RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g
76

CARL T. SMITH

Tam Tso (Achoy) gave $50. Then there are thirteen contributions of $10 each. Of these six are from compradores, and an equal number from merchants. The remaining contributor in this particular group was a government servant, the overseer of the coolie gangs of the Surveyor General's Department.

(5) In April, 1861, The Friend of China published a list entitled, "A Public Declaration of the Shop Keepers of Hong Kong, stating that when Mr. Caldwell managed the Proprietorship of the Chinese here, the people of Hong Kong were at rest, but he resigned his office. They now present their petition to the Governor asking him to retain Mr. Caldwell". It has sixteen names of firms as the chief petitioners. Beside seven of them are given the names of the head of the firm. Five of these are found on the 1859 list.

(6) In January, 1868, The Hong Kong Daily Press published forty-two names of individuals and firms who submitted a petition to the House of Commons against the imposition of a Military Contribution upon Hong Kong.

(7) In 1872, The Chinese Chronicle and Directory gives the names of the eleven members of the Kai Fong or "Joss House Committee, as well as the thirteen members of the Tung Wah Hospital Committee. This was the organizing committee of 1869 which remained in office until the Hospital was formally opened in 1872, when a new committee was elected. The Directory also lists a General Committee for the Hospital. This too had thirteen members.

(8) On 1 April, 1871, a memorial presented to Henry Charles Caldwell upon his departure from the Colony by the Chinese community, which was published in the Chinese section of The China Mail and signed by thirty-two of the most prominent Chinese, serves as a check against the Tung Wah and Kai Fong Directors.

(9) In May, 1872, The China Mail contains the names of thirty Chinese who called upon the Governor on behalf of the Chinese community. This delegation was composed of seven compradores, fourteen merchants, two journalists, one contractor and two government servants.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q
116

CARL T. SMITH

Mrs. Andersen was one of the founders of the Chinese Red Cross Society, serving as its first Vice President. In recognition, the Chinese Emperor granted her a large honorary board. Their only daughter, K. Ruth Andersen, married in 1905, Donald R. McEuen, son of a former Captain superintendent of Police at Shanghai.

A younger daughter of Chan Lai-sun married a businessman, Mr. W. Buchanan, presumably the same as listed in the 1884 Chronicle and Directory of China as a land agent and broker with J. P. Bisset and Co. of Shanghai.

This, then, is a record of a Chinese family living in a marginal situation. Both Lai-sun and his wife were born in Southeast Asian overseas Chinese communities. Both in childhood became caught up in English language missionary education, which served to further alienate them from Chinese tradition. Lai-sun started his career as a missionary assistant, but to make better provision for his growing family turned to business, associating himself with foreign businessmen, not as compradore but as assistant and partner. However, the very fact of his marginal background qualified him, as a member of Li Hung-chang's staff, to make a particular contribution to China's developing relations with foreign powers. His children received a solid western-style education. Of the two sons who grew to maturity, one was an engineer the other a journalist, and both for a part of their career served the Chinese government. The daughters left the Chinese community, but the eldest took her place in public life as a founder of the Chinese Red Cross.

This partial reconstruction of the life history of one China Coast family is perhaps more than a mere historical exercise in reconstructing a family history from scattered sources. It can also be viewed as an illustration of the social processes at work in creating a distinctive culture in the port cities of China, including Hong Kong.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1998
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794
132

Arthur Sowerby was recorded in the Directory & Chronicle of China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, etc. for the years 1932 and 1938 as manager of China Industries Ltd, with an office in Museum Road, Shanghai and in 1938, as a director of the Post-Mercury Company Inc., USA in Avenue Edward VII, also in Shanghai. The latter was involved in printing and advertising.

Arthur was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a Fellow of the Zoological Society, a member of the RAS North China Branch and also President [1928] of the China Society of Science and Arts [in Shanghai], as well as being Honorary Director of the Shanghai [RAS] Museum.

iii

He married three times, the first time in about 1910, at the age of twenty-five, to Mary Anne Mesny, the daughter of John Mesny of the Chinese Customs Service. She would have been just about the same age as Arthur though more than likely his elder by a few years. She seems to have disappeared from the scene almost immediately, perhaps dying comparatively young but not before she bore him a son. She does not appear in any notes after their marriage even when his parents and sisters were evacuated from Taiyuan to the safety of Tientsin during riots. This suggests that she was no longer present after about 1911 or 1912. As Mary Anne's father, John Mesny, was married to a Chinese lady whom he married in Hankow in 1866, Mary Anne was half-Chinese. This was a time when mixed marriages and even more so, marriage to someone with native blood, was frowned upon by the more bigoted expatriates.

His second wife, to whom he was married at the age of forty-two in 1927, was Clarice Moise, the American with whom he founded the China Journal. Clarice died in 1944 during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai.

His third wife was Alice Cowens, an old friend and the lady who had nursed Arthur's brother when he had been gassed during the First World War. She was invited to join Arthur in Shanghai in the Autumn of 1946 at a time when he was too ill to travel back to England alone and promptly flew out, first to Hong Kong and then, five days later, she arrived in Shanghai and married him.
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