RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d
94 

H. J. LETHBRIDGE 

employment; but few stayed with the department. Most took to their gypsy life again, once they had accumulated a few dollars, and left for either Shanghai or Singapore, or simply went to earth in Tai Ping Shan or Wan Chai until disinterred by the police, always on the look out for European destitutes. 

There were always some troops on garrison duty in the colony or manning the various fortifications designed to repel a seaborne invasion. The garrison normally was small and numbered usually less than 1,500 men. But numbers fluctuated markedly at times. In March 1860, for example, over 14,000 troops (10,000 British and 4,000 French) were being drilled in a vast tented camp on two square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, leased from the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, and awaiting transportation to the theatre of operations in the north. A witness of these events wrote that 'the streets of Victoria were thronged by soldiers and sailors; commissaries and staff officers were to be seen everywhere; all as busy as mortals could be'.7 

It was a policy of the government and the military to keep troops if possible out of European Victoria—the central commercial district—and to confine their debaucheries to special areas of the colony. Thus five brothels were specially opened at Wan Chai in the 1850s when soldiers at that time were prohibited by their officers from entering the central districts of the city. For soldiers on outpost duties access to Victoria was difficult in any case: 

Garrison life at these outposts is usually melancholy; society is impossible, as the fortifications are eight miles by water from the city, and communication over the mountains is arduous. It is not a question of which is the better of the two, but which the worse, to be of the British Garrison Artillery or the Chinese Lighthouse Service.& 

There were usually more sailors than soldiers ashore in Hong Kong, or afloat in the harbour, at certain times of the year. During the three winter months, the British China squadron was stationed in Hong Kong; in summer most naval vessels left Hong Kong for the north and other stations. The large number of sailors, who at times outnumbered the civilian European population, was supplemented by merchant seamen of many nationalities; for by the 1890s Hong Kong had become, after London, Liverpool, and Port Said, the fourth largest port in the world in terms of seagoing tonnage
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299
134

phone. It was a friend of mine, a former N.O., to let me know he had just heard from the British gunboat that the Luftwaffe was bombing Warsaw. I went over to a party at another table to tell them that the launch picnic we had arranged for the following Sunday would be off. The news spread from table to table. No emotion registered on the faces of the stolid English people sitting on the verandah of that exclusive club. A stranger coming in just then would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary except, perhaps, that it was later than usual when the members scattered from their tables to go home to dinner. I do not think that this display of composure was entirely due to British phlegm; it sprang in part from an unimaginative failure to realise what the news meant. Warsaw was very far from Shanghai. My Sunday picnic need not have been cancelled for all the difference the war made in its early stages. The chief problem seemed to be whether those with children in England should move them elsewhere, to the States or to China. There was no encouragement to join up; in fact, young men were informed officially that it was their duty to stick to their jobs to keep British trade going.

Since the outbreak of the war between China and Japan, there had been a succession of political murders and outrages in the foreign areas of Shanghai. I think probably that the Chinese government started it. They considered any "puppet" fair prey and, I daresay, those Green and Red tongs came in useful. Then the Japanese retaliated by organising terrorist gangs of their own, and attacking Chinese with prominent government connections, or such as refused to collaborate. It almost amounted to a reign of terror, under cover of which ordinary crime, too, increased. The police found great difficulty in coping with the situation. They themselves were sniped at by both sides. The police, in both foreign areas, were remarkably efficient, but unpopular with the official Chinese, because so often involved in suppressing illegitimate political activities, which had a long history in Shanghai.

My wife and I were living in a small flat in the French town, and several of us, in preference to joining the Shanghai Volunteers, decided to join the French Special Police. We were issued with a blue uniform, with a thin red line down the trouser, a police kepi, and a French tin hat; also a large Mauser automatic, one of numbers collected from time to time at the Concession entrances from disbanded Chinese troops seeking admission to the safety of the foreign area. In this accoutrement we paraded several evenings a week at the Central
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278
326

so "starchy" and where you did not have to dress for dinner. French ships called at Saigon and Jibuti and the voyage ended at Marseilles. Italian ships berthed at Genoa. Other passengers preferred freighters. These were more relaxed still and life was not so "organised.” Not more than 12 passengers were allowed or there had to be a doctor on board. Whereas most airports look similar, with a freighter you called at interesting, out-of-the-way little ports, each with its own special smell. By freighter, the journey from Britain to Hong Kong could take up seven or eight weeks. Halcyon days indeed!

Hong Kong

to

When I arrived in Hong Kong World War Two had ended less than a decade before. Yet some Britons living here still believed there were two kinds of expatriates. There were those who had been “in the bag" (prison camp) (where, in Stanley for example, some of my younger friends were born) and, secondly, those of us who came to Hong Kong after the War. The fact that some of us in the second group had seen more action than many of those who had been interned did not really count as far as old Hong Hands were concerned.

The camaraderie which develops when people face danger or privation together came to the fore when I received a ticket for parking in King's Road. When I later told my old boss he said, 'Pity: the case has gone too far now. If you'd told me earlier I could have got it quashed." My boss had a friend, a senior police officer, who had been in prison camp with him.

In 1954, Hong Kong's population was something like two-and-a-half million, compared with 600,000 at the end of the War. Immigrants were coming here from China in frantic attempts to evade communism. Accommodation was terribly overcrowded with people in some cases sleeping, on a shift basis, three to a bunk. With China all but cut off from the rest of the world we had lost our entrepôt trade and,

with backs to the wall, it was a case of export or starve. There was considerable unemployment.

Religion was burgeoning although many were said to be 'rice Christians.' Namely, joining for the handouts. People knew life in Hong Kong was not perfect. But it was a jolly sight better than living
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