RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241
the Society had a fine home of its own with a lecture hall presented by a Dr. Wu Lien-teh, a magnificent library and a museum and art gallery. It was supported by the Municipal Councils of the International Settlement and of the French Concession with liberal grants. In Hong Kong, however, no philanthropist has yet appeared to help the Society and the Government gives us only $200 a year in return for which it receives free copies of the Society's publications.

Our library is increasing and now consists of about 500 books but can be much enlarged by the purchase of books and by donations. One section of the library, the rarest volumes and our exchange journals as well as a stock of our own journals, is kept in the University, while the other section is kept in the rooms of the British Council which is already hard pressed to house its own library. We are grateful to the University and the British Council for these facilities and the services of their staff but the time has come when the Society will have to appeal for funds to house our library and make it more easily available.

We have to acknowledge with gratitude the gifts of books made during the year, including contributions from the Hong Kong University and from the South China Morning Post. A most valuable gift was the presentation on behalf of the Diocesan Girls' School of the classic and rare book, Bentham's Flora Hongkongensis, published in 1861. Bentham was a member of the Society but published his great work two years after the Society's collapse. In this connection I want to add that it has been my great wish, so far not achieved, to see Bentham's book succeeded by a new and colour edition of the Flora of Hong Kong based on the 500 admirable slides from the photographs taken by Mr. F. A. Nixon. With some Government encouragement and some philanthropic help, such as was given by Jardines and Dents in 1859, such an aim could be achieved and would serve as a permanent contribution by the Royal Asiatic Society to the natural history of Hong Kong.

As you will see from the Hon. Treasurer's Report our finances are in a satisfactory position; but we cannot be complacent as we have heavy expenses to meet in printing the new issue of the Journal and in reprinting Vol. I and the printing of the record and results of the recent Symposia conducted by Professor Dwyer
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p
54

J. H. HAAN

would, if not have abolished, at least have restricted child labour. But these came to nothing as a result of apathy or hostility on the part of sections of the foreign ratepayers who had to decide about such measures.51

Some years later, in 1933, a byelaw was in fact passed which gave the Municipal Council the right to refuse licences to industrial enterprises and through this indirect way it gained some control over factory conditions. But owing to opposition from the local Chinese administration (of the Shanghai territory outside the Settlement), which was against any new and undue expansion of the functions of the Municipal Council, the new rules were applied only haphazardly.

It was true that in 1932 an Industrial Section, under the Secretariat of the Municipal Council, was created, replaced by an Industrial and Social Division in 1940, and the officials of this department sometimes managed to persuade or coax factory owners into the adoption of more humane working conditions,52 but this was all on a rather ad hoc basis.

In the 1920s and 1930s more and more pressure arose from the workers, sometimes organised in small trade-unions which were, however, regarded with some distrust by the Settlement authorities (just as they had been in Britain before the abolition of the combination laws in 1824), and numerous strikes, politically or economically motivated, were held.

There were a number of reasons for the lack of social legislation in the Settlement, apart from the factors already mentioned.

1. As noted above, the Land Regulations only dealt with the traditional view of government functions. Any additions to the functions of the Municipal Council in the shape of byelaws

―

would have to be passed by the Council, the ratepayers, the consuls, and the foreign ambassadors, as well as, in some cases, the Chinese authorities. This cumbrous process alone was in most cases enough to nip any efforts for improvement in the bud.

2. A second major factor was that the Shanghai area consisted of three independent municipalities: The International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Greater Shanghai
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
97

the barrel resting on a second man's shoulder.

Kang sì: a baked mud or brick bed used in northern Chinese homes, warmed in winter by hot air from the kitchen flue passing through it.

Ko-ino Hul #₺★ : A powerful secret society; the Elder Brother Society, membership to which was strictly forbidden by the Ch’ing government and punishable by death.

Kowtow : 'knock the head': The ceremony of prostration common in China, chiefly performed before the emperor, in religious ceremonies, and by inferiors to superiors as an humble apology.

International Settlement together with the French Concession [Shanghai]: Colonial enclaves where privileges but not political control were enjoyed. The Municipal Council of the International Settlement, against which Mesny occasionally railed, eventually regarded itself as independent even of the UK and US Governments. Most foreigners regarded their presence in Shanghai, despite increasing Chinese nationalism, as in the best interests of the Chinese. Foreigners were divided socially and economically into businessmen, officials of all kinds including police officers and customs officials, missionaries and others such as be-shored seamen, refugees, later mainly White Russians and German Jews, and 'stayed-on' westerners who had married Chinese women or had nowhere better to go.

Lartigue railway system: Mesny would appear to have been acting as the local agent for the Lartigue Railway Construction Company in China [in 1886] though whether authorised on a retainer or on commission we shall probably never know. The Lartigue system was invented during the 1880s by Charles Lartigue, a French inventor who, having observed how camel loads were balanced on either side of the animal, invented a monorail which after a tentative experiment in France was chosen as the system to be used for the Bally-Bunion to Lisowel Railway in a remote corner of Ireland in 1888.

There is no indication that the line Mesny proposed between Wu-sung and Shanghai, ever got beyond Mesny's fertile imagination. Wu-sung, the town at the junction of the Yangtze and the river which leads up to Shanghai, was where ships first berthed before sailing up the Wu-sung River to Shanghai,
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x
157

surviving members of the Ezra family still enjoy a favoured position in the Jewish community in Hong Kong.

Nevertheless, individual members of the family (or families, since there were several separate groups of Ezras in Shanghai) attracted notoriety from time to time. In 1918, criminal proceedings were instituted against Joseph Ezra and Ellis Isaac Ezra for using the launch owned by the Standard Oil Company without authorization. The same year, Joseph Ezra was summoned to court for assaulting a Mr Gordious Nielson, a Dane, who was the proprietor of the Shanghai Gazette, which had printed something that Joseph Ezra did not like. The South China Morning Post recorded a 1933 case whereby two men named Ezra, Judah and Isaac, were brought to court in San Francisco for smuggling narcotics. By 1933, the International Convention against opium had long since been signed.

16

Nissim Ezra Benjamin Ezra, better known as N.E.B. Ezra, founded and edited the Anglo-Jewish weekly newspaper, Israel's Messenger from 1909 to 1935. This paper became the official organ of the Shanghai Zionist Association, taking issue with Sir Victor Sassoon and other Sephardic Jews in Shanghai over the issue of Zionism. The paper supported the Jewish National Fund in China. In 1921 the fund received a donation of 21,000 pounds sterling from a single donor in Shanghai. Since it was pro-Japanese, Chinese sources speculated that the Japanese had succeeded in buying the paper's editorial policy to favour Japanese imperial ambitions in Asia.

Silas Hardoon

Silas Hardoon alone among the Shanghai Jewry was not spoken of as a family. To the Chinese he was the most interesting Jew in Shanghai. There is so much information on him that it is difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Hardoon was a colourful as well as important personality. He was also very, very wealthy. He was elected to the Municipal Council of the International Settlement as well as the Conseil Municipal of the French Concession. Chinese tradition has it that the British made this Jewish parvenu pay for the honour of being a municipal councillor by shouldering the expenses of paving Nanking Road. Hardoon married a Chinese woman reputed to be of brothel origin, by Jewish and Buddhist rites. They adopted a number of Chinese and Eurasian children, rumoured to be from a dozen to twenty. The Chinese
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g
33

of Adolf Andre in the firm ceased in 1889 (DP 16 Feb, 1890) He left Hong Kong about 1882 and settled in London. He also had interests in France, and at the time of his death in Paris in 1911, he was director of Paguin Ltd and Maison Virot Ltd, as well as the London-based firm André, Mendel and Co. At the time of his death, he was a baron. For some years, he had been the Austrian Consul in Hongkong (DP 25 July 1911). Wilhelm Rainers was admitted a partner in 1874 (DP 3 Jan. 1874). He was appointed a Consul for Russia in Hong Kong and was an Acting Consul for Austria. He took charge of the Shanghai office in 1881 and was elected to the French Concession's Municipal Council (CM 17 Jan 1881). He retired from the firm in 1883 and returned to Hamburg (DP 16 Jan. 1884). Carl Krebs, a former bookkeeper at the Hong Kong and Dock Yard, was admitted as the partner of Melchers in 1877 and sent to open a branch in Shanghai (DP 4 July 1876, 13 Apr. 1877).

Max Carl Johann became a partner about 1884, but left the firm in 1887 (DP 3 Jan. 1888). He then joined the firm of Chater and Vernon. About the year 1897, he entered into a partnership with H.Z. Just and J.J.B. Heemskerk. The partnership was dissolved soon after. Heemskerk and Grote continued under the style of Heemskerk and Grote (DP 3 Jan 1888) In 1903, he retired from this firm (DP 1 January 1903). Laurenz Heinrich Carl Melchers Jantsen - usually known as Carl Jantsen - was an assistant in Melchers and Company in 1869. Sometime after 1880, he became a partner and was placed in charge of the Shanghai Office.

Stephen Cornelius Michaelson became an assistant in Melchers and Company in 1887. In 1888, he became a partner. As had been other partners in the Company, he was a Consul for Russia in Hong Kong. Upon the occasion of Tzar Nicholas' visit to Hong Kong, when he was still the Tsarevitch, Mr. Michaelson was awarded the order of St. Stanislaus and St. Anne. Mr. Michaelson's interest in Melchers ceased when he left China in 1898 (HKT, 30 Mar. 1898). Gustav Adolf Melchers, a nephew of Hermann Melchers, became a partner in 1894 (DP 1 Aug. 1894).

As opportunities for trade increased, the company opened new offices: Shanghai 1877, Hankow 1884, Canton 1893, Tientsin 1897, and Chinkiang 1900. In 1914, the partners were Hermann Melchers and A. Korpff of Bremen, C. Michelau, J.W. Bandow, and A. Widmann of Shanghai, G. Fiesland of Hong Kong, and K. Lindemann of Hankow. Mr. Fiesland, as the managing partner in Hong Kong, was a director of
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