[
    {
        "id": 204985,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 93,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "84 \n\nA. D. BLUE\n\nHong Kong, than in the 1920's and 30's. The latter period came within the warlord era when the writ of the central government at Peking or Nanking sat very lightly, if at all, on the southern provinces. In 1925 and 1927, however, the Navy sent expeditions into Bias Bay, to destroy—if possible without damage to innocent lives and property—villages known to harbour pirates and pirate junks. The second expedition was undertaken in exasperation after the pirating of the Jardine steamer S.S. Hop Sang in March 1927.4 The official report issued after the expedition claimed that one hundred and thirty stone and mat shed huts were destroyed in the two villages attacked, and forty junks and sampans destroyed. The raid had been no surprise, and definite evidence was found that the villages had been implicated in recent piracies. These raids only caused a temporary lull in the pirates' activities.\n\nThe Navy had one notable success in the Irene piracy of October 1927, which illustrates the difficulties with which the Navy and the Hong Kong Government had to contend in their anti-piracy campaign. H.M.S. submarine L4 challenged the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company's Irene when entering Bias Bay without lights and in suspicious circumstances. When she refused to stop, and then ignored a warning shot fired across her bow, a live round was fired which still drew no response. The Irene's captain was navigating under the pirates' supervision, and tried to ring down to stop the engines, but was too late.\n\nThe next shot struck the Irene amidships on the waterline, disabling the engines, killing a pirate standing beside the chief engineer, and starting a fire which almost gutted the ship before she sank. L4 went alongside and rescued most of the crew, and 220 of the 248 passengers. Three other warships and the tug Alliance arrived later, but were unable to prevent the Irene from sinking. When L4 arrived at Hong Kong the crew and passengers of Irene were screened by the police, and three men were identified as being pirates. A few days later seven other men were arrested, and all ten eventually hanged, after a sensational attempt to break out of Hong Kong's Victoria Gaol. The China Merchants Steam Navigation Company came under the control of the Chinese Government, and the Irene\n\n4 The only piracy of a Jardine ship in the modern era,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
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    {
        "id": 205977,
        "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": 57,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "52 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\n12 Malcolm Struan Tonnochy (1840-1882). Educated at Blackheath Proprietary School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1862; died in office while Superintendent of Victoria Gaol. Obituaries of Tonnochy are to be found in the Hong Kong Telegraph, December 14 and 15, 1882, and China Mail, December 15, 1882. The Telegraph tells us \"that yesterday the deceased was in good spirits and played tennis in the afternoon, dined out with a friend, and was in the Club until shortly after midnight\", A Chinese barber found Tonnochy dead in bed when he came to shave him in the morning. He was a bachelor. \n\n13 Walter Meredith Deane (1840-1906). Educated St. Paul's School and Trinity College, Cambridge. Hong Kong Civil Service 1862; Captain Superintendent of the Police, 1866-1891. Deane was severely wounded on duty in 1878 and resigned in 1891 on account of ill-health. \n\n14 Sir Cecil Clementi Smith (1840-1916). Educated at St. Paul's School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Hong Kong Civil Service 1862; promoted from Colonial Treasurer, Hong Kong, to Colonial Secretary, Straits Settlements, 1878. Administered Government 1884-85; appointed Lieutenant-Governor and Colonial Secretary, Ceylon, 1886; Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Straits Settlements, 1887; H. M. High Commissioner and Consul-General for Borneo and Sarawak, 1889. \n\n15 Alfred Lister (1843-1890). Educated at University of London. Hong Kong Civil Service 1865; prepared detailed index to the Ordinances of Hong Kong in 1870; Colonial Treasurer 1883-90. Died on board ship near Yokohama while on sick leave, Lister held the office of Treasurer as an adjunct appointment only, and with an almost nominal salary, in conjunction with his substantive appointment of Postmaster-General, Lister left a wife and four children in England. See Hong Kong Telegraph, 15 June, 1890. Governor Des Voeux referred to Lister as an \"excellent officer\". \n\n**\n\n16 Sir James Russell (1843-1893). Educated at Queen's University, Belfast. Hong Kong Civil Service 1865; private secretary to Governor Sir Richard MacDonnell 1868; Police Magistrate 1870; Chief Justice of Hong Kong 1888. The Hong Kong Telegraph, 4 September, 1893, in an editorial entitled \"Sir Judas' Russell: His History\" declares \"You could not have been much of an expert in the Chinese language two short years after your appointment to a cadet-ship, yet in 1867, you were Government ‘Interpreter'\". The editorial referred to Russell as \"the Gargantua of Hong Kong social life\" and \"the Jeffries of the Hong Kong Bench\". The writer of the editorial was the atrabilious Robert Fraser-Smith, who founded the Hong Kong Telegraph in 1881. Since Fraser-Smith had been jailed several times for libel, he had reason to dislike the Chief Justice. (See Frank H. H. King and Prescott Clarke A Research Guide to China-Coast Newspapers, 1822-1911, Cambridge, Mass., 1965). Russell, a bachelor like Lister, died at Strathpeffer, Scotland, shortly after resigning from Government. \n\n17 Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845-1929). Educated at Repton School. Hong Kong Civil Service 1867; retired on pension as Police Magistrate in 1898. One son, Peveril, was the first baby born on the Peak and brother of P. G. Wodehouse, the novelist. Wodehouse was the last of the batch of officials originally appointed to the Colony in the capacity of student interpreter. \n\n18 Sir James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (1858-1937). Educated at King William's College, Isle of Man, Watson's Academy, Edinburgh (gold medallist), and Edinburgh University (Greek medallist), Hong Kong Civil Service 1878; attached to the Colonial Office for one year; Registrar General 1887; Colonial Secretary 1895-1902; Special Commissioner to Inspect and Report on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, 1898; representative of Great Britain to delimit the boundaries of the extension of Hong Kong; first civil Commissioner of Weihaiwei, 1902; retired 1921.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206299,
        "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-1971",
        "page_number": 116,
        "title": "RAS-1971",
        "content_text": "110\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nBoarding School at Singapore of the American Board. One was Leung Tsun Tak (梁遵德) who was employed as an interpreter at the Hong Kong Magistracy. He was a son of Leung Afat (梁亞佛) an ordained evangelist of the London Missionary Society,49 The other lad was Wei Akwong (韋阿光) whom Bridgman had picked up sick and starving on the streets of Macao some years previous. Akwong, unlike the other Chinese we have been mentioning, never received baptism. At first he assisted Bridgman in his missionary work in Hong Kong, but when Bridgman moved to Canton in 1845 Akwong remained in Hong Kong. He became compradore for the ship chandlers and storekeepers Bowra and Company, but in 1855 was appointed Supreme Court Interpreter in Chinese and Malay. In 1857 when the Mercantile Bank of India, London and China opened its Hong Kong office, Wei Akwong became the bank's compradore. He retained this office until his death in 1878 and was succeeded by his son Wei Ayuk (韋亞玉) alias Wei Bo Shan (韋寶臣). Wei Akwong was a recognized leader of the Chinese community, and his name appears on numerous petitions and memorials. Like Wong Shing he sent his sons abroad to study. His eldest son Wei Yuk married a daughter of Wong Shing, and followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law by serving on the Legislative Council from 1896 to 1917.50 He was knighted in 1919 and died in 1922.\n\nThe Bishop of Victoria had under his patronage upon his arrival in Hong Kong in 1850, a young Chinese whom he had met in England. Chan Tai Kwong (陳大光) was a native of Pun Yu District of Kwang Tung, but he turned up in England in 1845 as a young man aged eighteen. How he got to England and what he was doing there, I have not been able to determine, but in 1849 the newly appointed Bishop of Victoria met him and took him under his patronage, with the hope that he could be trained as an evangelist among the Chinese. Soon after coming to Hong Kong, Tai Kwong was sent to Singapore to marry Gay Eng, also known as Sarah Hughes, a pupil in the school for Chinese girls conducted by Miss Grant. Upon his return to Hong Kong he was placed on three years' probation before ordination, but the Bishop did license him to preach to the prisoners in the Victoria Gaol. Chan Tai Kwong, however, had difficulties in adjusting to his new position. His experience in",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g",
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    },
    {
        "id": 206990,
        "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": 61,
        "title": "RAS-1974",
        "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n55\n\nnot serve his full sentence because he was released on grounds of ill-health. But, as Des Voeux notes, the day after his release from Victoria Gaol he was seen avidly betting at the Happy Valley Race Course. He was, clearly a great card and popular with drinking circles in Hong Kong. The Telegraph was an evening newspaper. After Fraser-Smith's death, J. J. Francis became publisher and Chesney Duncan its editor.\n\n28 John Joseph Francis (1839-1901) was educated in Dublin and intended for the Catholic priesthood. But instead of entering the Church he enlisted in the Army, coming out to China in the Royal Artillery during the Second China War. He took his discharge in Hong Kong and commenced the study of law in the office of a Mr. Owens, solicitor. He was admitted to practise as an attorney in 1869 and entered into partnership with another solicitor and soon acquired a lucrative practice. Ambitious, he gained admission to Gray's Inn and was called to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong in 1877. By 1888 he was the Colony's leading barrister. Francis was extremely touchy and truculent: in 1895 he returned to the Governor a silver inkstand, given to him in recognition of his work during the plague, on the grounds that the gift did not sufficiently acknowledge his services. He died of apoplexy at Yokohama's Grand Hotel in 1901. A fitting end: he was an apoplectic soul. Francis lived at 'Shirley House' in Bonham Road, a commodious residence with extensive grounds.\n\n29 A. Macmillan, Seaports of the Far East, London, 1923, p. 366.\n\n30 22 November, 1888. The Hong Kong Hotel, situated in Pedder Street, was originally managed by Parsees; in 1866 it came under European management and soon became a first-class hotel with all the facilities of a good West End hotel.\n\n31 7 January, 1889.\n\n32 Soulié states that Mayréna on his way to Hong Kong marooned Afong on Hainan Island but that the intrepid Chinese took passage on a junk and appeared in Hong Kong to haunt the King of the Sedangs.\n\n33 China Mail, 7 January, 1889.\n\n34 George Murray Bain (1842-1909) was born and educated at Montrose, Scotland. He joined the China Mail as a sub-editor and reporter (some say printer) in 1864. In 1875 he became sole proprietor of the China Mail and in 1879 took over the editorship of the paper himself. With N. B. Dennys he started the China Review in 1872. The China Mail was edited from Wyndham Street, a short distance away from the Hong Kong Telegraph on Pedder's Hill. Bain, unlike Fraser-Smith, appears to have been pious, temperate, and acutely respectable.\n\n35 Hong Kong Telegraph, 27 December, 1888.\n\n36 'Drey' was the name of a Sedang locality.\n\n37 China Mail, 24 January, 1889.\n\n38 Hong Kong Telegraph, 25 January, 1889.\n\n39 7 January, 1889.\n\n40 Sir Hugh Clifford, Heroes of Exile, London, 1906, pp. 69-70. Clifford states that it was the Hong Kong merchants 'who had paid his (Mayréna's) passage and had supplied his Majesty with a little ready money' and that they had been actuated partly by a desire to remunerate one from whom they had derived so much entertainment'. Sir Hugh Clifford (1866-1941), a colonial administrator, who served in Pahang from 1887 to 1899, was, apparently, in Hong Kong in late 1888; it is possible that he had taken local leave but I have been unable to confirm the fact.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207331,
        "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": 99,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY\n\n91\n\nbetween those who were, and were not, socially acceptable. An inordinate degree of effort went into securing release from this social limbo. Release, when it occurred, was achieved in most cases by judicious entertaining, by obtaining entrée to the right clubs and associations, or by a change of occupation.\n\nThe Oxford English Dictionary defines a beachcomber as ‘a settler on the Pacific islands, living by pearl fishery, etc., or loafing about wharves and beaches' and as 'a white man in Pacific islands etc., who lives by collecting jetsam, longshore vagrant'. The term, a pejorative one in European circles in the East, in time was applied to all European vagrants by those in established positions and meant, simply, a loafer. It was difficult to survive on the beach in Hong Kong for the climate, with its cold winter months, did not provide the lush consolations of life on the Pacific islands; and the Chinese, the host population, whose traditions supported the values of hard work, frugality and sobriety, were not as easy-going as the denizens of the South Seas. Beachcombers in Hong Kong were defined as loafers, destitutes, down-and-outs, spongers, and paupers, and were referred to as such in the newspapers of the time. A news item in the China Mail of 1888 sheds light on contemporary attitudes toward beachcombers:\n\nA 'Dead-Beat' named George Smith was brought before Mr. Sercombe Smith, in the Police Court to-day, charged with being a rogue and vagabond and having no visible means of subsistence. Defendant, who admitted having no occupation, no money, and no place of abode, was sent to Gaol for a month's hard labour, during which time steps will be taken to procure a more desirable berth for him.3\n\nBeachcombers in Hong Kong were mostly discharged seamen, seamen who had jumped ship, or deserters from foreign navies, especially the American. A few were work-shy nomads who moved from port to port, waiting for something to turn up. Others adopted an itinerant mode of life because their capacity to work regularly had been undermined by drink, drugs, or debauchery in general. Some were escaping from a criminal past. All were objects of suspicion.\n\nA European constabulary had been recruited to police the city of Victoria and adjacent areas soon after the establishment of the",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207332,
        "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": 100,
        "title": "RAS-1975",
        "content_text": "92\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\ncolony of Hong Kong. In 1845, Charles May, a London police officer, was brought out to organise the new force. Most of the early police recruits were obtained locally from the army, navy, and merchant marine; but in time policemen were recruited directly from Britain or from other colonial territories. The quality and morale of the force was never high. Norton-Kyshe writes that in 1850 a European constable got only $15 a month,\n\nvery far below what the humblest in the Colony required, so that, in the case of steady men, they only accepted the position in the hope of something better turning up. But to this class, unfortunately, the chief objection was the readiness with which they yielded to the temptation offered by the many public houses about, and many of the deaths among the European constabulary were ascribed to their excessive indulgence in ardent spirits, a great portion of which, sold by the low tavern-keepers, was of the most abominable and deleterious description.4\n\nBecause of the demoralised state of the police, Sir Richard MacDonnell, Governor of Hong Kong, reported in 1869 to the Secretary of State that he intended to substitute Scottish for English constables. Altogether forty-five Edinburgh constables were enlisted in 1872. But the Scots contingent proved as susceptible as their English colleagues, for the next year several were dismissed from the force. As a group, they, too, had succumbed to the blandishments and corruptions of Hong Kong. In 1897 it was found that almost all the police—European, Chinese, and Indian—were receiving money illegally from Chinese gambling syndicates, including a British Deputy Superintendent of Police.\n\nBecause of the general shortage of European personnel in Hong Kong, police were often seconded to, or allowed to apply for, positions in other departments. The scarcity of suitable Europeans was, in the main, a consequence of the growing attractiveness of Australia as a land of opportunity, especially after the discovery there of gold in 1851, and of the rapid development of Shanghai, which soon became viewed as an arena more accommodating than Hong Kong for the adventurous and ambitious. Turnkeys at Victoria Gaol were often policemen; and the various Inspectors of Brothels (a post established in 1858), who came under the control of the Registrar General, were in nearly every case former police officers, for the principal duty of such functionaries was to detect",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214056,
        "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-1997",
        "page_number": 124,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "91\n\nKong village in 1936, thus providing access to the proposed second airfield site at Pat Heung. In the following year the first roadworks on the outlying islands were undertaken at Muk Wo (Mui Wo) on Lantau, primarily to provide access to the ferry pier.\n\nDrainage\n\nIn 1843, a particularly bad year for disease, some essential drainage was begun and, by 1847, 740 metres of city drains had been laid in Victoria. At Happy Valley the muddy waters discharging from the surrounding hills via Wong Nei Chong (literally yellow mud stream) created swamp and healthwise lethal conditions, in particular following heavy rain. By 1846 the rice and sweet potato farmers at Happy Valley were bought out and the flat land drained, thus making the area less unhealthy than before. In spite of drainage improvements in and around the city, the mortality rate amongst European troops remained exceptionally high, for instance in 1851 it reached 24% compared with 10% for the civilian population, this latter percentage being swollen by the deaths of seamen. In the early days, to avoid flooding in low-lying areas, main drainage nullahs (large open channels) were constructed, the earliest in the central district probably being the Murray Barracks Nullah, which ran through the naval dockyard area, and the winding Victoria Barracks Nullah. At East Point, an impressive 6m-wide and 3.6m-deep nullah, the Bowrington Canal (now decked and located under Canal Road) which carried the run-off from the Happy Valley catchment area was planned as early as 1842. In Wan Chai, Stone Nullah Lane was located above a stream which ran below Hospital Hill (to the east of Morrison Hill).\n\nThe quality of design/workmanship in the original drainage system clearly left a lot to be desired as, in 1860, a very heavy rain storm is reported to have burst most of the drains and also caused the collapse of some houses in Canton Bazaar (off Queen's Road opposite to the naval dockyard). During the violent typhoon in 1874, mounds of soil were again thrown up by bursting drains. The sewers also had other uses, for instance in 1863 twenty-two prisoners were known to have escaped from the old gaol in Hollywood Road by way of the monsoon drains whilst, in the next two years, the ingenuity and engineering skill displayed by “drain gangs\" was such that a godown, jewellery store and even the vaults of a bank were entered by using storm-water drains.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
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]