar General brought the Committee within the colonial system of government, the latter would be forced not only to give the members of the Committee much 'face' but would have to engage in an intimate and prolonged dialogue with it: benefits would need to pass in both directions. Each, the Registrar General and the Committee would need to feel it gained from the special relationship25.\n\nBasically, the system created by Lockhart and Wei Yuk remained unchanged - there were a few slight modifications until 1941, the year of the Japanese occupation. The members of the Committee were nominated to their office by the Governor in Council, on the advice of the Registrar General (after 1913 renamed the Secretary for Chinese Affairs); and the Registrar General, before he put forward the name of a Chinese to the Governor, canvassed the opinions of prominent Chinese: nominees needed the support and approbation of both Chinese notables and the Registrar General.\n\nIn 1917 the Committee was enlarged from 12 to 14, exclusive of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs, the ex officio chairman, by the addition of two members selected from the retiring annual committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk but holding their appointments for the term of one year only. Usually these special nominees were the retiring chief directors of the two associations26. They were probationers in a sense. But usually such 'short-term' members of the District Watch Committee were made full members at a later date; or, in some cases, after their year of office was up. This special device allowed the Secretary for Chinese Affairs to include on the Committee any promising, emergent leader in these two lesser associations; at the same time, it helped inflate the status of the committees of the Tung Wah Hospital and Po Leung Kuk by making possible a speedier transition for some to the key advisory board, the",
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    {
        "id": 206515,
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        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "page_number": 63,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n57\n\nduties, and shown around various government departments. Lockhart then went by river steamer up to Canton to recruit a language teacher and learn Cantonese; but at times cadets were sent to Peking to learn Mandarin, the national language, because the Hong Kong Government always needed some officials who could converse in Mandarin with Chinese officials from the North.5\n\nE.H. Parker, then serving in the Canton Consulate, tells us that: 'on the arrival in 1879 of a Hong Kong cadet (i.e., Lockhart) to study Chinese in Canton, I lent him “Old Ow”, who took the youngster up country and taught him Cantonese very well.' Ou-yang Hui 歐陽惠 -- known affectionately to several generations of cadets as 'Old Ow' was a Cantonese scholar who had once worked in a yamên in Hunan but had fallen out of favour with officialdom. Parker also says of ‘Old Ow' that Lockhart ‘always cherished a noble veneration for his memory; and, indeed, he it was who, as a cadet, first introduced “Old Ow\" to \"outer\" barbarian life'. In 1893 Lockhart wrote that 'Old Ow' 'enjoyed a high reputation among several distinguished foreign students of Chinese for his power of ready and lucid explanation'. A few years after Lockhart's return from Canton (he became a ‘passed cadet' in 1882), he persuaded the old Cantonese scholar to come to Hong Kong and obtained for him a clerical post in the Registrar General's Department, in which Lockhart was then employed. In this department 'Old Ow' soon became a venerated institution, a lovable but formidable eccentric who deeply impressed young cadets with his Mandarin airs and graces and oddities. After his death, his portrait in oils was placed in the Registrar General's Office, a remarkable tribute to a relatively humble employee of the government.\n\nLockhart soon made his mark in the Hong Kong Civil service and his rise was rapid. He was appointed Superintendent of the Opium Revenue in March 1883; Assistant Colonial Secretary and Assistant Auditor-General in August of the same year; Acting Registrar-General in 1884 and 1885; Registrar-General in 1887, a post he occupied until 1901; and Colonial Secretary in 1895, a post he combined with that of Registrar-General. But in nineteenth-century Hong Kong departments were stringently staffed. In 1884, for example, when Lockhart worked as Assistant Colonial Secretary, apart from his superior, the Colonial Secretary, there were only five other assistants: a chief clerk and four junior clerks.",
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    {
        "id": 206516,
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        "document_key": "RAS-1972",
        "page_number": 64,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "58\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nRegistrar General's Department at that date was run by the Registrar-General and four clerks. Nevertheless, within five years of his return from Canton Lockhart had become the head of a key department, the Registrar-General's Department (renamed in 1911 more appropriately as the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs).\n\nDr. Ho Kai (later Sir Kai Ho Kai) in a farewell speech in 1902 on the eve of Lockhart's departure for Weihaiwei remarked that 'in 1882 Mr. Lockhart arrived here to find Hong Kong in a depressed condition, owing to the collapse of the great land speculation that occurred during the year previous; and he found also an embittered feeling between two important sections of the community. Young as Mr. Lockhart was then, and although occupying a minor position in the Government, he at once interested himself in the welfare of the Colony, and endeavoured to promote a better understanding between the Europeans and the Chinese. The leading Chinese citizens, who had hitherto been more or less apathetic towards public affairs, came forward in comparatively large numbers and took a keener and more active interest in civic welfare. They gave the Government their full co-operation and support and gave largely to the various local charitable institutions and took a more active part in their management'.\" Ho Kai was a very close friend of Lockhart's and, needless to say, farewell speeches are normally eulogistic—they are the expression of an understood social ritual in which white must predominate over black—but in truth Ho Kai had not exaggerated the part played by Lockhart over a number of years in drawing prominent Chinese into the orbit of Government.\n\nThere were several reasons for this: Lockhart always admired the Chinese; as an administrator he saw obvious advantages in securing Chinese support for government policies; he knew that Hong Kong was changing and that the style of governing had to change if only because a Chinese business and commercial elite had emerged, and because a segment of the population could be defined as permanently resident in the Colony; he knew, too, that the future prosperity of the Colony would come to depend more and more on a Chinese bourgeoisie. But the problems faced by Lockhart by the colonial government were not unique to Hong Kong of course; they were typical of some other colonial territories, notably in Africa.10 Hence, with the collaboration of a number of prominent",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206517,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 65,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n59\n\nent Chinese he was largely instrumental in reorganizing the District Watchmen Force (a body of watchmen paid for by voluntary subscriptions from the Chinese community) and he obtained the appointment of twelve leading Chinese gentlemen as a supervising committee; he remodelled the Po Leung Kuk (a voluntary association concerned with the welfare of girls and young women); and he helped in the reformation of the Tung Wah Hospital and strengthened its committee of management.11 He was active, then, in setting up a number of official Chinese committees, linked to government through their special relationship with the Registrar General's Department, of which he was head. The Registrar General in all cases was ex officio chairman of the committees.\n\nLockhart's views on the importance of the Chinese element in the population are to be found in a trenchant report he submitted in 1894 to the Governor, Sir William Robinson, 'on the subject of a petition addressed to the House of Commons praying for an amendment of the Constitution of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong.' This petition from Hong Kong taxpayers to the House of Commons owed its origin principally to the imposition upon the taxpayers in 1891 of an additional military contribution of £20,000 a year, a decision that irritated and excited particularly the European business community. In 1894 T.H. Whitehead,13 Unofficial Member of the Legislative Council and leader of the business faction, was granted six months' leave of absence from the Council and he took with him to England a petition signed by 363 members of the community — (in Lockhart's words) ‘284 British, 10 Anglo-Chinese, 3 American, 4 Portuguese, and 47 British Indians.' The petitioners sought the election of representatives of British nationality in the Legislative Council; freedom of debate for the Official members with power to vote as they desired; complete control in the Council over local expenditure; the management of local affairs; and a consultative voice in questions of an Imperial character.\n\nWith great dialectical skill Lockhart took the petition to bits and exposed the vacuity of its arguments. In his memorandum to the Governor he averred: 'Most of the taxes fall almost entirely on the Chinese. The only tax to which the British and other residents as a whole are subject in the same manner as the Chinese is the tax of 13 per cent levied on the rateable value of house",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206520,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 68,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "62\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nhad two meetings with the Chinese delegate, Huang Tsun-hsin1, and an agreement was signed at Government House on March 14. On the 16th Lockhart accompanied by the Director of Public Works left for Mirs Bay and proceeded to delimit the boundaries of the New Territory, which were fixed along a line joining the heads of Deep Bay and Mirs Bay, following the Sham Chun River for most of its course. Lockhart had urged the inclusion of Sham Chun and its valley but this was rejected later by the Chinese authorities.\n\nOn 1 April Lockhart and a party sent by the Public Works Department to erect the posts on the boundaries settled upon were stopped by villagers and informed that if they attempted to get on with their work they would be killed. Understandably, the party withdrew to Hong Kong. At the same time, Wei Yuk# 1 an unofficial member of the Legislative Council, procured a copy of a placard that was being posted up in many villages and market towns; the translation revealed that people in the New Territories were being urged to drill with firearms. This was the first sign that the occupation of the New Territories was not likely to occur without incident.\n\nThe Governor, Sir William Blake, accompanied by his Colonial Secretary, Lockhart, hastened forthwith to interview the Viceroy at Canton and they secured from him a promise of co-operation and the sending of Chinese troops to protect the two matsheds at Taipo that were being erected for the occupancy of police and officials from Hong Kong. On 3 April, however, F.H. May, Captain Superintendent of Police, and his small party of Sikhs and Chinese guards were set upon by 'villagers', the matsheds burned to the ground, and the group forced to retreat to Kowloon. The Governor immediately despatched troops by motor torpedo boat destroyer to Taipo. The troops were accompanied by Lockhart, of whom the commanding officer later said: 'I have to record my sense of the tact and judgment displayed by Mr. Stewart Lockhart in eliciting information most unwillingly given; and the interpreter whom he brought with him was simply invaluable owing to his proficiency in both English and Chinese and his knowledge of the system of dealing with the natives.' The interpreter was Ts'oi Yeuk-shan, First Chinese Clerk in the Registrar General's Department, a former pupil at Queen's College. Lockhart and the troops returned to Hong Kong later in the same day.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206537,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 85,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n79\n\nrelationships between ruler and ruled, proper behaviour according to status. Lockhart was a scholar-administrator in the Confucian sense.\n\nThe profession of Colonial Civil Servant is coming to an end with the dissolution of the British empire. Lockhart, then, is a representative of a stage in the evolution of English society — the stage of imperial expansion that is now over and can never return. In contemporary Hong Kong the European official is not likely to be a Chinese scholar, for the system of language training that produced a Lockhart has been radically curtailed?. Yet if an official is of a scholarly turn of mind, he is now more likely to be found reading history, politics or economics. The scholar-administrator of Lockhart's type is not to be found. He has become a specialist or bureaucrat. There is no doubt that Lockhart would have been saddened by this consummation.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Sir William des Voeux, My Colonial Service..... London, 1903, vol. 2, p. 211.\n\n2 George Watson's College was founded by George Watson, first accountant of the Bank of Scotland, who died in 1723. It became a day school in 1878. The Senior School has now about 890 boys.\n\n3 Sir Everard Duncan Home Fraser, K.C.M.G. (1859-1922). Educated at Aberdeen University. Passing a competitive examination, he was appointed a student interpreter in China in 1880, being promoted Acting Consul at Foochow in 1886. At the time of his death, Fraser was Senior Consul in Shanghai and, therefore, chairman of the Consular Body.\n\n4 In Britain the first chair of Chinese was created in 1838 at University College London. In 1846 Samuel Fearon, the Registrar General of Hong Kong, was appointed Professor of Chinese Language and Literature in King's College, London. The next incumbent of the chair at King's appears to have been James Summers, who was twenty-four at the time of his appointment in 1852. Summers had been for a few years a tutor at St. Paul's College, Hong Kong; but Hong Kong society was highly critical of the elevation to a chair of a mere stripling (see J. W. Norton-Kyshe, History of the Law and Courts of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1898, vol. i, p. 348). Summers resigned at the end of the 1872/73 session and apparently departed for China and Japan. He was succeeded by Robert Kennaway Douglas (1838-1913), who was also Senior Assistant in the Department of Printed Books in the British Museum. It was presumably Douglas who first introduced Lockhart to Chinese. (On Douglas see the short obituary in T'oung Pao, vol. xiv, 1913). For a long time the sole chair of Chinese in Britain was that at King's College until a chair was created in 1876 for Dr. James Legge at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Professor Douglas had few full-time students, only a Frenchman and a Pole; Legge had only one student and Sir Thomas Wade at Cambridge 'n'avait qu'un auditeur: il est vrai qu'il était Chinois'. (See Henri Cordier, 'Les Études Chinoises', T'oung Pao, 1898, p. 48).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206540,
        "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-1972",
        "page_number": 88,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "82\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\nIt is an interesting comment on Johnston that he visited England only twice in twenty-eight years of residence in China. See Johnston's obituary in the Times of 8 March, 1938.\n\n37 R. F. Johnston's, Twilight in the Forbidden City, London, 1934, describes his experiences as an Imperial tutor.\n\n38 Much information on Johnston's experiences as District Officer and Magistrate are given in his book, Lion and Dragon in Northern China.\n\n39 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1921, p. 3.\n\n40 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1903, p. 5. From time to time the Magistrate's office issued proclamations in Chinese, notifying the people of the wishes of the Government. All the villages of the Territory were provided with large notice boards on which such proclamations were posted. The style of governing in Weihaiwei owed much to Chinese example.\n\n41 Annual Report on Weihaiwei for 1904, p. 26. The statement is taken from Johnston's 'Report of the Secretary to Government for the Year 1904'. This is a most interesting report on Chinese society in Weihaiwei,\n\n42 The China Review was founded in 1872 by N. B. Dennys. The publication terminated with vol. xxv, 1901. It was published bi-monthly.\n\n43 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1937, pp. 391-3.\n\n44 In his obituary notice of E. H. Parker, E. T. C. Werner wrote: \"The editor's request to write this notice puts me in a rather awkward position, for I cannot but refer to the very great amount of valuable sinological work which has been done by members of the British Consular Service in China. Considering its relatively small size, the Service has produced proportionately more brilliant sinologists than any body connected with the Far East.” See Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (henceforth cited as JNCBRAS), vol. lvii, 1926, p. vi.\n\n45 Sir Cecil Clementi (1875-1947). Educated at Oxford. Hong Kong cadet in 1899. Governor of Hong Kong 1925-30. He published, among other books, The Chinese in British Guiana, Georgetown, 1915, Cantonese Love-Songs, Oxford, 1904, and Summary of Geographical Observations taken during a Journey from Kashgar to Kowloon, 1907-8, Hong Kong, 1911.\n\n46 Lockhart's interest in the Chinese language is recognised in the dedication to him of Mok Man-cheung's Tah Tsz Anglo-Chinese Dictionary, 2nd edition (Chinese foreword dated 9th October, 1914). Mok had served in the Registrar-General's department with Lockhart, and moved to the Supreme Court as an interpreter in 1891. See also note 71 below.\n\n47 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 405.\n\n48 Vols. xx to xxii. The disputants included E. J. Eitel, E. H. Parker, E. D. H. Fraser, H. A. Giles, and Lockhart. The first edition of Lockhart's book was dedicated to Dr. John Chalmers, the distinguished sinologue, and the second to Dr. James Legge as well. Lockhart spoke of them as 'two famous Aberdonians'.\n\n49 China Review, vol. xxi, 1892/93, p. 412.\n\n50 China Review, vol. xxii, 1893/94, p. 547,\n\n51 T'oung Pao, vol. viii, 1897, pp. 412-430.\n\n52 Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 6, 1930-32, p. 812.\n\n53 Chinese Recorder, Sept. 1903, p. 464.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
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    {
        "id": 206960,
        "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": 31,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "The Paper Chase\n\n25\n\nSo far, we have received transfers of records from 27 different government offices, the whole now occupying nearly 6,000 feet of shelving. We have therefore passed the storage capacity of our present premises and have had to resort to additional temporary accommodation on the old naval dockyard site.\n\nWhen I came to Hong Kong I was told that practically all of the government's pre-war records had perished during the Japanese occupation. It is true that pitifully little remains of the very large accumulations which must have been in government offices in 1941, and what records did survive, with a few notable exceptions, tend to be fragmentary and unrelated to one another in time or content.\n\nNevertheless the dearth is not as great as is sometimes supposed. The Rating and Valuation Department's Rates Collection Book series, which we now hold, is practically complete from 1858 to 1952, and several large and exceedingly valuable series of 19th and pre-war 20th century Land Office records have been transferred to us from the Registrar-General's Department. These include series of correspondence files dating from 1866 to 1940, Crown and Village Rent Rolls from 1843 to 1958 and 1856 to 1960 respectively and some 90-100,000 Surrendered Title Deeds, many of which date from the middle of the 19th century, and possibly earlier.\n\nOther pre-war records have reached us from the Prisons Department, Audit, the Supreme Court, the Hong Kong Regiment (The Volunteers), and the Official Receiver's Office and they are still coming. Only a few days ago some twelve volumes of Judicial Department correspondence dating from 1844 to 1903 were unearthed from a great pile of lumber and rubbish in a government record store and as my staff are still quarrying in it I have no doubt that more of them will come to light.\n\nThere is no knowing what treasures may lie in the many dungeons of government's archival limbo. Some of them are so cluttered as to be virtually inaccessible, except by emptying them, and it will be years before we have prospected them all—that is, if we succeed in finding them all. Twelve years ago a very large crate of mid-19th century records was discovered quite by accident in the roof of the Supreme Court.\n\nThe loss of Hong Kong's pre-war records is regrettable but the situation is not entirely irretrievable. As many of you know, a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
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    {
        "id": 207891,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 279,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "264\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nthe history and present significance of the Hospital. A Head of the Department of Home Affairs (the former Department of Chinese Affairs, and, even earlier, the Registrar-General or Protector of the Chinese) would possibly have his own unique evaluation of the institution. A medical doctor, a Neo-Marxist critic of elitism and the old compradore system, a sociologist or a historian all could find different things to emphasize in its history and development. The viewpoint of the writer of these notes is of one who has researched various aspects of Hong Kong history and is particularly interested in the historical development of the Chinese community in Hong Kong.\n\nI have mentioned the various overlapping roles of the Hospital in the past. One might divide these roles into medical, educational, religious, social and quasi-political.\n\nTung Wah as a Medical Institution\n\nAs a Hospital there has been a continuity in its medical service from its opening in February, 1872, but there has been a significant shift from an initial exclusive use of traditional Chinese medical treatment to today's most advanced international medical practice.\n\nThe story of Tung Wah Hospital as a medical institution is a part of the medical history of Hong Kong and the relation and inter-action of traditional Chinese practice with that introduced from the Western medical tradition. The nineteenth century foreign trained medical officer in Hong Kong did not look with favour upon the type of treatment the sick received at Tung Wah. He had little sympathy with Chinese medical lore. As an institution receiving a government appropriation, by the creating Ordinance it came within the province of the Colonial Surgeon to comment on conditions at Tung Wah in his annual medical report. His very first report was critical as evidenced by the following extract,\n\nThere seems to be a large number of attendants, but I never found them at hand when they were wanted. ... The treatment of surgical cases shows an amount of ignorance which is much to be deplored. Seeing that the Institution was endowed with such a large sum of money by the Colonial Government, I think that the Directors might be asked to set apart one ward of their Hospital for the treatment of patients by foreign Doctors.*\n\n* The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1873 p.228, No. 85. Report of the Colonial Surgeon.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210211,
        "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-1984",
        "page_number": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "161\n\n16\n\nFor example in 1908 CO129/352 pp. 416-419 and Minutes of the Executive Council, 26 March 1909 and 1 March 1910.\n\n37 Minutes of the Executive Council, 2 July 1931.\n\n38 J.H. Thomas to Peel, 29 Sept 1931 in CO129/533/10.\n\n39\n\nH.K. Hansard, 22 Oct. 1931 p. 193.\n\n40\n\nMinutes of the Executive Council, 6 Dec. 1934. Southern to Cunliffe-Lister, 18 July 1932 in CO129/532/3 p. 133.\n\n41\n\n42 Minutes of the Executive Council, 25 April 1935.\n\n43\n\nReport of the Committee constituted in accordance with the directions of H.E. the Governor contained in his letter dated 9 April 1938. C.S.O.5661/32. (The Abbott Committee, 1939) p. 19. (Copy available in Secretariat Library).\n\n44 Administration Reports 1932 and 1939. Reports of the Medical Department. The Abbott Report, p. 5.\n\n45\n\n46\n\nLeague of Nations Commission of Enquiry into the Traffic in Women and Children in the Far East. Replies to Questionnaire by Hong Kong Government p. 6 in CO129/533/10. Interview with Mr. R.R. Todd who first arrived in Hong Kong a cadet (administrative officer) in 1925.\n\n47 For the results of the system before 1894 see minute in CO129/259 p. 129 dated 23 Nov. 1893, quoting the views of the Registrar General.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211024,
        "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-1987",
        "page_number": 86,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "61\n\nthoughts back to the decision to leave the Central School and the teaching profession.\n\nEven before the expiration of any bond period to which he might have agreed, he capitalised on his extra training in English by moving out of the underpaid teaching profession and into the more prestigious, and better paid, government service as a Chinese Clerk and Interpreter. Thus, even if he were an open collaborator with colonial rule, he also made use of it for his own purposes. His first post was with the Registrar General's Department. He joined the Registrar General's Department on 1st April, 1887, not, as his Who's Who in the Far East entry claimed, in 1893. This move raised his annual salary to $660. The experience certainly provided him with evidence about active negotiation at the sharp end of the relations between the colonial government and Chinese social, cultural and political mores.\n\nWhile working in the Registrar General's office, he probably not only improved his facility to translate between Chinese and English, but also made useful connections. He was certainly in good enough standing to be able to secure a brief endorsement of his book by the new Registrar General, A.W. Brewin, over ten years later, in August 1904. Towards the end of his time at the Registrar General's Office, Mok Man Cheung had begun another potentially prestige-making and personally rewarding middleman activity. In 1890, he was translating Chinese wills into English. Indeed, his dual role is recognized in the Government Blue Book of 1890 where his name appears twice — first, substantively, as Chinese Clerk and Interpreter at the Registrar General's Office, but, also, as “Acting Chinese Clerk and Translator at the Supreme Court”, having been appointed to this acting post by the Governor on 7th July, 1890 under C.S.O.1531 of 1890.\n\nIt is not surprising, therefore, that his next career move was to the even more face-giving Supreme Court. This he joined, substantively, as \"Chinese Clerk and Translator”, on 17th September, 1891, under Colonial Standing Order 351 of 1891, not in 1895 as he elsewhere suggests. His salary was now $960 per annum, rising by $10 increments to $1,200. By 1894, however, he had reached the salary level of $1,200. In that year he witnessed a further dete-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
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    {
        "id": 214385,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 243,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "209\n\nBook, no District Watchmen appeared under the Sanitary sub-department.\n\nWhy were the District Watchmen employed in sanitary duties for only three years? It is tempting to suggest that one reason was because the Chinese merchants were not prepared to continue paying for a scheme which should have been funded by the Government and, by 1886, the merchants finally had found sufficient courage to make their point. After all, the entire force of District Watchmen was involved with sanitary work, which left no District Watchmen available for purely security functions. The rules issued by Government were very specific about where loyalty was expected to lie since all the Watchmen ‘must understand that their sanitary duties are of equal importance with their police duties.' In case any Watchman was left in any doubt, there was a final sting in the tail. The rules further warned the Watchmen that “if the Government does not receive from them that hearty co-operation and assistance in the detection of nuisances which it has the right to expect, such of them as may be found neglectful of their duties or otherwise inefficient shall be reported to the Registrar General for dismissal.'\n\nA less likely reason is that the Watchmen themselves did not wish to continue working in what must have been an unpleasant and uncomfortable atmosphere. However, even if this were the case, it is unlikely that these objections would have carried much weight with the Hong Kong Government. Undoubtedly, the Head District Watchmen, who had been in charge of the day-to-day running of their respective 'branches' for many years, would not have taken kindly to being instructed by Inspectors of Nuisances and would have viewed this as a loss of 'face.' For all their elevated title, these 'inspectors' were simply police sergeants in different clothing. Despite Chadwick's contention that the Chinese were ‘a most docile people ... accustomed for countless generations to implicit submission to authority,' the Government officials responsible for the changeover may have anticipated trouble if there was direct contact between the ordinary Watchmen and the Inspectors of Nuisances since the rules stated that 'The Inspectors of Nuisances shall avoid, except in cases of emergency, giving any instructions to the Watchmen direct.' The chain of command was Inspector of Nuisance: Chief District Watchmen: District Watchmen. The answer may even lie in the crime figures for these years. In 1883, minor crimes increased by 41.5% over the previous year's figure and a further 43.4%",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
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    {
        "id": 214387,
        "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-1998",
        "page_number": 245,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "211\n\nfuture years was missing in 1881, a point made by Elizabeth Sinn in her study of the Tung Wah Hospital15\n\nNew Legislation - 1888\n\nIn March 1888 \"The Regulation of Chinese Ordinance' (No. 13 of 1888) was introduced under the governorship of Sir William Des Voeux. Chapter IV of this Bill related to the District Watchmen and was entitled appropriately 'District Watchmen.' Despite the passage of more than two decades, the wording of the new ordinance was almost the same as the 1866 version referred to earlier. A few years later James H. Stewart Lockhart, who occupied the combined posts of Registrar General and Colonial Secretary, recommended the establishment of a board of prominent Chinese men to oversee the running of the District Watch Force. He appears to have been encouraged greatly in this endeavour by Wei Yuk, the rich comprador of the Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China. Thus at the end of 1890, General Barker, the acting Governor, appointed a group of twelve Chinese gentlemen as a committee to co-operate with the Registrar General's Department in the administration of the District Watch fund. In his annual report of 1892 Lockhart, in his capacity of Registrar General, stated that the introduction of this Committee had been a resounding success. He also maintained that, not only had the Committee proved to be of great assistance in increasing the efficiency of the District Watchmen's Fund because of being able to exercise closer supervision, 'it has also by its advice on several important questions connected with the affairs of the Chinese community been a great help to this Department.' However, despite the creation of the twelve-man Committee, the Government's control over the District Watch Force did not diminish. On the contrary, Lockhart noted that 'New Rules were drawn up under Ordinance 13 of 1888, Chapter IV, Section 19, with the advice of the Committee, for the regulation and guidance of the District Watchmen, and approved by the Governor on Council. Copies of these rules have been distributed among the contributors of the District Watchmen's Fund, by whom more interest seems to be evinced in and more assistance asked from the Force than formerly.'17 The newly formed Committee was concerned about the state of the Force and during 1892 new pay scales were considered. As a result of these increases it was hoped that a 'better class of recruits' could be enticed to join the Force.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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        "id": 214390,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 248,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "214\n\nceeded one hundred and the same year two District Watchmen were deployed to work in the emigration sub-division of the Registrar General's Department. During 1910 and 1911 it was felt necessary to employ 124 District Watchmen of different ranks but in 1912 the number was reduced to one hundred and remained unchanged until 1924.\n\nExpansion into Kowloon\n\nSince its formation in 1866 the District Watch Force had operated only on Hong Kong island. In May 1915 this changed when the new District Watchmen Station at Yaumati was opened and six District Watchmen were 'sent over.' In 1913, following the addition of a Cadet officer to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, the Government decided to expand the duties of the District Watchmen to include work connected with the registration of householders under the Registration of Chinese Ordinance. Perhaps the Government felt some apprehension that those responsible for paying for the Watchmen's services might balk at the addition of these duties because the Financial Secretary, in presenting this matter to the Legislative Council, maintained that this work 'if efficiently carried out should be of great value in checking serious crime in the Colony.' It is also clear from this speech that these extra responsibilities had required the expansion of the Force into Kowloon.19 Despite the fact that Legislative Councillors were only advised about these additional duties in October 1913, it is clear from the Annual Report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs that the District Watchmen had begun making house calls in connection with the registration campaign at the beginning of May 1913. Daily reports were made by the Chief District Watchmen to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs and the Police were informed immediately about the large number of opium divans and sly brothels which the District Watchmen's investigations uncovered. Thus, once again, the Hong Kong Government appropriated men from this privately funded organization to carry out work which was essentially public in nature.\n\nBetween 1897 and 1918 the District Watchmen continued to patrol on police beats under the supervision of European police. The following year saw an important change in the supervision of the District Watch Force, one that would bring its members into even closer contact with the regular police. At the end of 1919 Police Sergeant Timo-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    {
        "id": 214391,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 249,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "215\n\nthy Murphy was seconded from the Police to take charge of the twenty-three detectives in the District Watch Force. The official report of the Secretary for Chinese Affairs for that year enthusiastically noted that 'His work at once had the effect of inspiring the men to greater energy and of fostering co-operation with the Regular detectives' and 'A marked improvement in this department may confidently be expected under the new system.' In 1919 Sergeant Murphy, a Cantonese speaker, had sixteen years experience in the Hong Kong Police. The following year Murphy was promoted to sub-Inspector but despite his promotion he remained with the District Watch Force until January 1922 by which time he had attained the rank of Inspector. Of course detectives had existed in the District Watch Force before 1918. As early as 1894 a single detective appeared in the Registrar General's Annual Report. In 1910 the annual bill for allowances to 'Chief District Watchmen and detectives' amounted to $514 but it was not until 1911 that detectives' wages were listed as a separate item amounting to $1,212.\n\nTroubled Times\n\nIn 1922 the colony reeled from the disruption caused by a massive seamen's strike which spread to involve Chinese men and women in other occupations including the Governor's own domestic servants. The Governor, Sir Reginald Stubbs, commissioned Mr A.G.M. Fletcher, CBE, to investigate the background of the strike and to determine why the intimidation tactics of the strikers had been so successful. The resulting report together with a long covering letter from the Governor were forwarded to the Secretary of State in mid-March 1922. Stubbs was highly critical of the leading members of the Chinese community including members of the District Watch Committee who, he claimed, had not been of the 'slightest use' in either 'calming the fears of the ignorant populace' or obtaining information which would have enabled the Government to deal with intimidation. It was Stubbs' opinion that the information departments of both the Police and the Secretary for Chinese Affairs should be 'drastically reorganized.'20 Fletcher had harsh words for the District Watchmen and considered them to be 'entirely useless' when it came to collecting information about the causes of intimidation since the Watchmen 'must have had the amplest evidence available.' Whilst agreeing with Fletcher in principle, Stubbs downplayed the deficiencies of the Watchmen citing their lowly status as a probable reason for their poor performance. Given the critical tone",
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