[ { "id": 207308, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "68\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nintelligence service to pin-point danger spots and proposed the distribution of 100,000 hand bills publicising the causes and symptoms of plague, the destruction of rats and the addresses of places where sickness could be reported. Another recommendation was the establishment of a plague department with wide powers for the discovery, prevention and cure of plague including inoculation with a highly potent horse antiserum prepared at the Haffkine Institute in India.\n\nA final recommendation made by Simpson was a general improvement of sanitary conditions and stricter control over the design of tenement blocks which he described as follows:\n\n\"The rooms, as a rule, are far too deep, the object of this depth being to subdivide each room into a number of cubicles for the accommodation of families or lodgers. Though there may be windows at each end of the room, the great depth materially obstructs the light to take an example from the better class of buildings, many of the houses that are being erected are eighty feet deep without lateral windows and contain long, narrow rooms of fifty-five feet in depth, by twelve or thirteen feet in width, lighted in front by a window and also in the rear by another window which looks into a backyard of twelve feet. . . .”*\n\nFrom the recommendations made by Simpson arose the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance of 1903 which set new standards for the design and occupancy of buildings and which remained in force until 1935.\n\nBy 1904 a considerable amount of deductive evidence had accumulated to link the occurrence of plague to the fleas carried by rats. Dr. J. M. Howie of Changpoo, for example, was of the opinion that the main cause of plague was inoculation through the bite of fleas, lice and mosquitos. Dr. H. Dobson of Yung Kong also noted that the cases he had observed appeared to have been caused by \"the bites of insects (fleas), contamination of open wounds on legs or elsewhere (or) through food containing the germ.\" William Hunter, the Government Bacteriologist of Hong Kong also noted\n\n* Second Memorandum from W. J. Simpson to James Stewart Lockhart Sanitary Board Office, 20th March 1902, p. 15 in Blue Book Reports on Bubonic Plague 1894-1907.\n\n+ W. J. Simpson, Report on the Causes and Continuance of Plague in Hong Kong and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures, London, 1903, p. 31.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212176, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "95\n\nsuccessful in winning scholarships to England under the terms of the British Boxer Indemnity Fund. The tea party was held in the grounds of a lovely little Elizabethan-style house recently opened as the headquarters of the Sino-British Cultural Association.\n\nIt was hard to believe that all the work of reconstruction, the town planning, the laying out of parks, the building of government offices, which had continued uninterrupted since Nanking had become the capital, those material expressions of the national effort to drag administration out of the centuries-old morass of incompetence and venality, were so soon to be wrecked.\n\nThe fighting in the north went badly for the Chinese, who were repeatedly compelled to withdraw. They accordingly decided to divert the Japanese effort to a terrain more favourable to themselves, and nearer to the main bases of their army. Two divisions were concentrated on the outskirts of Shanghai, and it was their attempt in August to drive the small Japanese garrison into the Whangpoo, the tributary of the Yangtze on which Shanghai stands, that unleashed the aerial war in central China. The Chinese light bombers tried to sink the Japanese flagship, H.I.J.M.S. \"Idzumo\", where she lay anchored off the Shanghai waterfront, and the Japanese retaliated by attacking Chinese airfields in the vicinity of Shanghai, Hangchow, and Nanking.\n\nRealising the danger of air raids, but without experience, the authorities in Nanking in an excess of zeal issued instructions that all light-coloured buildings were to be painted black, and so through the advancing days the view from our windows turned from the bright red and green of brick and tile to a blurred dirty grey. Even the white and blue omnibuses were changed to match the mud of the roadway. For our part we got hold of some bituminous paint and caused it to be spread on our red-tiled roof; but in the course of time rain streaked it and spoiled the effect.\n\nThe first air raid caught us by surprise at lunch on August 15th. A warning system had been established, but when the 'phone rang to advise us that the alarm had gone we did not know what to do. Someone remembered we had a large Union Jack in the attic, which after some discussion, feeling rather foolish, we decided to spread on the lawn. Tim, the pup, thought it was a new toy to be pulled at and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212179, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "98\n\nThese figures compare with the total American investment in China of £32,000,000).\n\nFeeling had been further embittered recently by the damage and heavy casualties caused when Chinese pilots, attempting to bomb the **\"Idzumo\"**, had dropped 1000-pound bombs in the most crowded street of the city, while evading Japanese pursuit planes. These incidents were attributed to carelessness and, though the victims were mainly Chinese, the Chinese population of Shanghai at that time was around five million; many foreigners, moved also largely by sympathy for the victims, felt the Chinese government had given insufficient consideration to the international investments at stake in Shanghai. They resented the fact that the Chinese had deliberately brought the war to Shanghai. They argued that the Chinese intention was to provoke the foreign powers to intervene on their behalf.\n\nIn such an atmosphere, whispering campaigns detrimental to Chinese morale flourished. One of the most ridiculous, which to this day is still firmly believed by many, was that had the Chinese troops succeeded in driving the Japanese into the Whangpoo, they would then have turned to looting the International Settlement. If there was one thing that was clear at that time to the unprejudiced, it was that Chinese advantage lay in courting the goodwill of the powers, not in estranging it by allowing Chinese troops to commit anti-foreign excesses. It is true that in the past Chinese troops had acquired an unenviable notoriety for rapine and looting, but unfortunately, the seclusion from China in which the majority of foreigners resident in Shanghai lived had not allowed them to discover the great improvements the Central government had brought about in the administration and discipline of the Chinese army. The discipline in the 86th and 87th divisions, who were inspired at Shanghai to fight to the death, was equal to that of any Western troops.\n\nIt was not realised that the Chinese were fighting for the democracies against fascist aggression. What the Chinese needed most at that time was sympathy and the expression of some confidence in their ability to weather the storm; and that is just what they did not get. No confidence was shown in the ability of the Chinese government to withstand Japan. The prolonged resistance at Shanghai came as a surprise, although Chinese troops had already proved to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212180, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "99\n\nresidents in 1932, under conditions quite similar, the efforts of which they were capable. It was thought that at the best the Chinese government would be compelled to sue for terms within three or four months: nor did the foreign residents of Shanghai appear to feel much concern at the prospect of such an issue; the years of pin-pricking told. Despite the precedents recently set in Manchuria, where the Japanese had driven out foreign enterprise, there were many who really believed that the Japanese would “clean up the Chinese mess”, as they called it, and usher in a beautiful era when all obstructions would be removed to a profitable trade untrammelled by notions about \"unequal treatment\".\n\nOn my return I found Nanking settling down to war. Most of the foreign ladies had left by steamer for ports upriver, the International Club band was dispersed, the cinemas were closed, the leak in our swimming pool got worse, coupons were required for petrol, and the irreplenishable stock of liquid refreshment at the Bungalow Club diminished at an alarming rate.\n\nThere were particularly heavy air raids on the 19th and 20th of September, and so it was with some astonishment on the evening of the 20th that we heard over the wireless Admiral Hasegawa's warning to foreign residents of Nanking to move out because,\n\n\"the Japanese Naval Air Force may after noon on September 21st have to resort to such offensive measures as bombing and otherwise upon the Chinese forces, as well as all the establishments pertaining to their military operations and otherwise around Nanking.\"\n\nHe spoke after a month of bombing as though the bombing had not yet commenced. Japan waved the big stick with singular effect. During the night of the 20th there was a frenzy of packing and on the morning of the 21st the remaining foreign ladies left by steamer, and several offices closed down and transferred themselves to Wuhu. The men who were staying behind made arrangements to \"cruise\" for the day. The various embassy staffs boarded their respective gunboats; and many civilians hoarded the S.S. \"Whangpoo\" which promptly at 11 a.m. took the Butterfield hulk in tow and steamed away, while our small party had the use of a launch on which we crossed over to the far side of the Yangtze to anchor a couple of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212187, "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": 129, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "106\n\nburst all round us. There were three Japanese aircraft, whose pilots circled and dived repeatedly. The gunboats were caught by surprise and it was only on the third attack that they got their Lewis guns into action, thereby possibly disturbing the aim of the attacking planes, because again fortunately there were no direct hits.\n\nThe first bomb attack took place at 1.30 p.m. At about 2.30 p.m. three larger machines, in formation, approached at a height of 6000 feet. They were seen to drop a pattern of six heavy bombs, which fell near one of the Asiatic Petroleum Company's steamers, but once again did little damage, owing to what appeared to be poor lateral splintering qualities. This time the gunboats opened with both their \"pom-poms\" and their 3\" guns but without effect.\n\nThe Staff Captain together with the British Military Attaché and the British Consul, who had been in the \"Scarab\", had boarded one of the merchant ships the previous night to go 60 miles up the river to Wuhu to contact the Japanese troops, in the hope that they would be able to arrange to avoid further incidents. Following on these raids, signals were made to the Staff Captain at Wuhu enquiring whether it would not be better to move the ships. At that time we did not know that the U.S.S. \"Panay\" and the three Standard Oil ships had already been sunk, and we were still awaiting a reply from Wuhu, when a third attack was made at about 4 p.m. by three aircraft which made a succession of dives to 600 feet, but they received such a warm welcome from the gunboats that they missed their targets and soon made off.\n\nAll the British ships had Union Jacks painted across their decks: on my ship, for instance, the Jack was 25 feet wide. There could be no further illusion regarding the possibility that these attacks had been made by mistake. The continuous raiding, following on the shelling of the previous day, began to demoralize the Chinese crews, and the numerous Chinese refugees from the various British offices in Nanking, with whom the holds of the ships were packed. It became imperative to take action of some sort.\n\nThe \"Ewo\" hulk, lashed alongside the S.S. \"Whangpoo\", had had the worst of it. The pair of them offered the largest target at which it was natural for the Japanese pilots to aim. It was fortunate that the refugees had been taken out of the hulk after the first attack, because the thin plank walls of her deck house were now riddled", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212188, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "107\n\n: with splinter holes, and inside broken glass and damaged furniture lay scattered around. In the vain hope that she might avoid further attention the \"Whangpoo\" had taken the hulk for a \"cruise\" up the river, while a British officer stood all the time with a loaded revolver guarding the lashings to prevent the excited crew cutting the hulk adrift. It was eventually decided to move an anchor over to the hulk and to moor her off by herself. To the officers of the Merchant Service this sort of thing is all in a day's work. To stand on his bridge and listen to the flow of language addressed by the Captain of the \"Whangpoo\" to the panicking refugees below was a treat not to be missed.\n\nIn the evening a reply was received from Wuhu that the officer commanding the Japanese troops had declared that, if any ship moved on the Yangtze it would be fired at. He was the notorious Colonel Hashimoto, a prominent member of the young Officers' group, who staged the military rising in Tokyo in 1936 during which several leading members of the Japanese government were murdered.\n\nThe news was discouraging and we had to face the possibility that in the morning the attacks would be renewed and the ships sunk, because we could not expect our phenomenal luck in avoiding direct hits to repeat itself. It was decided that before dawn all the merchant ships should be placed along the north bank, where there was deep water, so that the Chinese could step off onto the shore to hide in the reeds. That night it was thought wiser to leave all the ships' lights on in the belief that the Japanese would be less likely to fire at ships, of whose presence they had been repeatedly notified, than if the ships blacked-out and showed no marks of identification. Hurried arrangements were made against the possibility of having to abandon ship. We opened the Captain's safe and shared out thousand-dollar bundles of notes, on the one hand to save them going down with the ship, and on the other to finance any cross-country travelling which might lie before us.\n\nDawn found the ships tied up at intervals of 200 yards along the bank, with only a few foreigners and members of the Chinese crews left aboard. The bulk of the refugees were hiding in the reeds. Many of the sailors and engine-room hands, as well as the Chinese employees of the foreign firms, decided not to risk another day in this dangerous neighbourhood, and disappeared into the interior of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212617, "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-1991", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "151\n\nalong the dismantled track ran no trains, under whose wheels we could get our dummy mines, as we had been able to do in Burma where the alarm created by their noisy, if harmless, explosions had often confused the Indian engine drivers.\n\nThe magistrate was helpful: he devoted two days to tramping round with us from village to village, until we could decide where accommodation for the school might be most suitable; and he promised to build a short length of road to connect the village finally selected with the motor road so that our lorries could drive right up to the door. The village was some miles outside a small country town; I shall call it Chin Ya, the Golden Duck.*\n\nNew Year's Eve fell while I was making these investigations. The local general, with that consideration which is the charming mark of Chinese breeding, fearing I should be lonely, invited me to dinner. Since arrival in the 3rd War Zone I had asked to be kept informed of any parties of foreigners escaping from Shanghai, but no news of any escapes had come through. It was accordingly with the greater pleasure, as we were sitting down to dinner, that I was surprised by the entry of a tall bearded figure, wearing a long Chinese gown, and heard myself addressed in English. He was the first foreigner to escape from Shanghai, an American, Mr. Hawkins, the manager of one of the branches of the big American bank which had offices in China.\n\nHe told us his story while we ate our dinner. Having only just returned from leave in the States, he was staying at an hotel, which happened to be near the Bund. Early on the morning of December 7th he was wakened by the sound of gunfire. He went out to investigate and found that Japanese destroyers were sinking H.M.S. Peterel in the Whangpoo River just off the Bund. He realised that war must have broken out and dashed round to his bank to 'phone his manager. He then returned to his hotel, packed a small bag, got into his car, and drove out to the stables in the western suburb, where a friend kept two ponies which he had permission to ride. He saddled the ponies, and riding the one while leading the other, passed through the gate at which a Japanese sentry stood guard where the road crossed the barbed wire barrier surrounding Shanghai. The barrier had originally been put up by the foreign troops holding the\n\n* It is in the Tianmushan mountains, near the border of Chekiang and Anhwei, near the country town Anchi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212862, "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-1992", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "156\n\nThe Abraham Family\n\nEleazer Joseph Abraham\n\nDavid Ezekiel Joshua Abraham\n\nDavid Abraham Reuben m Ruby Moselle (1890-1982)\n\nEzekiel\n\nJoseph\n\nIsaac\n\n1\n\nAziza\n\nof the Jewish community, and served it well. His son, Ezekiel Abraham, recalled how the Jewish community had rallied to succour the refugees from Eastern Europe and Germany in 1938 and 1941 when some 17,000 to 18,000 refugees found their way to Shanghai.\n\n\"The Japanese commander had called in R.D. Abraham, as leader of the Jewish community in Shanghai, to tell him that a shipload of Jewish refugees had arrived. 'We cannot let them land,' said the Japanese. 'Why?' Abraham wanted to know. 'There is no place for them to live, and the refugees have no money to feed themselves,' reasoned the Japanese. 'In that case,' said Abraham, thoughtfully, without a smile, 'you will just have to shoot all of them, because there is no other place on earth for them to go.' Then he paused for a few moments before confiding in the Japanese, 'or, we can open the Sassoon warehouses in Hongkew and let the refugees live there, and put them to work in the factories.'\n\nGhe Ezras\n\n+15\n\nEdward Ezra switched from the opium trade to large-scale real estate construction and management in 1900. He erected - on the land bounded by Nanking, Kiujiang, Szechwan and Kiangse Roads - 1,000,000 taels worth of residences that enjoyed modern amenities. His own home on Joffre Road boasted a ballroom and a music room. The family interests included hotels. The Astor House Hotel, on Broadway and Whangpoo Road, occupied three acres of ground. Edward Ezra, who was a Director of Astor House, was the first person born in Shanghai and educated at the Shanghai Public School to be elected to the Municipal Council. Socially linked to the Sassoons from the beginning by marriage, today", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 } ]