[ { "id": 207393, "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-1975", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n153\n\nWorld War dealing with the Campaigns. This was compiled from records and reports prepared for the editorial board by Colonel J. T. Simson, Lt. Col. C.O. Shackleton, Dr. P.S. Selwyn-Clarke and myself.\n\nPRELUDE\n\nUp to 8 December, 1941\n\nAfter twenty-four hours delay outside the harbour because of fog, my wife and I disembarked in Hong Kong one fateful day, 1 April 1939, where I took up duty as surgical specialist in the British Military Hospital, Bowen Road. The Colony was by far the most beautiful station in which I had ever served and the scenery recalled to me, as to many others, parts of the west coast of Scotland. Twelve years earlier I had spent a short time there on my way to Shanghai, Tientsin, Peking and Shan hai kwan so that the scenes were not altogether strange to me. We lived a pleasant life in a hotel and flat for the next fifteen months.\n\nBecause of fears that a Japanese attack was imminent my wife was evacuated in July 1940, first to the Philippines along with service and civilian wives and families and thence to Sydney with them. She took hardly to the regimentation inevitable in view of the numbers involved, and after living in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane she left the shelter of the official evacuation. In some fashion she contrived to make her onward journey to the west via Hong Kong and after a short interlude there she lived successively in Singapore, Colombo, up-country in Ceylon, in Calcutta, Delhi and Bombay before she reached England on 4 July 1942. At one time in India she was tempted by an offer to go to Chungking to work there with a financial expert friend of ours who was attached to the Chinese government at that time, but in the end she did not. Experiences of this kind were not uncommon among service wives and I include this short note of her travels to show what a war-time evacuation of families can mean.\n\nWith her departure my own life in Hong Kong continued to be filled agreeably enough with work, including valuable experiences with the University Department of Surgery and the Professor, K.H. Digby. There were plenty of opportunities for physical exercise, and I carried out an order to prepare lists of surgical equipment I judged necessary to fit army hospitals for the inevitable coming", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207396, "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-1975", "page_number": 164, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "156\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nsteeply to one of the passes, Magazine Gap, through which roads passed from one side of the Island to the other. The hospital had wide shady verandahs but no lifts, and all windows had heavy wooden shutters for use during typhoons. A reservoir for fire fighting purposes had been constructed a little above hospital level and was fed by hill streams. Above that again was the Nursing Sisters Mess. About the same level as the hospital were quarters for warrant officers and a barrack block for male staff, a NAAFI block for recreation and a tennis court together with some lesser outbuildings. Below the hospital was the Sergeants Mess and a residential block for married staff, \"H\" block. There was only one approach road winding up to the hospital, Borrett Road, but there was a subsidiary road, Bowen Road, running along a contour line but not strong enough to take heavy traffic. The hospital was one of the landmarks of the Hong Kong scene when viewed from the mainland. Below the hospital the ground fell steeply to the main road linking the city of Victoria and the Island to the east, and to the Naval Command Headquarters in H.M.S. Tamar, the Naval Dockyard and the headquarters of China Command. The hospital was therefore close to legitimate enemy targets and any margin for error in artillery fire and aerial bombing was reduced still further by the precipitous slope on which it stood.\n\nThe hospital however had nowhere else to go, and Colonel Shackleton the commanding officer used his considerable ingenuity to have two operating theatres with their necessary adjuncts and X-Ray rooms constructed in the basement of the administration block. Engines for generating electricity, one capable of supplying the theatres and X-ray room, the other able to serve part of the hospital as well were installed and were of great value during hostilities and during the long period of captivity. When the hospital was severely damaged and the kitchen totally destroyed very early on by aerial bombs and shell fire, Shackleton speedily got an emergency kitchen operating in the sergeants mess and set up a protective wall of concrete blocks, known to us from a much publicised local court case as \"Mimi Lau's”, on the harbour side of the ground floor wards. Shackleton was a forceful character, apparently not aware of fear, who was ready to cut through any red tape which obstructed his aims. He liked his own way and was not an easy man to have under command, but to those relying upon his administration in war he always provided what was needed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207400, "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-1975", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "160\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nside used gas in our short campaign. In a later section I shall refer in more detail to the casualties. I have noted earlier that Shackleton's war-time command in the hospital was splendid. As in all beaten armies there were some less stout-hearted soldiers; some of these, uninjured, sought shelter in the hospital in the last stages of hostilities, but Shackleton overcame this hazard effectively as he did the many others that arose. He was never a man tolerant of weakness.\n\nThe nursing service was first-rate, led by the Matron, Miss E. M. B. Dyson (the Q.A.'s did not have service rank at that time), and the wounded enjoyed a splendid standard of care right up to the end when the hospital was practically in the front line. The members of the R.A.M.C., R.A.D.C., and attached R.E. stuck to their jobs manfully. The Chinese drivers of ambulance and other cars disappeared into the civilian population as our defeat came nearer, and none should blame them.\n\nIn the hospital, we heard Japanese shells fired from the mainland pass overhead and watched them burst on houses on the Peak. We saw boats bringing Japanese troops from Kowloon in broad daylight to land at North Point. They passed unopposed across the harbour, for apparently our guns could not be brought to bear on them while our defences in the North Point area had been silenced. I saw the harbour crossings made under flags of truce by Japanese officers carrying demands for the surrender of the Colony. These were rejected. In the last stages, we watched the Japanese shelling of Magazine Gap just above the hospital, and we had to keep under cover when moving about the hospital to avoid mortar and small arms fire. It is, however, one of my treasured memories to recall the reaction of Miss G. Colthorpe, one of the Reserve Q.A. sisters, to the surrender of the Colony. She would have hanged the Governor and the General Officer Commanding on the spot. The urgency of the surrender was soon only too evident, for we saw long columns of Japanese troops pass along Bowen Road immediately below the hospital, and the front line could not have been more than four hundred yards or so from the hospital at the time of our capitulation. I believe that it was the fact that we were not overrun in battle that saved patients and staff from the rape and murder which disfigured the campaign in Stanley, Happy Valley, and elsewhere.\n\nEarlier in this account, I said that the topography of the Colony left our troops little or no room for manoeuvre in defence. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207406, "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-1975", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "166\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nletter to our commanding officer, Colonel Shackleton, which he at once passed to the Japanese. In the letter we said that the progress to recovery of our wounded and sick patients was being impeded by a diet low in protein, vitamin and total calorie value and also by the difficulty of overcoming chronic sepsis on a deficient diet. We quoted League of Nations standards, well aware of the fact that Japan had left the League after her Manchurian adventure in 1933. We suggested a diet more suited to our habits and needs. Looking at this letter today I believe that we put our requests on a very moderate level.\n\nSome time in 1942, well before August, the Japanese began to pay commissioned officers both staff and patients. Our nurses were not paid nor were any of our working staff. We were paid in “military” yen, which at first I think had the same value as the yen, and Shackleton set up a patients' Comforts Fund and an Extra Diets Fund to which officers made contributions on a scale which at first lacked regularity. On 3 August 1942 Harrison and I wrote again expressing our disquiet about the whole patients and staff situation and advised that all efforts to improve conditions should be financed through a Central Hospital Fund supported by all officers. We identified the needs under four heads; those of patients for special diets during and after dysentery, surgery etc., those of staff upon whom the work fell, the need of every person for improved food value in the rations and variation in the monotony of diet, and lastly the need of our whole community for electric bulbs, sewing cotton, soap etc. We quoted our basic average diet for the months of April, May and June and July 1942 (see Appendix “A”, Table 1). Perhaps a clearer idea of the position is conveyed by the fact that in the week 23 July to 1 August 1942 we had fish twice, meat once and a sweet rice pudding once, the last being the only dish for mid-day dinner, while all other dinners consisted of boiled rice and boiled vegetables only. Breakfast and suppers were rice or bread and sugar, syrup or vegetables, the whole diet being ill calculated to appeal to a sick man. Many so-called well men ate only as a duty to themselves and certainly not as a pleasurable activity.\n\nThe hospital had narrowly escaped a further disaster during hostilities for a large shell, a four-inch I think, had pitched at the junction of the road above the hospital leading to the sisters' mess and the lower wall of the reservoir. Had it exploded the reservoir", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207408, "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-1975", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "168\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nthe administration of the hospital. Though his wife and family had been safely evacuated in 1940 he had continued to live in his house, and sometime after our surrender I well recall him telling me that he had never in his life felt more care-free, for having lost practically all his possessions he had little left to worry about.\n\nLieutenant Colonel Cedric Shackleton was a powerfully built man, not very tall but with strong facial features. He was polite enough to the Japanese but to me he always seemed to carry a “be damned to you\" expression. Much of this was simply natural to him as I recognised from having known him for years, but though I do not recall any incidents, I think the Japanese, sensitive as they were, may have felt that they had met a formidable character.\n\nSome dogs had been brought by V.A.D's and others when they mobilised for duty from their homes, and it was gradually borne in upon their owners that feeding and other problems made it undesirable to keep the animals and with one exception they were put down. The exception was a splendid Dobermann being cared for by our Corporal Thompson for a friend of his in Victoria. Thompson was on the quartermaster's staff and had a way of doing things with impunity for which less skilful men would have been soundly punished by the Japanese. We profited in our rations from this talent and eventually he got the dog back to its home in Victoria though I believe that few dogs survived long in civil life.\n\nOne of our own men returned to us gravely wounded very early in January 1942. Corporal Norman Leath had been working in the Army Medical Stores at Shau Ki Wan near the Japanese landing points on the Island. When the store was overrun the staff who remained were lined up on the steep hillside by their captors and used for sword practice. In most cases the men were killed outright. In the present case the blow aimed to cut off the victim's head was directed at the back of the neck. The force of it toppled him down hill off the track on which he was standing. Some time later he discovered to his surprise that he was still alive and could move, and after a time he crawled away unseen and reaching a road, was picked up in a car which took him to the Queen Mary Hospital in Pokfulam. There he was succoured and shortly afterwards was transferred to Bowen Road. His wound was both wide and deep and his spinal cord had escaped by a miracle. Major Anderson did a splendid job of surgical repair and in due course the victim returned to take charge of the hospital office until our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207409, "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-1975", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n169\n\nrelease. His nerve was not shaken by his experience, and it was a privilege to have him on the staff.\n\nMajor Charles Boxer had studied the Japanese language in Japan and when hostilities broke out was a staff officer in China Command. Towards the end of the battle on the Island he went out to help the defence in the field and was very seriously wounded. He was taken first to the Queen Mary Hospital and thence to Bowen Road in early January 1942. The Japanese of course knew that he was in Hong Kong and sought him out after our surrender. After the immediate danger of his wound had passed his services as an interpreter were much in demand both by Shackleton and by the Japanese. The surgical problems of our wounded were being brought under better control when on 7 August 1942 Boxer gave me a message from the Japanese that on the following day Simson the A.D.M.S., Shackleton the commanding officer, a named number of officers and other ranks of the staff and 40 patients were to leave Bowen Road and that all women staff were to be transferred away from the hospital 48 hours later. At the time we considered that only twelve patients were fit to go to P.O.W. camp. All except two of the women staff were to be transferred to the Civil Internment Camp on the Stanley Peninsula. The two exceptions, as noted earlier, were released, in Hong Kong. I was promised 30 “first aiders” to replace our nurses but it was much later before 10 Canadian volunteers arrived to help us. The Japanese instruction to me was to take charge of the hospital with Major Gerald Harrison as my deputy. My own position was secure enough for I was much senior to my medical colleagues in the hospital, but Harrison was not the next in seniority in the British army. Before his departure Colonel Simson was good enough to give me a letter in which he “promoted” me to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and to take charge of the hospital. As an interpolation this development did not forward my career in any way and it was not till 16 January 1946 that I was promoted to the substantive rank of Lieutenant Colonel. My pay in this rank began only upon this date though my seniority was slightly ante-dated. By 1946 I had nearly 28 years service, so my forebodings of 1939 and 1940 about my career were justified. This little story shows that it is always unwise to be captured in war; the effect on the career of a regular soldier can be calamitous. It also illustrates the slow rate of promotion thirty years ago. I was however grateful for Colonel Simson’s", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207410, "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-1975", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "170\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nletter, for this showed that I did not owe my position to Japanese choice. They had been known not to be guided by seniority in the British army when selecting individuals with whom they chose to co-operate in running prisoner camps. The A.D.M.S. and Shackleton left with me letters expressing their admiration of the way the staff in the hospital were carrying on the work, and this was much appreciated.\n\nI had asked in writing for six nursing sisters to be left in the hospital to take charge of nursing but this, like many other requests in the future, was met by complete silence, and all were removed. The staff and the patients who could make the trip gathered in the forecourt to take leave, first of the male staff and patients and second of the women staff 48 hours later as they left in their lorries.\n\nAnd so by 10 August 1942 I found myself in charge of 211 patients including 25 officers, with a staff of 6 medical officers (including myself), one dental officer, a quartermaster, a Church of England chaplain, 55 other ranks R.A.M.C. and R.A.D.C. and 6 Royal Engineers plus one civilian engineer,\n\nThe staff remaining included two very well known Hong Kong doctors, Majors James Anderson R.A.M.C. who thereafter carried out all necessary surgery, my contribution coming when he was unwell or when acting as his assistant, and John Durran, a Hong Kong Volunteer who was both physician and eye specialist. Gerald Harrison was the specialist physician, James Swyer the specialist radiologist, Jack Fraser the specialist ophthalmologist, Norman Fraser the dentist, F.J. Campbell the quartermaster and James Squires the padre. Mr. J.L. Muxlow was the senior warrant officer, he had been in charge of the A.D.M.S's office at China Command. Mr. W.L. Bartley had been promoted warrant officer on the spot by Shackleton during hostilities to act as executive warrant officer in order to cope with the varying and awkward, not to say dangerous situations which suddenly developed and he had played his part well. He held his post until our release, but I imagine that his local promotion did not advance his army career for the same reason as held good in my case. We had a splendid, well qualified man, G.P. Shorthouse to take charge of nursing duties, G.W. Forknall was the chief cook and J.H. Platt lived in the food stores and was responsible for all receipts and issues from them. We had an excellent dispenser, D. Harper, and most of the skills needed in a hospital were to be found among our medical and dental staff.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207411, "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-1975", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "CAPTIVE SURGEON IN HONG KONG\n\n171\n\nengineers, of whom Mr. E. Sims was senior, contributed many talents from among their seven members and it was remarkable how other abilities, unsuspected beforehand, came to be displayed by other staff. We were lucky in our staff not only because of their varied skills but also because of the spirit they showed and their willingness to tackle problems in fields new to them.\n\nI considered that the removal of Simson and Shackleton was part of a Japanese plan to separate from bodies of prisoners those who had exercised command during hostilities and round whom men might rally against their captors. Most very senior officers were also removed from the P.O.W. camps. The only reason I was ever given for the changes was that the Japanese wanted to reduce our staff, which they considered to be too large.\n\nWhen I come to enlarge upon my diaries, which are complete after 8 August 1942, it is evident that the period of captivity up to August 1945 divides itself naturally into four parts. First, there was the period of the Infections, including wound sepsis, dysentery, and diphtheria. Then came the period of Deficiency Diseases. This was followed by a period of Slow Decline, which lasted till about March 1945. Finally came a few months of Relative Stability, which covered the period from April 1945 up to the Japanese surrender in August. Each stage merged with that which followed, but the divisions are convenient for descriptive purposes. All were characterised by undernutrition.\n\nTHE PERIOD OF THE INFECTIONS\n\nDuring the brief period, only 18 days of active hostilities, I had been much struck by the disabling injuries caused by enemy mortars and grenades. These disintegrated into small pieces, almost slivers of metal, which were sprayed in a shower when they exploded. In the patients who got back, these splinters caused many eye and peripheral nerve and blood vessel injuries. Clouds of them also seemed to penetrate the skin and fat, though not often deeply, and lodged there or in muscle. All these tiny wounds became infected, the soldier victim was put out of action, and his treatment added much to the burdens of our medical services.\n\nCompound injuries of the bones and joints were always infected, and the difficulty of eradicating infection added greatly to our anxiety for the outcome in these patients against a background of undernourishment on unbalanced diets.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207420, "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-1975", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "180\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nchases made using funds voluntarily subscribed by officers of the staff and officer patients. A first charge upon all receipts was to provide what we called \"extras\" for patients in need and only the surplus after this prime need was met was issued for general use. The true value to the hospital of the gifts received is therefore much greater than appears in the records I am able to give here, which reflect only that portion used for general issue.\n\n(b) Supplies bought with money, contributed by Officers, Staff and Patients.\n\nI recorded earlier how sometime in 1942 before the departure of our nurses the Japanese began to pay commissioned officers, both staff and patients. In these days members of the Q.A.I.M.N.S., as it was then, were not commissioned and were not paid. I also recorded how Colonel Shackleton started funds from which to finance purchases for the general good. When I succeeded him the funds were reorganised and responsibility for administering them was spread more widely. A Hospital Central Fund was set up and managed by an executive committee of two officer patients and one medical officer with myself as chairman. This received money, still on a voluntary basis, from officers in the hospital and occasionally from those in P.O.W. camps in North Point and in Argyle Street, Kowloon. Disbursements were made to four sub-funds; one to provide extra diets for patients, one to supplement general messing, one to provide necessities and comforts e.g. electric bulbs, cigarettes etc. and lastly a small C.O.'s Fund. The first three were run by sub-committees and I was left to apply the minor resources of the C.O.'s Fund to support any enterprise for the general good.\n\nAs a side light on human nature it is interesting to recall that one or two British officers were reluctant for a time to support the Central Fund. They feared, from past experience no doubt, that the British army's accounting system would seek to recover from their pay at home the value of the military yen they were receiving from the Japanese. They knew that when they became prisoners, marriage and other allowances ceased and they foresaw that their wives and families might be able to draw only upon their basic pay. This view was ridiculed by the majority who held that we were faced with a situation in which immediate action was required and the reluctant ones soon abandoned their position and made their contributions valiantly. Readers in the 1970s will find it hard to believe", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207470, "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-1975", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "230\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nlikely to follow neither I nor any of those present realised the straits to which the Japanese were being reduced by the Allied blockade.\n\nOn 1 April I had to give Saito a certificate in writing that no Japanese school children, soldiers or ordinary spectators had been allowed to come and look at us in the hospital, in fact that we had not been put on display for the curious to gape at. I had no difficulty in complying, for nothing of this kind had ever happened. My explicit clearance certificate was amended and returned by the Japanese and though their version was, I thought, less exculpatory than the original I was still able to sign it without reservation. On 20 June Watanabe told me that we must keep all our worn-out clothing including even the fandoshis and this was yet another indication of the deteriorating situation on the Japanese side.\n\nOn 1 July Saito brought a senior doctor to see our equipment in the operating theatres, the X-ray department, the laboratory, the physiotherapy and the ophthalmic departments, and they also looked at our disinfestor arrangements. A little later photographs of the operating rooms, the X-ray department and the laboratory were taken.\n\nOn 7 August Watanabe took away the remainder of the kit which Colonel Shackleton had left behind with us, seven boxes in all none being locked. On 10 September Saito again made a search and took more plain clothes. On 6 November a Japanese officer searched the operating theatres and X-ray department in the basement, knocking out some bricks in walls in the process. Directly after this search was completed Saito and Seino repeated the whole procedure.\n\nIn our small community I got news very quickly of any unusual happenings and one day late in the year I was told by our own people that two members of the gendarmerie, the Kempeitai, had arrived. I believe that they were identified by the Japanese guards and a notable stillness fell upon the hospital, guards and guarded alike. The former were clearly concerned to keep out of trouble while we knew enough about the reputation of the gendarmerie to keep quiet and avoid provocation. I was not summoned to accompany them nor were any of our local Japanese authorities but I observed two very powerfully built men whom it would have been unwise to provoke. They paid a few perfunctory visits to different parts of the hospital and then left. I never knew if this visit was any", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212307, "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-1990", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "226\n\nif the wife of Swire's Taipan, accompanied by two pipers, did fire Jardine's gun to salute the arrival of 1967. Although 1967 saw several months of 'Disturbances' (spillovers from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China), it was also Swire's centenary in the East and a nice gesture on Jardine's part to invite the Taipan's spouse of the rival firm to fire their cannon.\n\nOriginally, the company was a textile firm, founded by John Swire (1793-1847), in Liverpool in 1816. It was inherited by his two sons, John Samuel (1825-1898) and William Hodson (1830-1884), by which time the firm was involved in the import-export trade. An office was opened by Richard Shackleton Butterfield (a Lancashire mill owner) and John Samuel Swire in Shanghai in 1867, and in 1870 a trading and shipping branch was established in Hong Kong. Even until 1974 the company was still known as 'B&S' (Butterfield and Swire), Its Chinese name, Taikoo (**太古**), means great and ancient. The partnership did not last long. John S. Swire wrote:\n\n\"Mr Butterfield retired (in 1868) from our firm at my suggestion; he was grasping and bothered me.\n\nThe astute, disciplined, sarcastic, autocratic John Samuel Swire was proud of his Yorkshire origins. Common expressions of his were:\n\n**I told you so!**\n\n\"I write as I speak, to the point.\"\n\n\"I aim to be strong enough to be respected, if not beloved.\"\n\nIt was maintained by an American contemporary that he lived by and for business alone. He was addressed as 'The Senior' by his partners. Like many taipans, John Samuel Swire did not remain long in the East.\n\nHe was said to have been single-minded, forthright, ruthless and energetic, and drove himself and his staff, whom he discouraged from taking part in civic affairs. After his successes on the Yangtze he decided to expand into coastal trade. Here he used the same tactics\n\na vigorous attack that disheartened his rivals.\n\n―\n\nA residence had been constructed on the Peak for the B&S taipan and messes for the young 'gentlemen' officers of the firm by the late", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 } ]