[ { "id": 211689, "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-1989", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "79\n\nCommandant of the near-by Gendarmerie post promised us protection, he took no steps to implement his promise, and we had a number of invasions from parties of Japanese soldiers, on and off duty, sometimes searching for arms, sometimes frankly looting watches, jewellery and other small valuables. My wife had a polite but firm way of dealing with these intruders, and in the end they got nothing from us but some cigarettes.\n\nOn January 3rd Mr. Gimson (the Colonial Secretary) and Mr. Alabaster (the Attorney-General) came up the hill to find out what had happened to us. They told me that they had spoken to Mr. Yano (who had come back to Hongkong temporarily as Consul-General) and the Gendarmerie people about us and the other Embassy and Consular personnel who were in Hongkong (Mr. and Mrs. Martin, Mr. and Mrs. Rich, Evans, Herrett and Miss Howkins) and we were to be given special consideration. This was comforting but in the event did not mean very much as there was the usual confusion between the different Japanese authorities, none of whom seemed to pay the slightest attention to the others.\n\nThen on January 5th notices were posted up in different places instructing all enemy aliens to report at the Murray Parade Ground between 10 a.m. and noon for internment. The notice said they could take what luggage they could carry in their hands and that they must leave the rest of their property in charge of some responsible person. This notice only came to our knowledge on the Peak at 9 a.m. People didn't know what on earth to do. If they started off immediately, walking down the Peak, they could get to the Murray Parade Ground in time. But there were old people, babies and invalids. Most people thought it would be dangerous to disobey a peremptory order like that, and they struggled down the hill as best they could, taking a suitcase or pushing a pram and abandoning everything else to the looters.\n\nFor my wife and myself there was no problem as we couldn't walk, so we decided to stay and hope for the best, and a good number of others followed our example. As it happened, things turned out all right, as Sir Arthur Macgregor called later in the day to say that he had arranged with the Gendarmerie that the people still on the Peak might remain temporarily but must be ready to move at a minute's notice. However, the Police post had gone, we were in difficulties about food and water (we had eaten the last crust of three-weeks-old bread that morning), and we had had an unpleasant visit from a party of Japanese soldiers at 2 a.m. We were completely alone in the flat, other flats in the building had already been looted, and generally the situation was unpromising. So we asked Sir Atholl to try", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213459, "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-1995", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "22\n\nhowever, cases of marriage by proxy have come to notice and although the validity of such a marriage has never been decided by the Courts, at least there is a case wherein, it can be argued, there was implied recognition of such a marriage.\" Dyer Ball, writing nearly sixty years ago, describes the custom:-\n\n\"When a man is absent from home and unavoidable circumstances prevent his return to be married, a strange marriage by proxy takes place sometimes in some districts of the Canton province; we are not aware whether it prevails in other parts of the empire or not. But the curious thing about it is that, instead of a man acting as the proxy, a cock does duty for the latter to the marriage ceremonies, though it is not even necessary that he should be sent by the bridegroom. This fowl is sent by the bridegroom, the presence of the fowl at the wedding being sufficient.\"10\n\nOn 1st July 1940 an action was brought before Sir Atholl MacGregor C.J. for the purpose of obtaining letters of administration. The plaintiff claimed that she was the lawful widow of a man whom she married by proxy in China in 1922 and who was presumed to have died in City Island, New York, in 1930 without having consummated the marriage. She gave evidence that at the ceremony carried out in the deceased's village while the deceased was in New York, he was represented by a cock decorated with golden flowers and draped in red. At the time of that marriage ceremony the plaintiff was a widow of a previous marriage to another and had three children.\n\nAs is usual in cases involving Chinese customary law, there was a battle of the experts: one gave evidence that after the cock draped in red had been taken together with the bride to the ancestral hall and had entered the bridal chamber, the marriage was regarded as valid and complete as if the bridegroom and the bride were present and even though there was no subsequent consummation; the other expert gave evidence that according to the Ching Code, the most essential point for a valid marriage was a betrothal, for the validity of which there must be a marriage contract or marriage presents exchanged between the two families. Where there was a valid betrothal there must be some kind of public ceremony in order to complete the marriage. A marriage without a valid betrothal in the first instance and without a formal ceremony to complete it, could not, the second expert stated, have any legal effect. He conceded, however, that there was some local custom allowing representation of the bridegroom by a cock.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 } ]