forgotten-souls-a-social-history-of-the-hong-kong — Page 1

Forgotten Souls
Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series
Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series is designed to make widely available important contributions on the local history, culture and society of Hong Kong and the surrounding region. Generous support from the Sir Lindsay and Lady May Ride Memorial Fund makes it possible to publish a series of high-quality works that will be of lasting appeal and value to all, both scholars and informed general readers, who share a deeper interest in and enthusiasm for the area.
Other titles in RAS Hong Kong Studies Series:
Cantonese Society in Hong Kong and Singapore: Gender, Religion, Medicine and Money
Essays by Marjorie Topley, edited and introduced by Jean DeBernardi
The Dragon and the Crown: Hong Kong Memoirs
Stanley S.K. Kwan with Nicole Kwan
Early China Coast Meteorology: The Role of Hong Kong
P. Kevin MacKeown
East River Column: Hong Kong Guerillas in the Second World War and After
Chan Sui-jeung
For Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors: The Chinese Tradition of Paper Offerings
Janet Lee Scott
Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery
Patricia Lim
<p>&nbsp;</p><p><br /></p><span><!--more--></span><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>
Hong Kong Internment 1942�V1945: Life in the Japanese Civilian Camp at Stanley
Geoffrey Charles Emerson
Public Success, Private Sorrow: The Life and Times of Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor (1857�V1938), China Customs Commissoner and Pioneer Translator
Isidore Cyril Cannon
Reluctant Heroes: Rickshaw Pullers in Hong Kong and Canton 1874�V1954
Fung Chi Ming
Resist to the End: Hong Kong, 1941�V1945
Charles Barman, edited by Ray Barman
The Six-Day War of 1899: Hong Kong in the Age of Imperialism
Patrick H. Hase
Southern District Officer Reports: Islands and Villages in Rural Hong Kong, 1910�V60
Edited by John Strickland
Watching Over Hong Kong: Private Policing 1841�V1941
Sheilah E. Hamilton

FORGOTTEN SOULS
A SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE HONG KONG CEMETERY
PATRICIA LIM

Hong Kong University Press
14/F Hing Wai Centre 7 Tin Wan Praya Road Aberdeen Hong Kong www.hkupress.org
c Hong Kong University Press 2011
ISBN 978-962-209-990-6
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound by Paramount Printing Company Limited, Hong Kong, China
To my grandchildren, Suzannah, Daniel, Natalie, Eve and Zoe with love
Contents
Foreword
ix
Preface
xi
Introduction: The Hong Kong Cemetery, Its Position and History
1
Section I: An Introduction to Early Hong Kong
Chapter 1: The Early Settlers, the First Opium War and Its Aftermath
30
Chapter 2: Events Affecting Hong Kong as They Involved the Lives of
People Buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery
59 Chapter 3: How Early Hong Kong Society Arranged Itself
73
Section II: The Early Denizens of the Hong Kong Cemetery, 1845�V1860
Chapter 4: Merchants, Clerks and Bankers
92 Chapter 5: Servants of the Crown
113 Chapter 6: Professionals
143 Chapter 7: The Merchant Navy
158 Chapter 8: Tradesmen, Artisans and Small-Scale Businessmen
183 Chapter 9: Beachcombers and Destitutes
211 Chapter 10: Missionaries
214 Chapter 11: The Americans
235 Chapter 12: The Armed Forces
242 Chapter 13: Women and Children
269 Chapter 14: The Chinese and Their Position in Relation to the Europeans 286
Section III: Years of Consolidation, 1861�V1875
Chapter 15: Victoria City and Its European Inhabitants
298 Chapter 16: Hong Kong Society in This Period
321 Chapter 17: Hong Kong Becomes Cosmopolitan
349
Chapter 18: Government Measures and Their Effect on Society 364
Chapter 19: Changes Taking Place outside the Government 389
Section IV: The Turn of the Century, 1876�V1918
Chapter 20: Chapter 21: Chapter 22: Chapter 23: Chapter 24: Chapter 25: Chapter 26: Chapter 27:
Chapter 28:
Appendices:
Notes Age of Empire
418 The Disasters of These Years
442 The Old Residents Section in the Hong Kong Cemetery 452 Industry at the Turn of the Century
475 The History of the Freemasons in Hong Kong
483 The Chinese in the Hong Kong Cemetery
495 The Eurasians
512 Other Nationalities: The Japanese and Russians Buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery
522 The Second World War and Its Aftermath
531
1. Time Line of Hong Kong History
543
2. Sources 546
3. Glossary
548
551
Bibliography
577
Index
587

Foreword
The first thing to say about this book is that it is long overdue. That is by no
means meant to be a negative reflection on the author. On the contrary, she is to be congratulated for filling so well such a large gap in our historical knowledge of
some of the people who contributed to the early success of Hong Kong. So many of those people, leaders of the community as well as the virtually unknown, were laid to rest in the Hong Kong Cemetery in Happy Valley that, taken together, they almost amount to a social history of Hong Kong��s early years. And this is exactly what Patricia Lim has given us.
It would have been much easier simply to prepare an alphabetical listing of the names that feature in the Cemetery, and give brief biographical details of each to the extent these were available. But the author was not satisfied with this easy option. Instead she has applied a significant amount of thought, research and imagination to weave the entire story of Hong Kong��s early years consistently around the inhabitants of the Cemetery.
Whilst the story of Hong Kong��s foundation as a British colony has been told many times, it appears here as a necessary backdrop to the story of the individuals that then unfolds. And this is where this book truly shines as being a unique contribution to our knowledge. Many of the passages of history that are described might be very familiar to us already, and we know that a number of people died in the course of these events. But to be given details of exactly who these people were and where they are buried has the effect, if I may be forgiven for using the expression, of bringing many of the stories to life. Furthermore, reading about some of the Cemetery��s inhabitants emphasizes just how many people from different backgrounds ended up not being able to return to wherever home was as their lives were cut short here. The author is at pains to point out, however, that the Cemetery��s occupants do not necessarily represent a complete cross-section of even the expatriate community of Hong Kong. Those who were rich enough managed to go home to Europe or America to enjoy their fortunes, whilst those who lacked the means could not afford to be remembered by a grave in the Hong Kong Cemetery. Hence, what remains is a predominantly middle class population, with a fair sprinkling of military people as well.
Patricia Lim gives us a good account of the lives of these people, not just their deaths. As one of her sources, she has given credit to the Carl Smith Collection at the Public Records Office. In this respect she is but the latest in a long line of historians and writers who have benefited from the meticulous research of this widely respected and much loved former honorary vice president of the Society. Time and again, this unique collection of record cards opens doors to researchers and throws light on areas that might otherwise have remained in darkness. Like Patricia, we remain immensely grateful to this man and his work.
The Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch and Hong Kong University Press are very proud of what they have achieved so far with the Studies Series. More and more people, both here and abroad, are finding that Hong Kong and its unique history and culture provide a rich and fascinating field of study. An increasing number of schools are including the history of our city and its surroundings in their curricula, for which we should be able to take some credit. We will continue to bring to the public original works that will enhance this area even further.
The publications in the Studies Series have been made possible initially by the very generous donation of seeding capital by the Trustees of the Clague Trust Fund, representing the estate of the late Sir Douglas Clague. This donation enabled us to establish a trust fund in the name of Sir Lindsay and Lady Ride, in
memory of our first vice president and his wife. The Society itself added to this
fund, as have a number of other generous donors.
The result is that we now have funding to bring to students of Hong Kong��s history, culture and society a number of books that might otherwise not have seen the light of day. Furthermore, we continue to be delighted with the agreement established with Hong Kong University Press, which sets out the basis on which
the Press will partner our efforts.
Robert Nield President Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch October 2010

Preface
I have written this book in the hope that it will fan interest in Hong Kong��s social history and inspire others to continue where I have only just begun to scratch the surface. Where mistakes, inaccuracies and misstatements occur or where opinions might lack balance, the fault is wholly mine. But I would never have begun this project without the enthusiasm and support of my friend and long-time committee member of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia, Sue Farringdon, now Mrs. J. Doble. She inspired me to look more closely and methodically at all the tombstones at the Hong Kong Cemetery and then made the journey to Hong Kong in order to assist me in the task of recording them. Both B.A.C.S.A. and the Royal
Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, have generously given me financial support.
The late Reverend Carl Smith was my second inspiration. I visited him at his Mei Foo flat and watched him consulting his card index in order to provide me with much needed help and realized that his index was the perfect tool to help flesh out the names inscribed on the headstones and monuments in the Cemetery. I would particularly like to thank Angela Scrimshire and Penny Robbins, who both spent time reading, sorting out and commenting on the early chapters and pointed me in a more logical way forward. Ko Tim-keung has helped and supported me from the early days of recording and mapping the Cemetery. He helped enormously by using his knowledge of Japanese and of Hong Kong��s history to write Chapter 27 on the Japanese buried in the Cemetery and has been very generous and helpful in allowing me to use interesting and relevant pictures from his collection. I would also like to thank Cliff Atkins who has helped me a lot by taking on so competently much of the work needed to produce a useful database of the graves in the Hong Kong Cemetery, freeing me to work on the book. I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Colin Day for not only editing the book but also taking many of the best photographs of particular graves in the Cemetery, and also to Dr. Patrick Hase for his careful reading and helpful comments on the book. I would also like to thank the Hong Kong Public Records Office for their friendly support over the years of research. I would like to thank Dawn Lau and say how much I appreciate her patience and professionalism in shepherding this book on its way to publication.
Many people have kindly allowed me to make use of their pictures free of any charge. They include Martyn Gregory, Dennis Crow, Wattis Fine Art, the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. I would like to thank them for their generosity.
I would like to thank Richard Morgan of the Hong Kong Police who so generously allowed me to use the results of his research which added interesting new dimensions to the work. Lastly but by no means least, I owe a lot to my family for their steadfast support and in particular to my husband, Poh Chye, who has given me his backing and help throughout.

Introduction
The Hong Kong Cemetery, Its Position and History
In the midst of the concrete sky-scrapers that line the noisy bustling streets of Hong Kong lies an unexpected oasis of peace and quiet. This hallowed ground is arranged in a series of terraces cut into the thick, tree-clad undergrowth that scales the slopes of the hill. The Hong Kong Cemetery contains the main source material for this book. The Cemetery overlooks the Happy Valley racecourse to the front and at the back is bounded by the skyscrapers of Stubbs Road. This area contains a small ecosystem that has changed little over 150 years. It is a safe haven for birds, bats and butterflies. On one day in October, nineteen species of butterflies were recorded in just two and a half hours and on that evening, over a short three-hour period, two very rare moths were among the twenty-eight species found.1 Its trees speak of its age and colonial past and include spectacular Australian gum trees, tall palms as well as magnificent local specimens. The elegant Norfolk Island pines used for making masts for sailing ships were brought here from Norfolk

Hong Kong Cemetery at the junction of sections 12A, 17, 18 and 11A.

I.2. A wooded view across the Cemetery showing the Norfolk Pine trees.

Map: An aerial view of the line of cemeteries facing the Racecourse at Happy Valley, in order going from bottom left to just before the Aberdeen Tunnel (top right): 1. Muslim Cemetery 2. Roman Catholic Cemetery 3. Hong Kong Cemetery. The Parsee Cemetery and Hindu Temple are further up Shan Kwong Rd.
Island, an island not much bigger than Hong Kong, where the descendants of the Bounty mutineers were moved from the overcrowded Pitcairn Islands in 1856. The
magnificent West Indies mahogany tree at the top of Section 11A is unique in Hong Kong and was crowned king of the trees in Wan Chai in 1997.2 The oldest classical fountain in Hong Kong sits in the heart of the Cemetery.
The approximately seven thousand graves which constitute the main source material of this book have been mapped and recorded. If a visitor wants to find a particular grave, it should be possible. Wherever a deceased inhabitant of the Hong Kong Cemetery is mentioned, his or her name has been typed in bold and followed by three numbers in square brackets separated by slashes. The numbers stand for the section, row and number in the row where that particular grave may be found. Those graves mentioned as being in St. Michael��s Roman Catholic Cemetery, the Parsee Cemetery or the Jewish Cemetery will have to be left to the ingenuity of the readers, if they want to locate them.
The Hong Kong Cemetery, which in the course of its history was also known as the Protestant Cemetery and the Colonial Cemetery, lies in Happy Valley opposite the oldest racecourse in Hong Kong and at the centre of a long line of cemeteries. To its right as you look up the slope are the Roman Catholic and Islamic cemeteries opened in 1848 and 1870 respectively. The Catholic cemetery provides an interesting contrast to the Hong Kong Cemetery next to it. It seems as if no-one was turned away. The more egalitarian approach of the Catholic Church is obvious. Whereas the Protestant cemetery is calm, dignified and usually deserted with plenty of space round each grave, the Catholic cemetery is so crowded that it is impossible to reach the end of a row without stepping on graves. The Portuguese, Chinese and British Catholics lie huddled side by side without distinction. That the Catholic cemetery is more deeply integrated into the present day society of Hong Kong is shown by the numbers of visitors who arrive to lay flowers on the graves of their loved ones. The visitors are numerous and generous enough in their floral offerings to keep two stalls of flower sellers in business, whereas no flower seller sits outside the Hong Kong Cemetery.
To the left of the Hong Kong Cemetery is the Parsee Cemetery opened in 1852 and beyond that the plot of land granted to the Hindus in 1880. Since the Hindus cremate their dead, it has been used as a temple. At the head of Happy Valley at 13, Shan Kwong Road, tucked in behind a Buddhist school and temple is the Jewish Cemetery which was opened in 1855.3 Near the Muslim mosque above Hollywood Road, a cemetery was opened early on to cater for the Indian
Muslim dead. This cemetery remained open until 1870 in which year the last of
the Happy Valley cemeteries was formed, for the Muslim dead, to the right of
the Catholic cemetery. That the Chinese were the only people left unprovided for in the early days of
Hong Kong��s history was typical of the government��s attitude towards the majority
race. They were then in the colony uninvited, on sufferance and for limited amounts
of time for money-making purposes only. It was not up to the government to cater to their needs. A letter to the Friend of China dated July 1850 underlines the government��s attitude to the needs of the Chinese in early Hong Kong:
Romanists, Protestants, Zoroastrians and Mahometans have each their allotted places for interment; not so the Chinese who may bury their dead anywhere. On the hills immediately westward of Taipingshan burials of Chinese are of daily occurrence; indeed I am induced to draw your attention to the subject by seeing this morning such a grave being opened within a dozen yards of Queen��s road.
This, Mr. Editor should not be; the locality from its healthfulness may hereafter become one of much desirability for European residences and then in desecrating the graves to erect them, the Chinese may act on precedent
and strike at the head and front of the offending.4
This extract shows how the Chinese majority were relegated to the bottom of the pile where rights of interment were concerned. Even the reason given for the need for a Chinese cemetery assumed that the Europeans had the right to appropriate Chinese burials sites at will for their own use and it was only because the exercising of this right could lead to friction that the Chinese needs
were considered. The precedent alluded to here is the occasion when, in 1849,
D��Amaral, the one-armed governor of Macau, was pulled from his horse and speared to death by Chinese men. He had ordered a road to be cut through the Campo which interfered with the Chinese graves. 5 The area referred to in the
above extract was probably the popular unofficial area for Chinese burials along Fan Mo or Cemetery Street which was renamed Po Yan Street in 1869 when the Tung Wah Hospital was built there. In fact the first designated Chinese burial
ground was opened in 1856.6 The usual reason given for the lack of a need for a Chinese cemetery was that
when the Chinese became sick in a life-threatening way or died in Hong Kong, arrangements were made for their transportation back to their clan villages. There they could be nursed back to health or buried according to the proper rites among their clansmen. But given that the Chinese population in 1850 was said to
be about 32,000 and the death rate in the region of 3 percent (approximately 960
deaths in a year), if only 10 percent of those dying had made no arrangements for their repatriation to China, there would have been ninety-six corpses a year to be buried haphazardly in any suitable spot. 7


Happy Valley
The name Happy Valley was given to the area before the Cemetery was opened. Perhaps it was so called because it was considered the most fertile and prettiest
place on the north coast. Lieutenant Orlando Bridgeman, of the 98th Regiment
of Foot in Hong Kong from 1842 to 1843, described it:
There is only one spot in the whole of the island that has a tree on it. It is called Happy Valley, and is certainly a pretty spot. The rest of the island is one barren rock and perfectly devoid of all vegetation.8
The choice of Happy Valley as the site of the cemeteries can be blamed on the mosquito. It was at first intended to be the principal business centre of

I.3. A view across Happy Valley before the racecourse was built, c. 1845. (By courtesy of Wattis Fine Arts).
Hong Kong. In a lecture given by Rev. James Legge at the City Hall in 1872,
reminiscing on his long sojourn in Hong Kong, he recalled his first sight of Happy Valley in 1843:
There were to be seen only fields of rice and sweet potatoes. At the south
end of it was the village of Wong-nei-ch��ung [Yellow Mud Creek] just as at
the present day, and on the heights above it were rising two or three foreign houses, with an imposing one on the east side of the valley, built by a Mr Mercer of Jardine, Matheson and Co��s house. All these proved homes of fever or death, and were soon abandoned.9
John Ambrose Mercer [11A/6/3], who abandoned his house in Happy Valley,
was one of the first fifteen justices of the peace chosen by the governor, Sir Henry
Pottinger, ��to represent the leading merchants of the earliest period of the colony��. 10 He died of fever in August 1843 while he was preparing to build a new house on the
waterfront at Wan Chai. His obituary ��bewails the loss of a truly kind-hearted man��.
The deadly fever was then attributed to poisonous vapours arising from the newly disturbed earth rather than to the bites of the swarms of mosquitoes which rose up from the swampy rice-paddy:
The prejudices of the Chinese merchants against the fungshui [geomantic aspects] of the Happy Valley and the peculiarly malignant fever which
emptied every European house in that neighbourhood almost as soon as it was tenanted caused the business settlement to move gradually westwards.11
And so in the words of Major-General d��Aguilar:
Happy Valley was as suddenly deserted as it was inhabited. Crumbling ruins overgrown with moss and weeds attested on every side to the vain labour of man when he contends with nature. And the Happy Valley restored to its primeval stillness has been converted into a cemetery.12
The Beginning of the Racecourse
The Happy Valley racecourse came into being about ten months after the Hong
Kong Cemetery had opened. In 1845 ��the deadly Wong Na Chung [Happy Valley]
was drained and the cultivation of rice forbidden��. 13 This left the ground free for other uses. The first references to the racecourse date from early in 1846. A
meeting was held at the house of Archibald Carter of the German firm of Hegan
& Co. to consider measures for converting the valley into a riding ground. Gilbert
Smith who was in the chair offered to approach the governor to ask for the grant
of a lease for a term of years.
Notwithstanding the great improvements lately made in the roads of the Colony, during a great part of the year these are so hard as to be greatly prejudicial to a horse constantly exercised on them. Besides the number of foot passengers is such as to render it highly dangerous to put a horse to a quick pace: while the nature of our climate renders this not only a favourite exercise, but at many times almost the only one which can be indulged in.
The undertaking therefore is one that cannot fail to be most beneficial to the
health of the community as well as a source of innocent amusement, and we
feel confident will be supported by the voice as well as the contributions of
the public.
So work commenced on a public recreation ground subscribed to by the community for the purpose of galloping their horses so that ��next winter Hongkong will have a race course and racing and other national and manly recreations will be introduced into the youngest British colonial possession��.14 The
first race meeting was held there at the end of 1846. Samuel Gurney Cresswell, a
midshipman on HMS Agincourt, wrote in a letter to his parents:
Hongkong is very gay now. There are races on the 1st and 3rd of December and a race ball on the 4th. I have to ride a flat race on a most beautiful horse and a hurdle race on a very mere little pony�K. I have a great deal of work to do getting ready for the races, exercising horses, getting jockey caps, whips, etc.15
Thus began the unusual closeness of the race track with its concomitant gambling to the row of cemeteries which over the years was to surprise so many of the visitors to Hong Kong. As one visitor, who climbed the hillside within the grounds of the Hong Kong Cemetery to better overlook the racecourse, remarked:
But truly looking down from this point, it is a strange combination to see the semicircle of cemeteries and mortuary chapels, just enfolding the race-course, and as it were, repeating the semicircle formed by the Grand Stands!16

The banning of rice cultivation in Happy Valley in 1844 and the subsequent
compulsory purchase of their land deprived the Chinese of Wong Nai Chung of
their livelihood, making them beggars in their own land. The once prosperous village, whose Chinese school in 1845 was the second largest in the colony with twenty-five pupils to Victoria��s twenty-six, continued as a living indictment to
colonial rule until the village was finally pulled down. In 1845, Captain Richard
Collinson of HMS Plover wrote home to his father that ��the government apparently doesn��t care about the Chinese at all��.17

The Wan Chai and Western Cemeteries
The Hong Kong Cemetery was not the first cemetery in Hong Kong. Two older cemeteries in Wan Chai, one Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, were
situated in the area now occupied by Sun, Moon and Star Streets. In August 1841, a full year before Hong Kong was formally ceded to England in the Treaty
of Nanking on 24 August 1842, John Mylius of the Land Office announced in the
Canton Press:
A piece of land to the eastward of Cantonment Hill having by Government been allotted as the ground for burial of the dead Europeans and others, Notice is hereby given that persons burying their dead in any other unauthorized place will be treated as trespassers.18
It seems that the above notice was necessary because people were burying their dead wherever they found a likely spot, such as the slopes of Happy Valley. One of those buried in an unauthorized cemetery was Commander William Brodie [11A/5/4] who died on 17 June 1841
aged fifty-six. He was buried ��in the new cemetery in Happy Valley, Hong Kong��, 19 four years before the Hong Kong Cemetery as we now know it was opened.
He must have been relocated to the old Wan Chai Cemetery, as his chest
tomb was among those moved from there to be reburied in the Hong Kong
Cemetery in 1889. Brodie��s grave is one of the earliest monuments in the cemetery. It dates from the year before Hong Kong was officially British. Dr. Edward Cree, surgeon on HMS Rattlesnake in the First Opium War, described Brodie��s death in his diary:


I.6. Commander Brodie��s coffin being carried into Happy Valley for burial. (By Dr. Edward Cree.)
Soon after daylight James Brodie came to tell me that his father was delirious, so I crawled out of bed and into his cabin, and found the poor old Commander shouting violently and apparently shortening sail in the midst of
a storm. I was too ill to do anything for him and sent for Robertson [Assistant Surgeon HMS Hyacinth]. Soon after he became comatose and the fine old sailor and good-hearted man breathed his last.20
Due to the ravages of malaria, dysentery and other diseases little understood by the doctors of the time, the high death toll among the civilians and the garrison
alike meant that the first cemeteries in Wan Chai soon filled up. Already in 1844
thoughts were turning towards a new cemetery. An article in the Friend of China in July 1850 summed up how the decision was taken to open the new cemetery in Happy Valley in the interests of public health, and also to use a second cemetery in
an area of West Victoria already containing soldiers�� graves:
At the close of 1844 and in the early part of 1845, leading members of the Council, then regaining their strength after serious attacks of summer sickness, had under serious consideration the best means of averting disease in future seasons. Amongst other of the causes of sickness, no inconsiderable weight was attached to the burial of corpses within the town precincts. The result of the deliberations of the Council was the public announcement that it had been resolved,
1.
That the burial ground of the East of Victoria should be in the Wong-nei-

chung Valley.

2.
That the burial ground at the West of Victoria should be the one formerly


used by H.M. 55th Regiment: and consequent on the resolutions so announced, burials in the old grounds were altogether forbidden, much we believe to the annoyance of the Procurator of the Roman Catholic Mission �K who had just completed some rather expensive cuttings and the erection of a large cross on the site intended as a cemetery �K
4. That the burial ground in Victoria West shall be surrounded by a ditch and
a bank and in Victoria East by stone walls.
The article continued:
The walls of the burial place have been duly built in the East; but �X no ditch
�X no bank �X mark the site of the Western Cemetery; and soon the spot,
where lie the remains of so many of the gallant 55th, will be known to but few.
The appointment of a particular place for burials in the West has proved in
short a nullity.21
As was predicted, this Western cemetery, with its many soldiers�� graves, disappeared early on. The botanist and plant collector, Robert Fortune, who passed this spot in 1848 and again in 1851 on his way back to England with his collection of tea plants, described the desolate scene:
A fine road leading round the island �K passed through the place where they had been buried. Many of their coffins were exposed to the vulgar gaze, and
the bones of the poor fellows lay scattered about on the public highway.
No one could find fault with the road having been made there, but if it was necessary to uncover the coffins, common decency required that they should
be buried again.22
It might be suggested that the reason so little was done to maintain the Western
cemetery was related to the very low status that the common soldiers, who were buried there, were accorded in the social structure of the day.

The Hong Kong Cemetery
Before the Hong Kong Cemetery opened, Governor Sir John Davis authorized the fees payable for burial there. Five shillings and sixpence or three rupees
went to the sexton for digging a grave of not less than five feet in depth. A $15 ground fee was levied from all those who died possessed of $15. Those who did
not possess this sum were buried as paupers ��in a separate nook��. Only the armed
forces were exempted. On top of this, a charge of $50 was made for a monument
though, according to an editorial in August 1851, upright headstones were not taxed.23 The sum collected for 1851 amounted to 91 pounds, 13 shillings, nearly enough to pay the total educational outgoings for the same year which amounted to a mere 103 pounds, 6 shillings and 8 pence.24 The above article regarded the ground fee as a payment for the privilege of dying a Protestant, since the Roman Catholics, having bought possession of their ground, never levied charges unless the deceased family wanted to erect a monument, when fees were paid according to the size of the plot desired.
The new tax aroused anti-government sarcasm. Boy Jones wrote in a letter to the Friend of China about how he was under the council table when the taxes were decided on.
I am able to inform that the ��Death Tax�� was inflicted, not so much for the
direct purpose of raising revenue, as to deter people from dying without just cause, which has been found during the past years of the Colony to have depreciated considerably the value of Crown lands�K. Council had reason to believe that many parties died on purpose to have virtues they never possessed in life transmitted for posterity on hewn granite; it was further stated that
others die for no other purpose than to fill up the present ground and put the
government to the expense of opening up another place of sepulture.25
A Very Sick Man wrote in asking the cost of a funeral in Hong Kong as compared to Macau. The editor replied:
We have a dim remembrance of a tax upon the grave itself, another upon
the tomb, another upon a hearse �X ordered from England, we believe on Government account �X another upon the stones of which the tomb is
built, and some other trifling exactions for the use of a mort-cloth etc. We
should say that the charges paid directly or indirectly to government for a
gentlemanly funeral would be about $100; as the hearse has not yet arrived
probably a little less.26
The work for a new cemetery was carried out and the carriage road round Happy Valley necessary for funeral processions completed by March 1845. The Hong Kong Cemetery opened soon after.27 A mortuary chapel was erected in the same year and the Cemetery was placed under the charge of the colonial chaplain who kept a register of burials.28 The maintenance costs for the Cemetery were borne by the government as
part of the ecclesiastical establishment. The first
burial record book to survive dates from 1853,
with the first grave number given being 807.
Nine of the earliest headstones, not counting
those removed in 1889 from the Wan Chai

Cemetery, date from the first year of operation, 1845. The earliest found is Thomas Doherty [9/17/7], a mate of the SS Pekin, one of the first of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigator Company ( P. & O.) steamers to visit Hong Kong. He died at sea on 16 March. He was followed in April by David Davidson [9/14/2], the assistant surgeon on the hospital ship, HMS Alligator, and Henry Cropper [9/12/12], a commission agent.
Those graves that have survived from the nineteenth century are predominantly from the middle and lower middle classes. The rich merchants aimed to retire in good time to enjoy their wealth back in ��the old country�� and the top civil servants had their passages home paid by the government, so could leave the colony when they fell sick or grew old. Thus fewer merchants and top government officials are found buried in the Cemetery in proportion to the number of people who can be ascribed to the middle class. For example, no governor died in office. The only death of a close relative to a governor was that of Felicia Robinson [18/10/3], the wife of Sir William Robinson, who died of undiagnosed sprue soon after giving birth to her baby son in 1894.29 In the same way, no heads of the major mercantile houses, none of the Matheson family or Dent & Co., are buried there and the Jardine house is represented by just one nineteen-month-old baby, who died in May 1852. Almost the only well-known merchant buried there from the early years is William Forsyth Gray [9/18/20], who was thrown from his horse in January 1850 while practising for the races. The merchants could afford a healthier lifestyle and when illness threatened they could leave by the next available boat.
The poor Europeans, who included the soldiers of the garrison, sailors from the merchant navies of a number of different countries, policemen and paupers were buried in nameless graves
only
distinguished by small numbered granite markers.

In the surveyor general��s report of 1855, for instance, among the 152 burials for the past year, it was noted that 31 paupers, 4 destitutes and 3 Russians (perhaps prisoners

of
war) were buried, none of whose graves now exist. 30 By 1865, the Cemetery was thought I.8. Numbered marker stones, Section 20.



to be approaching capacity. The China Mail declared: ��The time must come for the existing cemetery to be closed and the dead taken elsewhere for burial. The Protestant Cemetery is now nearly full and every little corner is being made use of��. 31 In the mid-1860s, a bandsman in the 20th Foot Regiment writing home
confirmed this. He wrote that Happy Valley was:
crammed with the graves of Europeans who have succumbed to the diseases of the unhealthiest country in the world. The graves of the soldiers
are numbered. And, when the last one was buried, on his grave was 5373,
showing the number who have died here since the city was garrisoned by the British.32
Yet not one grave exists for any soldier below the rank of sergeant before the
mid-1860s. The first headstone of a soldier, of the 2nd Battalion, 9th Regiment, dates from 17 March 1865. It appears that, when the Cemetery seemed to be filling up, the graves unmarked by headstones were dug up and their remains
disposed of, leaving fresh ground for new burials. Charles St. George Cleverly, the surveyor general, admitted as much when he reported in 1861 that there
were difficulties in expanding the area of the Cemetery, the soil in the new areas
being ��excessively rocky and hard to excavate��, making it very difficult to dig graves. He continued:
I will however take such measures as may be necessary to provide sufficient
accommodation and in the course of a few years, it may be possible to work the old areas unprotected by gravestones over again, as is done, I understand in other tropical climes.33
The number of soldiers dying in Hong Kong was of considerable embarrassment to the government who disliked the bad publicity on the subject in the British press. Perhaps they welcomed the opportunity to dislocate the numbering system which made it clear to anyone visiting the Cemetery exactly
how many had died, not while fighting, but of common diseases in Hong Kong.
Thus, the men and women from the earlier periods now represented by grey granite headstones consist almost entirely of the various layers of the Protestant and Non-Conformist middle class.

The Monuments in the Hong Kong Cemetery and Their Imagery
1845�V1859
The Protestant ethos is clearly shown particularly in the design of the earlier
gravestones and it makes this cemetery very different from St. Michael��s Roman Catholic Cemetery next to it. In short, and much oversimplified, the Protestants
believed that God had got lost among the ritual, symbolism and imagery of the Roman Catholic Church. They wanted a simpler religion that spoke to
its people directly through the Word of God in the Bible and not through the
intervention of pictures, statues, vestments and priests. The lower the church, the simpler were its symbols, decorations and rituals. This cemetery was the burying ground for all shades of Protestantism, including the lower church Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists who were brought together in the Union Church, founded in 1843 by Rev. James Legge, whose wife, Mary Isabella Legge [9/17/9] and baby daughter, Anne Murray [9/17/10], are buried in the Cemetery.
The design of the headstones changed dramatically over the years charting changes in religious practices, fashion, wealth and
I.9. Early headstones, Section 9.
the way death was viewed. From 1842 up to the mid-1860s, beside a handful of monuments raised by particular ships or regiments or to commemorate well-loved doctors, two main types of monuments remain: granite chest tombs, for those who wanted to make a statement and who could
afford the extra $50 tax to the
government, and headstones. I.10. Early chest tombs, Section 11A.


The great majority of headstones are starkly simple with either rounded or sharply triangular tops cut from the local granite. In this period of seventeen years, only four graves have been found whose headstones were not cut from granite. Two much revered missionary wives, Mary Isabella Legge and Anna Johnson [9/16/12], and two Americans, one a merchant, Samuel H. Rich [9/14/15] and the other a sea captain, Captain Elias Elwell [9/14/14], have marble headstones brought in from elsewhere. Anna Johnson��s headstone is decorated with a book
to emphasize the importance of the sacred scriptures. Where headstones have
carvings, the motifs seem to have been carved without much thought having been
given to their significance. Some of these motifs almost look as if they were left to
be decided by the Chinese craftsmen, who altered Chinese motifs, such as the bat, to suit the tastes of their Christian clients. Even the symbol of the cross was rare in
early days. The first crosses in the Cemetery seem to be that on the tomb of Bishop
Joseph Smith��s son, Andrew Brandrum Smith [7/28/6], who died in 1854, and one commemorating the death of Odiarne Tremayne Lane [13/4/3]. A handful of headstones have a simple Latin cross carved in the top quadrant like that of John Smithers [40/4/7]. The plain simple headstones seem to say that death was too frequent, the deceased are colleagues rather than beloved relatives, and that the decency of a proper Protestant burial was more important than remembrance in a place like Hong Kong where few wanted to stay for any length of time. This conclusion is also borne out by the comparative rarity of epitaphs and the number of stones on which it is stated that they were erected by friends or colleagues of the deceased rather than relatives.
In the early years of the Cemetery, the frequency of death was something
no-one wanted to think about. A sergeant in the 59th Regiment, James Bodell,
who attended the races in Happy Valley, perhaps summed up the general feeling about the Cemetery in his memoirs: ��I always considered the Race Course was in the wrong Place, as the Sight of the Grave Yard generally dampened my Spirits and took all Pleasure away at these Races��. 34 Equally, the attitude to the Cemetery seems fairly cavalier. Men could joke about such places without it being considered in bad taste. For example, a quirky notice appeared in February 1844, in the ads column of the newspaper, the Friend of China:
A gentleman having purchased a lot of land, unsuitable for building purposes is anxious to form a Joint Stock company for the formation of a Cemetry
[sic]. It must be evident to the weakest men that the contemplated project
will prove a safe investment, as the Grave Stones are already in a plentiful supply upon the lot and only require engraving and should it not succeed, there is every reason to suppose, that only 15% will have to be paid on its abandonment. For particulars, enquire at the office of Messrs. Quirk,
Gammon and Snap, Saffron Hill where a Map of the lot may be seen and the
largest stones (suitable of course only for Mandarins) are given on the plan�K. Having enumerated the advantages, we have only one drawback to mention: that no Gentleman can be buried here until he makes a Road up to it, and brings his own Earth to cover him.35
The cemeteries in early days appear to have been regarded more as functional spaces reserved for the decent and healthy observance of the rites of burial, whether the dead were Protestant, Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Parsee. The mystique of sacredness which was connected to wealth, nationalism and empire seems to have been a later Victorian development. A letter to the Friend of China from the sexton F. Drake in April 1849 shows the lack of respect paid to the
European dead when he wrote that he had ��long been desirous to suppress an evil��. He asked the readers to pardon his ��humble intrusion�� and related the following:
On the morning of Friday last, when performing my usual duties in the Burying Ground, I unexpectedly discovered that the feet of horses had left many impressions on that part of the ground where it is scarcely possible for an animal to expand a limb without resting on a grave! I hastened to learn the cause and by whom the unpardonable trespass had been committed, but the unintelligible coolies, therein employed, and who are perpetually cautioned to prevent cattle, dogs etc. (as also are two printed notices on each side of the
entrance door, sufficiently conspicuous and respectful to attract the organs of
the most indistinct observer) could only inform me that some ��Mandarins�� had
been guilty of the offence.36
The path between the Cemetery and the racecourse was narrow and men out exercising on horseback in the early mornings had no compunction about taking their horses into the Cemetery grounds and over the graves when they wanted to pass the slower members of the fraternity. As late as the mid-1860s, it was reported that until recently the colonial chaplain was in the habit of turning in his ponies to graze there.
Furthermore cemeteries were often neglected. A letter in March 1857 to the
China Mail complained of the state of the Roman Catholic Cemetery. The editor, after visiting the site, was clearly scandalized:
In one open grave were the coffin and the winding sheet though the human remains which they had contained were gone. The bottom of the coffin was
barely three feet from the surface of the earth�K. The ground is apparently just as it was when granted to the Catholics nine or ten years ago for burial purposes and the rude huts at the entrance are without doors or windows, every vestige of woodwork, if there ever was any there, having been removed�K. A few cartloads of soil from the neighbourhood, with a sprinkling of grass-seed would quite change the aspect of the spot and at least give it a semblance of a Christian burial-place.37
Then in May 1857, the China Mail reported on the state of the Wan
Chai Cemetery:
The condition of the Old Protestant Burial Ground �K is said to be in a shameful state �X the tombstones capsized, some broken, and others carried away by the Chinese for building purposes; while the ground is strewed with
filth and with skulls and other relics of mortality.38
In an article on the Protestant Cemetery in 1865, the editor complained that the south end of the Cemetery, where the soldiers were buried, was still unwalled twenty years after the decision that it should be enclosed had been taken. The author noted that few in the colony took an interest in preserving or beautifying the cemeteries of Happy Valley. He made a rather unconvincing plea for a better
level of care on the grounds that the Valley may become ��our final abode, and our
relatives may possibly come to shed a tear over our graves, recall the memory of what we were and grieve over our loss��. Neither this article nor respect for
the dead galvanized the authorities into taking action. The Western Cemetery disappeared, and in the old Protestant Cemetery at Wan Chai only forty-eight
monuments of those buried between 1842 and 1845 still remained in good enough
condition to be moved to Section 11A of the Hong Kong Cemetery in 1889.39

1860�V1880

The majority of headstones in the 1860s and on into the 1870s followed the earlier
Protestant guidelines. They are easily distinguished from the earlier headstones by their larger size and the more complicated patterns for their tops, as is shown by the one commemorating Sarah Barton [4/8/8], wife of Zephaniah Barton, opium inspector for Dent & Co.
The headstones displayed greater skill on the part of the carvers. Many were now edged and a number, particularly to lost wives, had heart-shaped inscription panels with side pillars. A new design had a fleur-de-lis at the centre of the top and curled side edges, as is seen in the headstone of Jane Bonnett [5/3/20]. More examples of crosses are found, both in the form of crosses carved into the top quadrant of headstones and of standing crosses such as that to Eliza Dalziel [5/3/29], the wife of the agent for the P. & O. shipping line, who died in 1866. A very impressive cross was raised in 1866 over the tomb of the Basel missionary, Anna
I.11. Headstone in memory of
Reiniger [5/3/17]. As the century progressed
Sarah Barton, d. 1867, wife of
into the 1870s, a number of different kinds of
Zephaniah Barton of Swatow,
crosses can be seen, including the Celtic cross, merchant for Dent��s and opium inspector at Hong Kong. A typical
the Latin cross and the Armenian cross which is
headstone of the type used in the found over the grave of Avietick Lazar Agabeg 1860s. [8/19/4], the first Armenian to be buried in the Cemetery, in 1876. A new model of tombstone, a low cruciform type, became increasingly popular in the 1870s with more than ten examples. A number of grave plots, such as that of R.S.R. Fussell [5/3/1], were now enclosed with granite surrounds and metal railings. Although granite was still the most common stone, the late seventies saw a small number of larger and more expensive monuments built of red or black marble.

1880�V1920
By 1909, the governor Sir Henry Blake could describe Happy Valley as ��A flat
oval, around which the hill-sides are devoted to a series of the most beautifully kept cemeteries in the world. Here Christian and Mohammedan, Eastern and
Western, rest from their labours while below them �K every sport and game of
England is in full swing��.40 Some time before the turn of the century, the grounds of the Cemetery were remodelled on a garden design in the latest European fashion. This remodelling made the Hong Kong Cemetery very different from
the other cemeteries in Hong Kong. It featured flowering trees, winding paths,
spaciousness and a fountain in the classical style.
This new style of burial ground had earlier become popular in England, where there had been an awakening to the importance of public health issues. The crowded old churchyards in the large new towns had become unsanitary. People were aware as they walked to church of horrid smells that emanated from the burial plots. This led to the formation of a National Funeral and Mourning Reform Society with the aims of making burial sanitary and encouraging moderation and simplicity. The first of the new kind of garden cemetery was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery founded on the outskirts of Paris in 1803. This cemetery inspired the huge garden cemeteries established outside big towns in England, among the first being All Soul��s Cemetery, which was founded in 1832 at Kensal Rise in North-West London.
By the closing years of the nineteenth century, the old Protestant guidelines that stressed simplicity and lack of symbolism seem to have disappeared. The headstones had become typically high Victorian with a number of new motifs.

I.12. A photograph taken in the 1890s showing that the Hong Kong Cemetery has been remodelled in the style of a garden. (By courtesy of Ko Tim-keung.)
Motifs More Commonly Found on Late Victorian Graves in the Hong Kong
Cemetery and Their Meanings
Motif
Acanthus leaf
Anchor or Capstan
Caliper and set-square Cherub Clover Conch shell Columns: Broken
Columns: With urn and shroud
Grapes One hand Two hands
Ivy
Lily Palm Urn
Symbol of
Peace in the Garden of Eden; the plant was thought to grow in paradise. Hope anchored in Christian belief which death cannot change. Freemasonry. A soul soaring heavenwards. The Holy Trinity, also of Ireland. Baptism and pilgrims. A person who died in the prime of life (the age being indicated by the length of the column)
The person was buried in that place.
The Last Supper and Christ��s blood. God��s helping hand stretched to guide us to him. Matrimony and the couple��s hope that they will meet in the next world. The evergreen nature of ivy symbolizes immortality and victory over death won by the
Redeemer. Clinging ivy symbolizes fidelity and
friendship. Purity. The peace of resurrection and life eternal. Death.41
Innovations in the use of symbolism were generally first used on the tombs of dearly beloved wives or deeply mourned children. For example, by the late Victorian times, angels and cherubs were beginning to appear. Other than a very small apology for an angel on the headstone of Sophia C. Boxer [9/18/15], wife of the chief storekeeper of the naval yard victualling department in 1860/66? (old, worn inscription), the first cherub that has been found dates to 1873, and is seen on the headstone commemorating the death of two infants, Helen and Mabel Speechly [7/16/13]. The first full-sized angel must have seemed daringly papist to contemporaries. It adorned the grave of Andrew Millar [23/9/1], plumber

to the government as well as gas fitter and general contractor who died in 1890.
Although cherubs became more usual as memorials to much loved children, angels remained uncommon.
The presence of a picture of the deceased on the headstone first appeared in 1876 adorning the headstone of Peter Petersen [8/21/1], a Swedish tavern keeper with a Chinese wife. This artist��s impression on porcelain of J.A. Straube [12A/3/9], who died in 1928, is an interesting example. It indicated that the person responsible for erecting the headstone was almost certainly Chinese and was following the Chinese custom.
The wealthier and more settled population wanted to remember and honour their dead in a way the earlier generations in Hong Kong had had neither the inclination nor the money for. An explosion in the number of types and the size of monuments seems to date from the 1880s, a time when the size of the population and the wealth of the colony were increasing. Large imposing crosses became common like the one over Theophilus Gee Linstead��s [8/12/1] grave. A number of pedestal tombs can be seen, such as the one to mark the grave of Captain Paul Kupfer [8/13/5] of the Imperial German Navy, which is topped by a magnificent eagle poised for flight. Scrolls unrolled over flowery boulders. Relatives of the deceased seem freer to use their own initiative to create new designs for their memorials. For example, when William Dolan [5/2/8], the doughty, old timer who

had been making sails at Whampoa
and Hong Kong for forty years or more, died in 1885, his rugged indestructibility was remembered in a large solid block of granite. The amount and intricacy of the carving also increased.
Epitaphs were more frequent and longer. Hong Kong was now more firmly embedded in the wider embrace of the British Empire, both administratively and culturally. It seemed that those burying their loved ones, besides having more money, now also had faith in both the continuity of Hong Kong as a small part of the empire and of the Cemetery in which they had buried their loved ones. The old, rather cavalier view of death had now given away to a more patriotic and nationalistic view of a piece of ��sacred�� ground that symbolized the sacrifice and suffering of those who had assisted in the building of the empire and died far from home. Intrepid lady travellers stopped off at Hong Kong to report back to the homebound in Britain on the wonders of Britain��s outposts. Mrs. Gordon Cumming writing in 1879 described the Cemetery as: ��This silent God��s acre��. 42 Major Henry Knollys praised it as ��the saddest and most beautiful acre in the British Empire; the so-called Happy Valley��.43

Yet, at a time when its name was changed from Protestant to Colonial Cemetery and its ��sacred nature�� was being stressed, the Chinese and Japanese were building for themselves positions of economic strength in the colony from which they could wield their power and they were demanding to bury
their dead in the Public Cemetery. When the question of the burial of non-Christians in the Hong Kong Cemetery arose in 1909, some members of the
European community objected to their funeral services, citing in particular the
custom of lighting joss sticks and firing of crackers at the graveside as disturbing
to the peace of the place. Although nominally the land had been put aside for Protestant burials and placed under the care of the colonial chaplain, the
Cemetery grounds were not consecrated until 1910. They were maintained at
public cost and were therefore public property and open to all tax payers. There was nothing in the ordinances to stop the burial of non-Christians. Over the turn of the century some Chinese and a larger number of Japanese non-Christians found their way into the Cemetery. The controversy burst out into the open when Chan Yui Tong applied to the sanitary board to purchase four new grave sites so that he could set up a family grave to include the two wives and son of his father, Tsai Kwong, chief interpreter of the Supreme Court.44 The new
Christian Cemetery Ordinance of 1909 proposed that the Cemetery should
be enlarged and that a certain portion of the Cemetery should be set aside for Christian interment. Lau Chu Pak, part-owner of the Hong Kong Telegraph and member of the sanitary board, objected to the racial overtones of the proposed ordinance, and the Telegraph took up the case:
The fact of the matter is that this sort of petty municipal legislation is all of a piece with the policy of the Government in reserving special lands for the bon ton of the Colony. First, they decree that in life the Chinese should not live in
the vicinity of the Peak and now in death the Chinese are not deemed fitting
occupants of lairs in the public cemetery�K. The Colonial or Protestant �X or whatever fancy name anybody might wish to call it �X the public cemetery of Hong Kong is maintained out of the rates and taxes provided by the residents in the Colony. It is no more a private institution than the public gardens. No sect or body has a right to say that it has any particular claim on the domain, as far as we can make out, all have an equal right to interment.
The Telegraph continued in the same editorial asking:
Are the Chinese and Japanese to be relegated to the slums of paradise while
the ��hupper suckles�� [upper circles] loll and lounge on the grassy swards of
the golden river, secure against the intrusion of the vulgar rabble.�K It is incredible to believe that all this pushing for precedence and squabbling for place will follow us to the next world.45
The final passing of the ordinance was followed by a dedication service held at the Cemetery in March 1910 by the Anglican bishop, assisted by the clergy of other denominations, of that portion of land set aside for Christian burials. Most of the later Japanese graves are now found high up the hill in the more isolated sections 34, 35 and 36, and the majority of the Chinese graves in the equally distant sections 1 and 2.
By the twentieth century, the style of monuments was being influenced by the art deco movement. Concrete was taking the place of granite. Many White Russian refugees, fleeing the Bolshevik revolution down through Siberia to the port of Harbin, continued their journey south to end their days in Hong Kong. The cross of the Russian Orthodox Church can be found in all parts of the Cemetery. There also exists a rare example of the Nazi swastika on the headstone of Paul Kurt Brohmann [16F/15/2] who may have been serving on one of the German naval vessels when he died in 1934.
The above paragraphs greatly oversimplify the huge diversity in the styles and the architecture of the tombstones and monuments found in the Hong Kong Cemetery.

I.16. Monument in memory of Paul Kurt Brohmann. Note the small Nazi swastika in the top of the picture.


Source Material
The Hong Kong Cemetery will be used as an important source material and is supplemented by some significant names from the Catholic, Parsee and Jewish Cemeteries, in order to bring to life the differing kinds of people who made up Hong Kong��s society over the decades and to show what shaped their thoughts,
hopes and fears. By fleshing out the names found on the tombstones, by using the
newspapers of the day together with material from the cards that make up Carl Smith��s collection at the Hong Kong Public Records Office and contemporary travellers�� tales, one can begin to recreate the way of life of these people in the hope that this will bring new insights. The Hong Kong Cemetery is at first sight an amazing repository of history, since in theory all the early Protestants and Nonconformists were buried there. In fact the Cemetery has certain drawbacks from the point of view of the historian. Firstly, it could be hoped that the headstones would show a representational proportion of the various classes that lived in Hong Kong in any particular decade. But, as has been shown, the Cemetery is predominantly a middle-class enclave in which the very poor and very rich are under-represented. Thus, the emphasis will of necessity be on the middle class, who make up the bulk of the burials.
Secondly, when the Aberdeen Tunnel was built in 1976, cemetery ground
was appropriated and more than three thousand graves were moved or consigned to the ossuary. It seems that, when this was done, the graves of the officers in the armed services and those serving on merchant navy ships were relocated to different sections, whereas the graves of little known civilians were sent to the ossuary, thus upsetting the balance between army, merchant navy and civilians. Those in the ossuary have their names and dates inscribed on their pigeon-holes, but they lack all the extra information that is found in the inscriptions on headstones, so it is difficult to allocate to them an occupation and a place in society. This means that the information from the Cemetery is less representative than it might have been.
With these two provisos, the Cemetery remains an invaluable source of
Hong Kong history. It enables us to build up an idea of the makeup of those people, mainly from the middle classes, who settled, if only for a time, married and raised children there. From these threads, it is hoped that a picture will emerge of how Hong Kong changed direction, grew and branched out from the blustery little seaport, dealing mainly in opium in its early years, to an important international city.
For lack of much other material, the newspapers of the day constitute an important and much used source. However a caution is necessary in interpreting what they show about society. Firstly, certain newspapers catered to particular readers and showed certain biases. For example, the Friend of China while under the editorship of William Tarrant was clearly biased against the establishment. Tarrant had lost his job in the government when he exposed the alleged corruption of Major William Caine and his comprador. He continued for a number of years to carry on a personal vendetta against the establishment in the pages of his newspaper. Even before Tarrant assumed ownership of the paper in 1850, the perceived biased outlook of the Friend of China had led to the founding of a second newspaper, the China Mail, which was backed by money from the merchant elite and was therefore more sympathetic towards their point of view. Secondly, the newspapers were written and published for profit and sensational stories, especially if they involved well-known people in the community, sold more copies. This aspect was compounded by the court reports which inevitably portrayed men in a negative light, since they were being accused of some misdemeanour or loss of control which perhaps, had we more facts on which to judge them, was out of character for those individuals. As these reports are now often the only remaining source of information on certain individuals, they may paint a rather bleaker picture of the people and the period than is warranted.
Section I

AN INTRODUCTION TO EARLY HONG KONG


Chapter 1
The Early Settlers,
the First Opium War
and Its Aftermath
Death and life, the theme of this book, is a reversal of the usual order because the book begins with death, the tombstone and then looks backwards in order to breathe life back into the faded and forgotten names that are so difficult to decipher on the old grey granite stones. It attempts to shed light on the lives of these men, women and children who people the terraces of the vast Hong Kong Cemetery. It aims to put them back into the surroundings they were familiar with and among the friends they spent time with. It looks further back to the factors that formed the society they lived in and brought forth their hopes and fears. Hopefully, a picture of an older version of Hong Kong will emerge that underlies our modern Hong Kong, influencing its development in subtle and often little understood ways.
The social history of the early settlers in Hong Kong has been largely ignored. They have been dismissed as a small, troublesome and corrupt group of between
about five hundred and one thousand men, rather fewer than the typical roll call
of most schools in Hong Kong now. It may be asked why the way in which the early colonists ordered their society has any importance in the larger view of Hong Kong history where recently and rightly the emphasis has been on teasing out the facts that shed light on the history and progress of the Chinese majority who made their home in Hong Kong. It seems though to me that there are two reasons why their lives should be looked at more closely.
Firstly, the early settlers in their lack of comprehension and their distrust of
the Chinese race were at least partly responsible for relaying to Britain the cliches
of the inscrutable, mysterious and inherently untrustworthy Oriental which so
coloured the way the Chinese were regarded in the West. They helped to pave
the way in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for the ��us�� and ��them�� way of interacting with and studying the Orient, with the superiority of the ��us�� faction as a sine qua non assumption. The knowledge that was being busily acquired by the colonists gave the governments back in England a handle in their dealings with the ��them�� of their colony on the outskirts of China. It coloured the way the politicians back in Britain decided on their diplomatic paths in their dealings with
the Chinese Empire. In fact, it coloured East-West intercourse and the course of
history both in Hong Kong and in the wider context of the Far East through the nineteenth century and beyond. As Edward Said says:
The Orient was viewed as if framed by the classroom, the criminal court, the prison, the illustrated manual. Orientalism, then, is knowledge of the Orient that places things Oriental in class, court, prison or manual for scrutiny, study, judgement, discipline or governing.1
Secondly, the path that the government took in Hong Kong was determined by the early experiences of the European settlers. The way it developed, without being subjected to the usual democratizing influences, was due to the particular circumstances that arose in Hong Kong. Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of a viable opposition to autocratic rule by the governor together with his carefully chosen Executive Council, backed by military power, lay in the fragmentation of society where small groups were set against each other. This layering pushed the various groups and sub-groups of European settlers so far apart that it was almost impossible for the cliques or layers to combine forces and Hong Kong governors in the nineteenth century were, by and large, able to divide and rule. On the few occasions when the whole community, including the Chinese, came together, as in October 1844, to oppose Sir John Davis��s attempt to impose registration and a poll tax on the entire population, the governor was soon forced to climb down and amend the legislation.2 But even at that early date, the merchant body wrote a letter to the papers, signed by forty-four of their leaders, indignantly denying the governor��s insinuation that they had ��colluded�� with the Chinese: ��Not one of them had the slightest idea that the Chinese intended closing their shops or leaving work��. 3 The early relationships between the English and the Chinese, largely based on the fear and distrust of the few in the face of the potential for trouble of the many, meant that at this time it was almost impossible for the two races to come together to oppose the government. Unlike in the other colonies, the early settlers found no better class of Chinese on whom they could devolve the responsibility of looking after their own people as they did in Malaya or India, where the British ruled through the local kings or princes. For these reasons perhaps, power was kept throughout the nineteenth century firmly in the hands of the governor and his administrators and backed by a large military presence. Meanwhile the neglected Chinese majority left largely to their own devices were forced to form their own organizations to cater to their needs.
Those early members of Hong Kong society buried in Happy Valley were members of a very small and distant society living in an environment full of dangers. Their health was at risk from little-understood diseases. Their possessions and even their lives stood in danger of being snatched away by dangerous Chinese outlaws engaged in robbery and piracy. It is the aim of this book to explore such questions as to why they took the huge risks, leaving their
homes and families to seek new lives in the Far East, what influences they brought from the West and what peculiar circumstances and events in Hong Kong shaped
the kind of society they attempted to build in their new home. From this, it is hoped that insights will emerge as to the kind of society that evolved here.


The City in the Early Years
In 1845, the year in which the Hong Kong Cemetery was opened, the city of Victoria was only three years old. The northern slopes of the Peak at whose feet it lay were stark and bare, denuded of all vegetation by generations of grass
cutters from the mainland. The first sight of Hong Kong by those arriving at the
port was of barren mountain sides. The tiny European population, numbering a

1.1. Hong Kong 1857. (Illustrated London News, 14 March 1857.)

mere 501 men and 133 women not counting the garrison, clustered in Victoria, as Central was then called.4 They ranged mostly along Queen��s Road between
Central and Wan Chai,
with the wealthier merchants leaving their assistants in their
1.2. Hong Kong. An early engraving.
merchant houses by
the sea and retiring up the hillside to large bungalows surrounded by gardens. The Europeans were hugely outnumbered by the Chinese population. In 1845, those Chinese who
had been registered, numbering 15,800 men and 3,290 women, crowded into the
lower bazaar, the higher area of Tai Ping Shan and along the banks of the stream that cut across Hollywood Road and ran into the sea where Central Market now stands.5 These figures do not include the many unregistered visitors to the island. A further 4,100 Chinese were living in traditional villages mainly on the south side of the island which they had inhabited for generations. The imbalance of the sexes both among the European and Chinese inhabitants of Victoria is very striking. It points to an unsettled, male-dominated society where the tavern and the brothel

flourished. In 1845, according to government sources, only twenty-five Chinese
family homes existed in Victoria, yet already there were twenty-six brothels.6 The port attracted many nationalities as can be seen from the fact that aliens
and resident strangers accounted for another 409 residents. These would have
included Malays, Lascars, Parsees, and Manila men from the Philippines.
Victoria had sprung up in the first three years in a burst of enthusiasm and a
scurry of buildings that took everyone by surprise. Captain Richard Collinson, in a letter home dated 22 February 1844, wrote:
Our city of Victoria �K has been built almost in a day. If you leave it for a
month, where you left a rock, you find a drawing room furnished in the height
of Indian luxury �K and a road where there was twenty feet of water.7
At the end of 1845, the Seamen��s Hospital had been erected and an Ice House
Company established selling ice at four cents a pound to subscribers and five cents to non-subscribers. The Freemasons had inaugurated their first lodge. There were
two competing newspapers in the colony, the Friend of China, begun in 1842, and its young rival, the China Mail which started in February 1845. The latter aimed at a less anti-government and more upper-class readership. The Hong Kong Club was being built and was due to open in 1846. Anglican Church services were being still held in a mat-shed while plans were being approved for a cathedral, but the Roman Catholics, the Nonconformist Unionists and the American Baptists had
all erected permanent chapels or churches and the Muslims had built a mosque.8
The town itself spread along
Queen��s Road following the line
of the beach for about a mile from
just west of Central to Wan Chai
with the garrison barracks area cutting between the two. Victoria looked towards the sea to a much greater extent than present day Central does. The goods being unloaded at piers along the waterfront would be dragged straight across Queen��s Road into the waiting godowns. On any one day, about thirty visiting brigs, barques, schooners or steam ships would be anchored in the harbour together with visiting ships of the Royal Navy and two or three permanently anchored opium-receiving ships. Many of the vessels arriving at Hong Kong would have carried opium.9

The capital, Victoria, displayed all the raw earthiness of a frontier town. Open drains made the air smelly, particularly above Tai Ping Shan where there were flat drying fields on which the night soil of Hong Kong was deposited to allow the liquid to trickle down the hill before the dry solids were exported to Kowloon as fertilizer. Pigs and pariah dogs wallowed on hot days luxuriating in the ��blue liquid mud�� of the creeks where the streams ran down to the sea. 10 Goats and cattle wandered freely along the roads, destructively nibbling at the newly planted trees. In 1849, No Goat Sucker wrote to the newspaper, the Friend of China, complaining that the goats had reached plague proportions and suggested that ��the policemen should be allowed to practise their muskets upon them, powder and shot to be supplied by subscription��.11
The fleet of anchored vessels were served by a small army of sampans that
tied up beside the Chinese fishing fleet near the Central Market.12 Whole families
of boat people lived on these boats, and the cries of their babies added to the
nightly cacophony. The fishermen spent:
all day mending seine or curing fish but the moment the morning gun fires,
there is such a clamour �X such a rattle of bamboo on the gunwales of boats
(to induce the fish to go quietly into the nets) that �K sleeping in the locality
indicated is absolutely impossible.13
Then, at sunset, the men on the Chinese junks chin-chin Jos paid their devotions to the gods by beating gongs and tom-toms and letting off crackers. Sleep was
made more difficult by:
those merciless unmuzzled dogs �K who all in one grand chorus disturb the
night with their barking �K fighting and howling until daylight dawns when
the howl is augmented by the shrill notes of the cock aided and abetted by the geese and turkeys in a neighbouring poultry yard.14
Noise at night was a persistent problem. George Strachan, architect and also editor of the China Mail, and James Brown [10/8/3], solicitor, both resorted to violence. Strachan was fined $15 in the summer of 1851 for assaulting an unfortunate journeyman silversmith who continued to beat out his silverware after midnight. In a consequent letter signed A Monument of Patience, he asked why braziers, tinkers and cobblers were permitted to work through ��the silent vigils of the night��. He continued: ��The tombstone cutter��s chisel is at work through the
whole night, and it is hardly a figure of speech to say that every blow cuts a letter
in his neighbour��s epitaph��. He was then woken at early dawn by the cries of the hawkers selling ��one lychee, a pineapple, a leg of a dry duck, a slice of white poultice
[probably rice porridge or congee] or raw pork��. 15 Brown was fined $25 for ��violently
assaulting a Chinese bookmaker in his own shop because he was disturbed by the beat-beating of a shoemaker occupying part of the same shop in what was meant to be the silent watches of the night��. 16 Drunken singing from the taverns, which disregarded the regulation 11 p.m. closing times, caused further annoyance: ��Every evening one��s ears are assailed with the beastly songs and carousings of the customers of these dens of iniquity��. The carousing was not confined to the
lower ranks. Inebriated officers of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment smashed eight
house lamps along Queen��s Road including those of Messrs Markwick [10/8/2], Franklyn [13/9/3], Winniberg [40/2/3] and Maclehose [9/9/9] and were urged to own up and pay up.17 The officers of the Ceylon Rifles Regiment, in their mess in D��Aguilar Street, were only restrained from loud singing into the small hours by a direct order from the governor himself. By day Queen��s Road was thronged by hawkers, who were jostled by drunken soldiers and sailors. The chaos was made worse by ��furious riding��, the subject of many letters of complaint: ��At the time the streets are most crowded, there they are, riding their tits (horses) helter skelter, three or four abreast, no man saying them nay��. 18 The writer alleged that people had been trodden under foot, seriously injured and even killed.
The lack of understanding between the races in this period meant that each race looked after their own in their own way and there were few points of contact. The authorities were completely taken by surprise when a gunpowder factory blew up in Shau Kei Wan killing several Chinese. The China Mail observed: ��It is carried on by desperadoes �K and their only customers have been pirates, smugglers and outlaws��.19 Legislation was hastily introduced banning the making or selling of gunpowder on Hong Kong Island.
Between 1845 and 1850, Hong Kong was hit by a downward spiral that
could have led to its demise. When in 1851 a huge conflagration destroyed most
of the little wooden shacks in the Chinese part of Victoria, the editor of China Mail exclaimed sadly: ��Hong Kong is a place of so little note that if the whole of it had burned the other day, the world at large would have cared but little for it��. 20 Although the China Mail put forward interesting proposals for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace, which give us a picture of the more
important and flourishing Chinese enterprises in the colony at that time, nothing
came of their proposals. The paper had suggested sending a portable model of a stone quarry, with the tools used to extract the stone. Joss making, at Aberdeen, would make an impressive exhibit with its carved, gilded and painted joss sticks together with a model of a joss house. A third proposal was to demonstrate Chinese skills found in the bazaar at Victoria with examples of porcelain painting and quilt making which would show a model of two men carding the cotton and making the quilts together with the finished products.21 In the end:
The only exhibits representing Hong Kong in that fair temple of the world��s commercial competition at Hyde Park consisted of a tiny pagoda, a jade cup and two silver race cups �K and a North China walking stick�K. How very little was thought or known of Hong Kong at this time even by those in authority in England is evidenced by the fact that the Royal Commission of the International Exhibition of 1851 gave no place to Hong Kong as a colony.22

Factors Affecting Early Hong Kong and Its Society
The First Opium War: 1840�V42
The events leading up to the First Opium War and the conflict itself are important
in that they led to the foundation of Hong Kong and influenced the mindset of its residents. The merchants, who derived a greater part of their profit from an illegal trade in opium, were well aware that, with each transaction they made, they alienated themselves further from the Chinese authorities and made war more likely. In order to give a brief background to the lead-up to the war, the events will be described focusing on the part played by John Slade [11A/6/6] who died in August 1843 and whose chest tomb is among the earliest graves in the Cemetery.
Slade was personally involved in the quarrel over the open import of the semi-legal drug, opium. Though banned earlier by the emperor, the opium trade had in effect been allowed to continue so long as stiff duties were paid. The
situation changed in 1839 with the arrival of Commissioner Lin Tsu-hsu with a
new mandate to end the trade in the drug. Its continued import into China after
this date culminated in the First Opium War and the annexation of Hong Kong by Britain. The decline and final demise of the East India Company in 1834 left a
power vacuum with no obvious British representatives with whom the Chinese authorities could negotiate. Its place was taken by the ��country�� merchants, the name given to those who had been trading on their own as opposed to under the auspices of the East India Company, and trading to a large extent in opium. The trade in opium, carried on by these robust believers in ��free trade�� had grown from approximately 5,000 chests a year in the years 1801 to 1820 to 30,000 chests in 1836. The use of the forbidden drug had increased in China to such an extent that it was
said that, ��A son of the emperor himself died in his very palace from the effects of the excessive use of opium. He [the Emperor] was totally unable to exclude the
drug even from his own palace��.23 Mandarins both smoked opium and dealt in it,
and made enormous profits from it. The country merchants, Dr. William Jardine
and his partner, James Matheson, together with the Dent brothers, were the principal importers. A clash between the traders and the Cantonese authorities was
inevitable. Slade was in Canton on and off from 1816, trading and learning Chinese
and for a time in the employ of the East India Company. He also edited the weekly
Canton Register, the newspaper established by Matheson in 1827 to disseminate
the principles of free trade and oppose the prolonging of the East India Company monopoly.

1.5. Chest tomb in memory of John Slade, editor of the Canton Register.
The Early Settlers, the First Opium War and Its Aftermath 39
In 1835, when Lord William Napier suggested that the British merchants in Canton needed a united front to form a medium of communication between themselves, the superintendent and the Chinese Hong merchants, a British Chamber of Commerce was established and Slade became a founding member.24 In March 1839, Commissioner Lin ordered all opium to be surrendered to him for destruction. In a dramatic standoff, business was brought to a standstill; communication with Macau and Whampoa was cut off. The foreign merchants were in effect prisoners in the factories. Since the departure of Dr. Jardine to England, Lancelot Dent was considered the leading foreign merchant. Lin had good reasons to believe that he was still harbouring 6,000 chests of opium. When told that only 1,037 chests had been offered up for burning, Lin sent the two leading Hong merchants, Howqua and Mowqua, with their buttons of rank torn from their hats and chains round their necks to demand that Dent appear in person before him. It was decided among the merchants that he should not comply and this refusal to appear resulted in a withdrawal of the servants, fresh water, and food from the Canton factories. Dent, moved by the plight of his trading partners, Howqua and Mowqua, with whom he had been on the best of terms for many years, wanted to obey the command to give himself up. The members of the Chamber of Commerce feared that he would be thrown into prison and held hostage for the rest of the group and that his life might be in danger. Whereupon Robert Inglis, a partner of Dent & Co. who could speak some Chinese, said that he would take Dent��s place and asked for three Chinese-speaking volunteers to accompany him. Slade courageously volunteered as did Samuel Fearon, the first coroner in Hong Kong, and Robert Thom, who later became interpreter to the governor, Sir Henry Pottinger. Not knowing whether they would face imprisonment in a Chinese jail or even death, the four presented themselves for examination. The Chinese officials, who examined these merchants, ��were so struck with admiration of the bravery of the four Englishmen, that, after briefly examining them, they allowed them to return to the factories unmolested��. 25 The immediate crisis was averted. Slade died in Hong Kong on 2 August 1843.

The Descent into War
This first sustained and menacing attack on the opium trade continued after Commissioner Lin finally collected and destroyed 20,000 chests of opium.26 The British merchants, after refusing to sign a bond of good behaviour, retreated en
masse to Macau. Their merchant fleet left Whampoa for the anchorage between Kowloon and Hong Kong, where they were watched by Admiral Kuan��s fleet of war junks. The situation was further inflamed by the death of a Chinese villager
in a drunken quarrel between a group of villagers from Tsim Sha Tsui and some British sailors. This led to the British refusal to render anyone up to Chinese authorities for execution and the ensuing refusal by the Chinese to provide
supplies of food and water to the British fleet. The first shot was fired in Kowloon Bay by Captain Henry Smith on 4 September 1839. Dr. William Jardine back in
London provided Palmerston with a ��paper of hints��, a blueprint of the measures he considered necessary to bring the Chinese government to a more pro-British
stance. It is even said that he offered to lend the government the Jardine Matheson opium clippers as an auxiliary fleet.27 Sixteen warships and four thousand troops were dispatched by Lord Henry Palmerston, British prime minister 1855�V58,
1859�V65. After the arrival of the Expeditionary Force in June 1840, the war began
in earnest.
A group of the earliest graves brought from the former cemetery in Wan
Chai and found in Section 11A of the Cemetery are memorials to some of the
soldiers and sailors who died in the First Opium War either from their wounds
or from fever, dysentery or other
diseases. One of the first graves in
the Cemetery is that of Lieutenant Benjamin Fox [11A/3/16] of HMS Nimrod. He died on 25 May 1841 when his leg was shattered by a cannonball while he was leading one of the assault parties sent to take the high land to the north of Canton.28
Another monument was erected by the officers of HMS Cornwallis [11A/3/1], the vessel on which the Treaty of Nanking
was signed on 29 August 1842,
which regularized the status of Hong Kong as a British colony. It commemorates three officers.


According to the inscription on the memorial, Lieutenant William Atcherley died in 1842, at ��Yong Tso Kiang��, probably an alternative spelling for the Yangtze River. In 1841 the British fleet sailed up the Yangtze River with the
object of capturing Nanking. On 13 June, they anchored off Woosung close
to present day Shanghai. As they continued to move up river to Chin-kiang-foo, where the Grand Canal crosses the Yangtze River, the Chinese batteries opened fire: ��The fire of the Chinese was severe and well directed�K. On our side, one officer, Lieutenant C. Hewitt (Hewet on inscription), Royal Marine, and one seaman were killed��. 29 The third officer included on the inscription, Major James Uniacke, also of the Marines, was assisting in the taking of the town of Chin-kiang-foo on 16 July 1841 when he became a victim of sunstroke:
Here it was that the gallant Major Uniacke, R.M. [Royal Marine] fell from the effects of the sun and in the list of casualties of the day no less than sixteen
men are included who died from the same cause.30

He was buried on:
the fairy-like Golden Island in the centre of the river with its tall pagoda on top and its sides covered with temples, gardens and trees.31
The sun continued to take its toll on soldiers:
1.8. Golden Island, Chinese artist, c. 1850. (By courtesy of Martyn Gregory, cat. 78, p. 81.)
The men in one regiment (98th Regiment) were kept standing in the sun buttoned up to their throats with stiff leather stocks and heavy shakos, three
day��s provisions and sixty rounds of ammunition, till a dozen of them dropped in the ranks from sunstroke.32
Another monument in this early group commemorates Lord Richard Pelham Clinton [11A/3/14] of HMS Harlequin whose body was committed to the deep off the Gulf of Siam in May 1842. The Expeditionary Force suffered more losses from sickness than from battle. Another six-sided monument erected by officers of the 55th Regiment [11A/3/15] commemorates five officers who arrived in June 1841 and fought through the war but all died later from malarial fever in Hong Kong. After occupying Amoy and then Chusan, the regiment was involved in the battle at Chin-kiang-foo, described above. They formed a storming party using just three ladders to scale the walls unnoticed by the Tartars (Mongol soldiers):
When at last they were seen, there was a desperate fight as the Tartars rushed against them with great fury and from the gardens below a galling fire. Many
of our men dropped, but at last they forced the Tartars back.
As the British forces drove them back, the Tartar army finally assembled in the centre of the town:
where their general had harangued them, and exhorted them to die for their country rather than submit to the hated barbarians. They had first rushed into their homes and slaughtered their wives and children, then joined their
general to fight to the last man.33
When the 55th Regiment returned to Hong Kong in January 1843, it suffered
badly from outbreaks of fever. It is recorded that:
scarcely anyone escaped the fever and the mortality was so great that, at
the end of the year, (1843) out of a total strength of thirteen officers and five hundred and fifteen men, four officers and two hundred and thirty-eight men
had succumbed to the epidemic.34
It is therefore probable that Captain A.H.S. Young, Ensign L.H.C. Rogers, Ensign J. Campbell and J.R. Macgrath, whose names are inscribed on the monument, were the four officers mentioned above who died of fever. Captain T. de Havilland had been a military magistrate at Chusan, the island at the mouth of the Yangtze River captured and administered during the war by the British forces. On his return to Hong Kong he was lent to the Hong Kong government to act as assistant surveyor and a member of the lands committee. He was assisted by Charles St. George Cleverly in completing the planning and surveying for the town of Victoria. He died on 6 September 1843 of the prevailing fever aboard the HMS Judith Allan. 35
Indian troops made up considerably more than two-thirds of the Expeditionary Force and many of the officers who died during the First Opium War were from Indian regiments. Lieutenant Oliver Ankatell [11A/5/9], who died in July 1841, had set out from his home in Winchester one year earlier to take up his appointment as ensign in the 37th Regiment, Madras Native Light Infantry.36 After a successful campaign in Canton, this regiment returned to Hong Kong, where it was decimated by fever and dysentery caused by the primitive and unsanitary conditions in the barracks. Captain Arthur F. Bevan [11A/5/1], who died in October 1842, and Captain Henry Harriot [11A/14/1], who died in December of the same year, served with the 39th Regiment of the Madras Native Light Infantry. Lieutenant Francis Beavan [11A/5/2] and John Theophilus Boileau [11A/6/4], who both died in November 1842, were attached to the Bengal Volunteers, Boileau as assistant surgeon to the Bengal Establishment. This must have been an early use of the forces of one colony to wage war for Britain against another country. The regiments of Madras Native Light Infantry and Bengal Volunteers were both in action at the siege of Canton. The gallantry of the Madras Native Light Infantry was recognized in the words of the commanding general: ��They nobly upheld the high character of the native army��.37 But there was also a darker side to the war. The Hindi word lut, or loot, as it became in English spelling, is said to have entered the language after the taking of Tin-hai, the capital of Chusan: ��A more complete pillage could not be conceived�K. The plunder ceased only when there was nothing to take or destroy��.38
The pillaging and the huge losses in battles such as that at Chin-kiang-foo go some way to explain the humiliation and bitterness felt by the Chinese in their defeat. There could be little hope of improving relationships between the two
Opium Wars while the Chinese were waiting for their moment of retaliation and
the European traders continued to use China��s weakness to expand their trade in opium. By 1850, opium imports into China were at least double what they had been in the year of Commissioner Lin��s ban.39 The Treaty of Nanking was ratified in 1843. It ended the war, made the trade in opium legal and established Hong Kong as a British colony. Thus the founding of the colony of Hong Kong was closely bound up with the ever-increasing trade in opium and a constant reminder of the defeat and degradation of the Chinese.
The merchants knew that many Europeans opposed their trade. For this reason, it was important for them to have a strong lobby in Parliament to counteract any moves to curtail their trade. In the early days, the merchants found it more useful to their trading to seek position and power in London rather than
to involve themselves in affairs concerning the governing of Hong Kong. It could
be suggested that the kind of trade in tea, silk and opium in which the merchants were involved, which ranged along the entire coastline of China, meant that these powerful traders had wider interests and saw Hong Kong more as a safe bolt-hole than as a colony needing their ability to guide its early years. There were a number of complaints in the newspapers that the merchants held themselves aloof from the day-to-day problems associated with governing the tiny young colony.

Relationships between Europeans and Chinese in the Aftermath of the First Opium War
In the early Victorian years, the misunderstandings and breakdowns in relationships between the Chinese and the Europeans at all levels of society set up a pattern of dislike and mistrust between the two races that can be seen to have coloured the way Hong Kong was governed over the next century. A number of factors worked together to bedevil relationships. The determination of the merchants to break down the barriers to free trade in the Chinese Empire put them on a collision course with the Qing government. The British and American traders, headed by Jardine Matheson & Co., wanted an end to controlled trading through the designated treaty ports as set out in the Treaty of Nanking. Meanwhile a small number of merchants helped by corrupt mandarins flouted the customs and excise rules by selling their goods (especially opium) without paying duty and beyond the bounds of the treaty ports. Furthermore, the Chinese were slow and obstructive in conforming to some of the terms of the treaty, such as the one which allowed foreigners free access to the city of Canton, citing as an excuse their inability to protect foreigners wandering inside the city walls. In the meantime the larger body of merchants called for free trade.
The Chinese Imperial government could not accept the terms of the Treaty of Nanking imposed on it in 1842, regarding it as an unfair treaty and an attempt to weaken the empire and limit its sovereignty. China bided its time and set about strengthening its armed forces hoping to reverse the situation in an inevitable confrontation at a later date. In the meantime China continued the previous policy of isolating the foreign barbarians in the treaty ports and as far as possible limiting their contact with the Chinese. They feared that the foreigners would contaminate the Confucian ideals which regulated the society. In line with this policy, it was forbidden on pain of death to teach the Chinese language to foreigners. A debased ��pidgin�� (meaning ��business��) language had sprung up which allowed overseas merchants to communicate with the Chinese. The European community was largely only able to communicate with the Chinese in pidgin and were despised by the Chinese gentry for their woeful ignorance of the Chinese language and culture. They in turn despised the Chinese, for their simplified pidgin ��Chinglish�� which they often labelled as puerile, and for being a benighted heathen race, whose lack of Christian moral principles made them inherently untrustworthy. Neither side saw the necessity to communicate with or understand the other and each side drew apart to entrenched positions based on the beliefs of both parties in the superiority of their own culture and belief system. The ability to speak and understand Chinese was considered by the British as a positive drawback to their usefulness as officials. The editor of The Friend of China was able to write:
Now it is next to an impossibility to master the Chinese language under a ten year��s residence and the time taken up in the study of it, detracts from other equally important avocations; whilst it is an astonishing fact that the close attention absolutely necessary, when the study is once begun, entirely untunes the mind for the business of everyday life.41
At the level of the ordinary Chinese people, suspicion and dislike of the foreign barbarian were particularly strong in Canton and the mob violence created
flashpoints, any of which could well have led to a renewal of conflict. An editorial
sums up the mood in Canton:
The hostile feeling of the lower and it is said even of the higher classes towards outside barbarians has in no degree diminished since the termination of the late war. Indeed it is the opinion of the oldest residents that at no time has there been so little security of life and property�K. In former days the insolence of the population was kept within certain bounds �X their superiors
asserted that foreigners were a debased and cowardly race merely suffered to traffic at Canton from the benevolent feelings of the Emperor. The delusion
was flattering to natural vanity and it was cherished until foreign bayonets were glittering on the heights that command the city and foreign artillery had silenced the forts which they vainly believed rendered the entrance to the river impregnable�K. It cannot be doubted that a remembrance of this increases
the rancour nor will the severe punishment that has so recently been inflicted
at all tend to soothe the public memories. A desire for revenge will be created and more than ever are foreigners in danger of attack. It is painful to imagine such a dreadful calamity as the destruction of the factories by an infuriated
mob and the sacrifice of valuable lives in the defence of property but such an
occurrence is by no means improbable.42
The daily contact between Canton and Hong Kong meant that everything the next day and the Hong Kong residents would have known of those living in Canton certainly by name if not personally. A riot that occurred in Canton on the
8 and 9 July 1846 was already known by rumour in Hong Kong when the arrival of the steam ship Corsair on the 12 July confirmed the fears. The mob attacked with stones breaking into one of the factories and the foreign community was forced to
open fire killing thirteen and wounding twenty. One American and one German
were severely wounded and a Parsee had his leg broken. The small British community felt dangerously isolated:
It seems that the English are left unprotected alike by their own Government and the local authorities, in the midst of a population comprising some of the most lawless and desperate in China who add to their other dangerous qualities, an implacable hatred of foreigners.43
The sense of isolation felt by the small European community in Hong Kong at this time was increased by the fear engendered by living in the midst of an overwhelming majority of approximately nineteen thousand Chinese on whom they depended for their existence.44 The Friend of China questioned the government on why it had allowed hundreds of Chinese to settle along the banks of the nullah above Victoria and asked whether the registrar general had
sanctioned the sheds or registered the occupants as men fit to live in the colony. It
continued: ��Let us remember that at this moment there are thousands of bad men among us who only lack courage to butcher every European on the Island.��45 The general feelings of fear and dislike for the Chinese mob were heightened in Hong
Kong by the influx of lower-class Chinese coolies in search of work or of gain by
less reputable means:
Less than one mile from Victoria, there is in the course of formation a
native village with hundreds of inhabitants. These men can be seen flocking
to town in the morning with bamboos over their shoulders, as if porters seeking for employment �X they wander about during the day, make their observations and return at night to rob. Strangers in Hong Kong express their astonishment at the number of idle, suspicious looking men seated in the public roads, gambling and quarrelling; they cannot imagine how they gain a subsistence �X it is by theft.46
The dangers were brought closer to home in December 1847 by the murder
of six Britons at the village of Hwang Chu Kee and the spread of animosity to
Whampoa. In 1848, the Chinese refused to allow the burial of a dead foreigner
from a nearby ship:
The body was taken on shore for internment on Dane��s Island, when the Chinese assembled in large numbers, armed with hoes and other agricultural implements, with the intention of attacking the party who had landed to bury their deceased comrade. Before the violence of the mob they were compelled
to retreat leaving the coffin on the ground, where it lay until the following day
when some Coolies were hired to dig a hole and cover it over.47
The Friend of China was already talking of the inevitability of another war in 1850 when it declared:
We are no peace society man �K however if war is to shake his torch over the
Chinese empire, we for one shall not express any regret, as we have for some time looked upon it as an inevitable necessity forced upon us by a long career of treachery and cruelty on the part both of the Governors and people of China. But if war is to come, let it not come in the shape of a buccaneering excursion along the northern coast of China. Let the place that has seen our humiliation, see our triumph, and let that triumph exhibit itself in the shape of something that may be written in the annals of China, as a never to be forgotten lesson to Chinese statesmen on the dangers of duplicity. Such a lesson will be the cheapest and most merciful in the end.48
To understand the prejudices of the men who lived in Hong Kong in the years
between the two Opium Wars and are buried in this cemetery, their lives must be
looked at with this background of suspicion, intimidation and isolation in mind.


Ideals of Society That the Emigrants Took with Them from England
Memory of the British Social Order
The inscriptions in the Cemetery give us the names and dates of its denizens but
we are left to discover what role each one played, and how he or she fitted into the
young society. In order to understand the kind of social set-up that evolved in the early years of Hong Kong history, it is useful to look at three of the factors that
influenced these early settlers. The first was the sometimes nostalgic memory of
the British social order the settlers had left behind them:
The British Empire has been extensively studied as a complex racial hierarchy (and also as a less complex gender hierarchy); but it has received far less attention as an equally complex social hierarchy or, indeed, as a social organism, or construct of any kind.49
It is from the social point of view that one would like to show Hong Kong��s European society as it developed over the nineteenth century. David Cannadine suggested that the British Empire was ��the vehicle for the extension of the British social structures, and the setting for the projection of British social perceptions, to the ends of the earth �X and back again��.50 The settlers wished to replicate what they considered best in this remembered social order.
At a time when the industrial revolution was a new, little understood and a rather fearsome phenomenon, the British abroad looked back with nostalgia to the traditional settled society of the rural landed squires, who in theory ruled in a Christian and paternal manner over their estates with the help of the clergy. The squires looked up in their turn to their social superiors, the aristocracy, who wielded political power in London and held most of the important posts in the government under the reigning monarch. An article describing this idealized concept of society in Britain was printed in a Hong Kong newspaper. Entitled ��Family Life in England��, it was written by a Monsieur Florentino who had visited
in 1849. It was a society where everyone knew their station in life. The article
copied from an English periodical described the way some settlers viewed the society at home:
Everyone is content with his condition. The valet remains a valet; the farmer is content to remain a farmer. Their ambition is confined to ameliorating their material condition �K to passing from a small establishment to a large, from the antechamber of a baronet to the saloon of a lord; but everyone remains within his sphere, and has no desire to emerge from it�K. In short, the demarcation of classes is so deep in England, the hierarchical sentiment so innate, that the coachman of a high family treats his stable boy with the same haughty disdain that is exhibited by his master to himself. Equality of condition is unknown in this country�K. The aristocracy make amends for their power by the luxury which they display�K. You can form no idea of the improbable, the ridiculous sums of money that are squandered by the English on their jewellery, their tables, their liveries, and their studs.51
The view held by the British of their social organization which stretched round their empire can be summed up by the following quotation:
Britons generally conceived themselves as belonging to an unequal society characterized by a seamless web of layered gradations, which were hallowed by time and precedent, which were sanctioned by tradition and religion, and extended in a great chain from the monarch at the top to the humblest subject at the bottom�K. It was from that starting point that they contemplated and tried to comprehend the distant realms and diverse society of their empire.52
An article entitled ��Liberty in England and on the Continent�� further disseminated this idea:
In Britain of all the countries in the earth, the nobility have the most power.
The king or queen is but the keystone of the aristocracy�K. When we behold
elsewhere the frightful tyranny which Radicalism sets up, we can understand the mischief it would do to England if ever it were triumphant; and we are inclined to regard the aristocracy which there exercises such strength, as one of the necessary guarantees for freedom.53
Thus, on the sparsely inhabited island of Hong Kong, the colonists felt themselves free ��to replicate the layered, ordered, hierarchical society they believed they had left behind at home��.54
Although a number of emigrants believed that they would create for themselves a similar kind of social hierarchy to the one which they regretted leaving behind, many also hoped that, in this newer society, they could achieve a status that they would never have aspired to in their native land. They had left their
homeland in order to better themselves socially as well as financially. Materially better off members of the community would vie for the social position that they
considered their new wealth should buy them. This led in Hong Kong, as also in India, to a preoccupation with status. This vying for social status and ��precedency�� often began even before arrival. Those travelling via India on the P & O. steam
ships would have certainly felt its influence. An army officer on board the Nemesis in 1859 described how: ��Ladies (real ladies! �X ladies of Indian officials many of
them!) squabbled and fought like schoolboys for precedency at table and for berths; and even Mrs. Commissioners and Mrs. Generals lost their tempers �X but never forgot their rank��.55 While emigration was seen as a way to escape poverty, to make money and to rise above one��s present station, what was emerging in Hong Kong seems to have been rather a rigid, status-bound social order that was ruled by ��precedency��. The clash between these two conflicting models was bound to lead to tensions and anomalies which would make it harder in a small place like Hong Kong for those wielding power to exclude those who rose up through the ranks of the society to challenge them for a place in the sun.

Feelings of Superiority and National Pride
Among the colonists, there existed a conviction that the kind of social order they were bringing with them to Hong Kong was superior to anything they were likely
to find in the country they considered settling in, and that spreading their newly gained scientific knowledge and their religious beliefs could do nothing but good.
Colonization, they proclaimed:
will be fraught with unmixed good not only for China itself, but for our beloved country, other enlightened nations of the west and mankind at large
�X so true is it that knowledge like water will find its level and the moral and social improvement of any portion of the family of man must benefit all and
hasten that glorious day when knowledge shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.56
The earlier defeat of Napoleon by the British at Waterloo had given the
British a strong feeling of national pride. It should come as no surprise then that,
when the first newspaper the Friend of China needed material to fill its pages in
January 1845, it published the names of every officer in every regiment who had
fought in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The British victory in the First Opium War over the technologically inferior Chinese troops had boosted this feeling of
pride and superiority to new heights. Even the names given to the local taverns bear witness to this sense of national pride: Britain��s Boast, Albion, Britannia, The British Grenadiers The British Queen and
Fortune of War, among others. Whoever
buried Nathaniel Beard [16Ci/3/7], master of the British ship Gundreda, thought it worth recording that he died ��at Victorian Hong Kong�� and furthermore that they took the trouble to import the stone from England for his memorial. The inscription proudly announces: ��This stone hewn from
an English rock / typifies his solid worth��.
The superiority of the British as seen at sea, on the battlefield and in the fields of science and technology, had been demonstrated and the superiority of their religion was taken as self-evident. The irony contained in the opening address in the Friend of China must strike all who read it today:

A year has scarcely elapsed since the British flag was unfurled on this island,
evidence de facto of it being henceforth a part and parcel of the widespread British Empire, that Empire on which the sun never [sic] sets and with whose aggrandisement is linked the regeneration social and moral of China.57
According to the naval officer, H.T. Ellis:
The more your downright John Bull is isolated in foreign society so much the more resolutely does he wrap himself in national prejudices and
endeavours to bring everything within his influence to a condition as purely
English as possible.
He continued:
Irishmen and Scotch are of a more cosmopolitan disposition. They fall more readily into the ways of the places they visit.58
This perceived difference is interesting in view of the contributions to Hong Kong��s
success made by generations of Scotsmen.

The Reasons for Emigrating from Britain
People emigrated from Britain in the early years of Victoria��s reign to escape the unemployment and poverty that were partly due to the massive growth in
population, which had doubled between 1780 and 1836 and in Ireland exploded from less than 2.5 million in 1753 to more than 6.5 million in 1821.59 Those people settling in Hong Kong in the early years of Queen Victoria��s reign left behind them
in Britain a rough, tough and deeply divided society. A.N. Wilson sums up early
Victorian society as a:
ruthless, grabbing, competitive, male-dominated society, stamping on its victims and discarding its weaker members with all the devastating relentlessness of mutant species in Darwin��s vision of Nature itself.60
That governments should be held responsible for the wellbeing of those they ruled was totally against the beliefs of the laissez-faire economists of that time:
The years 1837 to 1844 brought the worst economic depression that had ever afflicted the British people. It is estimated �K that more than a million paupers
starved from simple lack of employment.61
Even for those who could find work, wages were pitifully low.
Emigration to the colonies was seen as a way of alleviating poverty and distress and was actively encouraged by the landed classes from the royal family downwards. Queen Victoria herself gave five hundred pounds to help finance the emigration of unemployed needlewomen from London to Australia where, it was argued, that they would make good wives for the large number of unmarried white men. 62 Sixty-four companies as well as members of the Hong Kong community, for example in 1853, were prevailed on to contribute $1,366.20 to the Society for Promoting Emigration to Australia from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.63

Influences on Hong Kong from Colonial India
Indian Regiments Doing Garrison Duty in Hong Kong
The Madras Native Light Infantry were among the first of a long list of Indian
regiments to be stationed in Hong Kong to do garrison duty.
Seven British officers, three wives, and two children from Indian regiments are buried in the Cemetery in the years between the Opium Wars.64 This compares to four officers, two regimental doctors, one wife and six sergeants from British regiments. The Ceylon regiment suffered particularly heavily with the death of five officers. Conditions for the Indian regiments were often worse than for their

1.10. Madras Native Light Infantry. (Illustrated London News, 1857.)
English counterparts since they were given whatever accommodation was left over after the British soldiers had been housed. Besides the usual malarial fever, they suffered from beri-beri, suggesting that fruit and vegetables were lacking from their diet. Dr. Robert Austin Bankier [13/1/1] wrote in an article on the disease:
It prevailed epidemically among the Gun Lascars or Madras Artillery quartered at Hong Kong in 1852, and proved fatal; and a great number of the
crew of the P. & O. Company��s ship, ��Fort William��, lying in the harbour were recently attacked with this affection and some deaths occurred.65
Indian policemen were first brought to Hong Kong as early as 1844 by Sir
Henry Pottinger. The acting superintendent of the police, Captain J. Bruce, previously of the 18th Irish Regiment, formed an Indian night guard of twenty-
five ex-soldiers to be stationed at short intervals along the length of Queen��s Road. From then until after the Second World War, Hong Kong was never without
its contingent of Indian police, many of whom stayed on to open businesses, reinforcing Hong Kong��s multinational image. An intriguing headstone is found in Section 13 dedicated to Alexander Randeen [13/5/5], late steward to Messrs. Jardine, Matheson & Co. Randeen died in August 1866. He is described as a native of India and remembered for his faithful service. The Jardine Matheson establishment in Causeway Bay employed a number of Indian nationals for security purposes and also as servants in the house. Only one Indian policeman is buried in the Cemetery. Samuel Baboo [2/2/10] died on 19 March 1913, aged seventy-four, having served over forty-five years in the Hong Kong Police during
which time he presumably converted to Christianity. Because of their greater familiarity with Indians, born of a century of British involvement in India and the many personal links between colonists in Hong Kong and in India, the European settlers placed more trust in Indians than in the local Chinese.

Sir Henry Pottinger and Major Eldred Pottinger, His Nephew
This familiarity with India and the mode of operating there is clearly seen in the careers of Sir Henry Pottinger, the first governor, and his nephew, Major Eldred Pottinger [11A/3/10]. Sir Henry Pottinger, born in County Down,
Ireland in 1789, had been made a lieutenant of infantry under the presidency of Bombay in 1809. He then resided for many years at the Indian courts of rajahs
as a political agent of the East India Company. Even his face showed the mark of a long sojourn in India. The Friend of China remarked: ��No person who has seen him will forget his oriental countenance��. 66 From 1809 to 1840 he had made his reputation in India, winning his knighthood there. In 1841 he accepted Lord Palmerston��s invitation to go to China as plenipotentiary and chief superintendent.
Pottinger��s dealings with the Amirs of Sind undoubtedly influenced his reactions
to events in China, as can be seen by his reaction to the treatment of Mrs. Noble, a victim of the shipwreck of the Kite. She had been forced into a bamboo cage and paraded in the streets. ��It was the outrage to Mrs. Noble. In his long experience, no white woman of the Raj had been so abused. He now faced an enemy even more barbarous than the Sind Amirs��.67
Like his uncle, Eldred Pottinger had made his reputation in India. His life reads like a story written for a Boy��s Own Annual. The East India Company sent
him off alone, aged twenty-four, to reconnoitre and map the Northwest Territory,
now part of Pakistan. Finding himself under siege in Herat in November 1838, he took successful command of its defences against the Persian army. He was then proclaimed hero of Herat and as a reward sent as agent to Charekar in Kohistan, where he was again besieged by rebellious tribesmen. After another heroic but unsuccessful defence, he and a fellow officer escaped to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, where the British were under attack. The two officers, both wounded, Eldred with a ��ball in his leg�� and his fellow officer, Haughton, with one arm newly amputated, managed to escape the siege, cross the enemy lines and join their countrymen by pretending to be Persians. Eldred arrived burning with fever and Haughton had to endure a second amputation. Once in Kabul, the British envoy having been murdered, Eldred reluctantly negotiated terms with the Afghans for the withdrawal of the British forces. During the retreat the army was massacred and Eldred taken prisoner:
1.8. A portrait of Major Eldred Pottinger by Duncan Beechey.

The sympathies of the [Hong Kong] community were powerfully aroused at
the news of the Cabul disasters, and a public subscription was immediately
raised (October 13th, 1842) for the relief of sufferers in Afghanistan.68
While a prisoner, Eldred persuaded his captors to change sides and, by the time
he was relieved, had set up an administration to govern the local tribesmen.
In 1843, Eldred arrived in Hong Kong. He was a taciturn man. It was said of him: ��You might have sat for weeks beside him at table and never discovered that he had seen a shot fired��.69 But weakened by the wounds he had received in India, he caught the prevalent malarial fever and died on 15 November 1843, still aged only thirty years old. ��The whole community was in mourning when one of the heroes of Cabul, Lieutenant Eldred Pottinger, the brother and expected successor of the Governor, died at Hong Kong��. 70 Eldred��s life makes a colourful and fascinating story in itself. But it also reminds us that Hong Kong was a relatively late addition to the British Empire. By the time it had been acquired, an imperial ethos and a system of colonial administration in other parts of the British Empire
were influencing the attitudes and actions of administrators sent to Hong Kong.

The Parsees
The fact that the Parsees were allotted the tract of land next to the Hong Kong Cemetery for the burial of their dead in Happy Valley as early as 1852 shows that
they were an influential and well-regarded minority group. They originally came
from Persia but, since being expelled from that country in the seventh century, had built up very successful businesses particularly in Bombay and Calcutta. Dr. William Jardine, while still a young surgeon on the Brunswick, was captured off the coast of Ceylon by a French ship and became a prisoner of war until the
French vessel was driven ashore by bad weather at the Cape, South Africa, where
he was exchanged. With him during these trials was a young Parsee, Jamsetjee
Jejeebhoy, who became a lifelong friend and business partner.71 Jejeebhoy traded in cotton and opium and built ships.
He owned a fleet which included the Good Success, one of whose captains, Thomas Dumayne [9/13/7], is buried in the Cemetery.72 Jejeebhoy was also responsible for building the admiral��s ship, HMS Calcutta, whose figure-head represented a very fierce-looking Jejeebhoy himself. The memorial [11B/9/3] to Calcutta��s dead sailors is one of the most striking in the Cemetery. Jejeebhoy
was one of the first Parsees in India to be created a knight bachelor in 1842. His
experiences with the British merchants there paved the way for a number of Parsee families to build trading connections with Canton, where they became so strong a group that they owned their own cemetery on Dane��s Island. In 1861, John Fryer, newly arrived principal of St. Paul��s College, gave his impressions of
this group in his first letter home:
The Parsees come next in point of number and importance, after the English but before the Portuguese, Americans, Germans, French and Arabs. They
are a fine looking race of men, bearing a strong resemblance to the ancient
Jews. Their complexion is very brown however and they wear a long black beard�K. They are a very wealthy class of people and are considered excellent subjects. In fact they may be said to be but a very little behind the English.73
Linguistic Influences from India
The Indian influence brought to Hong Kong the rupee, which was declared one of the official currencies by Sir Henry Pottinger. The Parsees brought the local term ��shroff��, meaning money-taker. A Parsee family, with the surname Shroff, can
still be found in the Hong Kong telephone directory and a number of members of this family lie buried in the Parsee Cemetery. The word ��coolie�� came from the Hindustani quli meaning hired servant. Bungalows in Victoria were built to tested Indian designs and even named after Indian towns like Patna Lodge on Caine Road. The word ��bungalow�� is derived from the Hindi bangla meaning
belonging to Bengal. Fear of the harmful effects of the tropical sun and that very
British head protector, the topee, a specially designed pith helmet to keep the rays of the sun from striking the head or neck of the wearer, originated in India.
Lunch in Hong Kong was always known by the Anglo-Indian term ��tiffin��. ��Chit
or chitty��, the voucher issued to record payment due, was derived from the Hindi citthi, meaning note or pass. ��Nullahs�� or storm drains were constructed after the Indian fashion to take away the typhoon torrents. ��Punkahs��, copied from houses in India, were oblongs of light cloth stretching the entire length of a room. They were pulled on the outside of the room by ��punkah wallahs�� and created a cooling breeze in the drawing rooms and dining rooms of the colony. Another word, ��boy��, is often considered a denigrating and derogatory term used to describe the head servant of a household, who would normally have reached a mature age. It was in fact a corruption of the Hindi, bahi, 74 denoting body servant and major domo.
With all these examples, it seems clear that influences from Imperial India were
readily absorbed in Victorian Hong Kong.



Chapter 2
Events Affecting Hong Kong as
They Involved the Lives of People Buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery


The Turning of the Tide in Hong Kong��s Affairs
For a short time after the Treaty of Nanking, the colony flourished, but by the late 1840s it looked for a time as if Hong Kong might cease to exist. Its fearsome reputation for ill health had spread and few expatriates were willing to put their lives at risk by settling and investing in the colony. The wave of robberies and piracies had added further worries. The hoped-for higher class of Chinese merchants had not materialized to any substantial degree, probably frightened away by Hong Kong��s reputation for being anti-Chinese and the rough justice meted out to the Chinese by the police and magistrates.
Three interlocking events summarized briefly below, however, changed the course of Hong Kong��s history: the wave of emigration to the countries of
the New World, the discovery of gold in California and the Taiping uprising all
contributed, during the decade from 1850 to 1860, to setting Hong Kong on the path to success and prosperity. In each of these events those people living in Hong Kong, and now at rest in the Cemetery, played important roles.
Chinese Emigration
Since the abolition of slavery in 1833, the British Navy had policed the coasts of
Africa to such good effect that nations such as Peru were forced to look elsewhere for their labour force. Where better to look than to China with its hordes of work-
hungry poor? By the end of the 1840s the shipping of contract labour to North
and South America and the West Indies was in full flood. A large number went
voluntarily, but many thousands were kidnapped and abducted by unscrupulous agents or sold to them by poverty-stricken relatives. The coolies themselves were not always blameless and many, having accepted engagement money, failed to turn up at collection centres. The labour agents employed at the centres received
a capitation fee for every coolie delivered to the coast, which in 1853 stood at $3
per head. The coolies were kept in virtual imprisonment in a series of wretched barracoons along the coast while waiting for ships, and suffered great hardship and cruelty on the long voyages to the Americas.1 As a result there were a number
of revolts on board ships. For example, John Fortunatus Evelyn Wright noted the
arrival of the French ship Albert, whose captain, two mates, cook and passengers had all been murdered by the coolies on a previous passage from Cum-sing-moon to Callao, Peru. He alleged that the coolies had been shamefully treated, flogged and given short allowances of food.2 In early days much of this trade was centred in Hong Kong, materially adding to the wealth of anyone with the capital needed to procure a suitable vessel. The condition of coolies, held in barracoons
in Hong Kong and shipped from there across the Pacific Ocean, was so bad that
in 1855 a Chinese Passengers�� Act was gazetted, prescribing certain standards of food, accommodation and medical attention. This resulted in much trade going elsewhere or in ships leaving the Hong Kong harbour with the legal number of passengers, but then picking up more outside Green Island.
Two names from the Cemetery are linked to people engaged in monitoring this human trafficking. The first are the Austin-Gardiner brothers. Charles Mildmay Austin-Gardiner [13/3/3] was born at Demerara, British New Guinea, and died at East Point in 1862 and Hugh Percy [13/3/3], the third son, died in 1858 aged eighteen. Their father, John
G. Austin-Gardiner, came to Hong Kong in 1853 as the immigration agent-general for the government of British Guiana.3 He succeeded through the
influence of the Protestant missionaries
in obtaining the consent of a number of
Chinese families from Tsuen Wan to leave for Demerara. ��As many as 2,756
respectable Chinese women were with their husbands and children shipped from Hong Kong��. 4 Austin-Gardiner later joined the Hong Kong government
and, in 1868, succeeded William Mercer as colonial secretary. The second name is William Gee, who is listed in the 1862

Jury List as a member of the same emigration agency. His daughter Mary Carr Gee [7/29/9] died in 1860 aged seven months.
Wherever these Chinese emigrants settled, Chinatowns grew up and
Chinese businessmen often from Hong Kong supplied local traders with dried
foods, clothing and Chinese medicines. This growing trade brought profits to the
community of Chinese merchants who congregated round Nam Pak Hong Street
(later renamed Bonham Strand West) and Wing Lok Street and also benefited
Hong Kong.5

The Finding of Gold in California and Australia
Rumours flooded back to Hong Kong of the fortunes to be made from gold and
the opportunities for employment created by the growth of San Francisco and the building of the Trans Continental Railway and caused great excitement in Hong Kong. Dr. Benjamin Lincoln Ball, a visiting American dentist, reported: ��I was
shown the curiosity of $12,ooo in gold dust, so called though consisting of gold pieces or fragments�K. Wonderful stories are told about the California gold and
incredulously listened to here��. 6 A doctor, in his letter to his father dated March
1849, added further details:
Large quantities of gold have arrived in Hong Kong and the shopkeepers here are making large profits sending off whole cargoes of all kinds of
miscellaneous article. Upwards of fifty persons have already left for this gold
country and several, who have returned again for supplies, bring the most marvellous accounts, �X such indeed as one can scarcely believe were it not for the specimens of the precious metal which they bring and the amount of money they spend now after being away but a few months.7
Thousands of Chinese and many Europeans took ship in the hope of making their fortunes. Ships to carry them were at a premium and every vessel on the coast was pressed into service. The newfound wealth in California spawned a trade in all kinds of necessities including tools and frame houses that could be assembled on the spot. Besides this kind of goods, Chinese women and girls were
transported often against their wills to work as prostitutes. John Wright recorded
in his diary seeing the Ann Welch at anchor in the ��Lye Moon Passage�� ready to start for California with 260 passengers.
Amongst them were thirty females being taken down as speculation as prostitutes. One of the girls had just jumped overboard so determined was she not to go�K. She was picked up �K but was so earnest in her entreaties that she gained her point and was put ashore. Not so another poor girl who leapt into a boat that was alongside and in the jump was very much injured by falling on her side. I should have liked to have seen this poor girl put on shore but she was kept fast.8

The Taiping Rebellion: 1851�V64
This terrible rebellion that caused such an immense upheaval in Chinese society and had such serious consequences for the Imperial government, began in the hinterlands of Hong Kong. It coincided with a time of rising population and eroding value of the silver currency at least partly caused by the opium trade. These two factors led to poverty and unrest which was particularly pronounced in the countryside of Guangdong. An idea of the disruptions can be gathered from the following editorial in the China Mail:
A friend lately returned from a trip down the West Coast and whose
information may be relied on, informs us that the whole of the districts known as San-ooy and Sun-ning are in the hands of a numerous body of Ha-kas who are committing the most barbarous outrages. They have got possession of the towns of Hoi-ping, Yun-ping and Chaong-sha, and about ten days ago were
only ten miles off Quong-hoy, from which place the families were endeavouring to fly, but were prevented by the authorities, who detained them in order that
the males might assist against the banditti. The atrocities committed by this body of men are frightful to relate: men, women and children are massacred; whole families of children, and women above the age of thirty have been put
into houses alive, and the houses set on fire: while all the young women and
girls are detained as captives. The Ha-ka women, who are a very hardy set, are said to have joined the men in large numbers and have even gone so far
as to have shaved their heads like the males. When glutted with carnage and
satiated with plunder, they were formerly in the habit of retreating to their strongholds among the hills where the soldiers never ventured to follow them; but latterly they have become daily more formidable, both in numbers and
daring and now place the mandarins at defiance.
The shipwrights employed in the building-yards in the Colony, being nearly all from the disturbed districts, lately chartered the steamer ��Eaglet�� to bring their families to Hong Kong; but were prevented and such of them as had gone home for that purpose were detained to assist in repelling the enemy. 9
One immediate consequence of the social unrest, however, was beneficial for
Hong Kong. A number of merchants, whose livelihoods were threatened by the rebels, moved their businesses and families there, rapidly increasing the percentage of ��respectable�� Chinese of the kind that had long been desired but previously had mostly shunned the port.
Three people buried in the Cemetery are connected with the Taiping
rebellion. Worn Chinese characters in a far corner of the Cemetery are inscribed
on a simple granite headstone with a curved top. This memorial is to Hung Chuen Fook [2/4/28], one of the Taiping rebel leaders or ��princes�� as they termed themselves. He was the nephew of Hung Hsiu Chuan, king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and had fought in the Taiping army. A granite Latin cross remains as a memorial to a British volunteer formerly from the Royal Navy who achieved the rank of colonel in the Taiping army. Alban Mountney Jephson [38/4/14] returned to Hong Kong after the defeat of the Taiping and ended his
days in Hong Kong in September 1871 while working for the Naval Yard.

2.2. Headstone in memory of Alban Mountney Jephson, colonel in the Taiping army.
Ranged on the imperial side in the conflict was another volunteer, George Clayton [20/19/3], a captain
from the 99th Regiment. He
fought in the Anglo-Chinese force known as the Ever-Victorious Army and died at Kowloon in August 1863 ��from the effects of a wound received, whilst gallantly acting as a volunteer with the Anglo-Chinese force under Major Gordon R.E��. Major Gordon was later to become famous as Gordon of Khartoum after battling the dervishes there.


Hong Kong before the Second Opium War
By 1855, Hong Kong had reached a watershed in its political development. It seemed as if two paths lay open, one leading to a more open, democratic society and the other leading to a political stalemate, with the power remaining in the hands of the governor and the civil service, backed by the merchants.
Sir John Bowring came to Hong Kong as governor with the reputation of being a reforming radical and a follower of Jeremy Bentham. He was also a brilliant linguist and president of the Peace Society but was already considered past his peak, being sixty-two when he arrived in 1854. His age and background
were against him in his troubled and onerous tenure as governor. James William
Norton-Kyshe quotes a passage in which he is described as: ��like other parvenus, assuming an official importance which is highly ridiculous��.10 The gibe of ��parvenu�� refers to his modest family background in the wool trade in Exeter. Nevertheless, political reform and the achievement of some form of representation in the councils
seemed possible. In 1849, a memorandum had asked for increased representation,
and suggested the setting up of a municipal type of government. Earl Grey had replied that, in principle, the British government had no objection, but he could not pronounce upon the question until a distinct proposal was submitted.11 By
1851, the justices of the peace had proposed that, as a first measure, the police force
should be placed under the control of a municipal committee, ��in a similar mode to that obtaining in an English borough��. 12 A scheme was suggested in 1851 to put this

proposal into effect on the condition that the expenses of police should be met by
an adequate local tax. This condition led to its rejection. The previous governor, Sir George Bonham, had doubted the practicality of such a scheme in Hong Kong since ��men of standing, engaged in their own absorbing pursuits would possess neither time nor inclination to devote to the interests of the public��. 13 Bowring made a further proposal in 1855: that the colonial government be made more representative by reforming the Legislative Council. Five members should be elected for three years by an electorate composed of all holders of land with an
annual rental of at least ten pounds sterling. The qualified electorate would have
consisted of sixty-nine British, forty-two Chinese and thirty other nationalities. The secretary of state in England opposed the proposal on the grounds that ��The Chinese have not yet acquired a respect for the main principles on which social order rests��.14 Two events in the second half of the decade combined to rock Hong
Kong to its foundations and negate efforts to make the society more democratic. The first was the Second Opium War. The second involved a series of bitter fights
and scandals within the government that culminated in the recall of Bowring, the dismissal of the attorney general, Chisholm Anstey, and the dismissal from government service of the only man who could communicate with the Chinese, Daniel Caldwell [19/1/1].
Public Scandals
It is difficult in a short space to convey the lack of restraint, the back-biting and
the bitterness that arose from a series of very public scandals that convulsed the community during the years 1856 to 1861. The fact that the news of the internal
dissensions took precedence over news of the progress of the Opium War points
to the importance they assumed in the minds of contemporaries. A psychologist would be needed to fathom the mind-set of the principal players in the series of events that were acted out in the local and British press and brought the Hong Kong government to a state of paralysis and Governor Bowring to his knees. The China Mail attempted to analyze the problems:
The Colony has got in to a suspicious, morbid, unhealthy state in which every man is apt to suspect his neighbour�K. In small isolated communities, where there is scarcity of proper excitement and amusement and no great
pressure of competition as at home, the natural instinct for strife is gratified chiefly by assaulting the character of one��s neighbour or else offering devout attention to his wife. Hong Kong being in the first stage, officials here are
especially liable to assault; and the evil has been aggravated by the conduct
of a portion of the mercantile community who affect to take no interest in the colony and who take advantage of this affectation to shirk their duties and
gratify their resentments.
How far this is a fair assessment of the situation is now difficult to tell. A further
factor may have been the uncertainty and insecurity of life in the colony, at a time when misfortunes such as illness, robbers, pirates and bankruptcy lurked ready to pounce on unsuspecting settlers. The catalyst for this unseemly spate of public scandals, Chisholm Anstey, was described in the China Mail as the ��affliction�� that had been sent to Hong Kong. He was said to have combined ��the simplicity and honesty of an angel with the ferocity of a demon and the recklessness of a lunatic��.15 Anstey arrived in January 1856 ��in a diabolical frame of mind��16 to take on the post of attorney general. This is not the place to discuss the turmoil of these years but a brief summary of events is given in sequential order below.
1.
Anstey attacked the chief magistrate, Charles Batten Hillier, for his lack of legal competence.

2.
Anstey attacked the new chief magistrate, W.H. Mitchell, for an alleged misdemeanour in his capacity as sheriff.

3.
Anstey provoked a riot by the heavy-handed way he implemented the Buildings and Nuisances Act, both summoning offenders in his capacity as auxiliary constable and then fining very heavily those summoned to appear in court before him.

4.
Anstey accused the chief justice John Walter Hulme of drunkenness despite his having been cleared of the charge a few years earlier (1847�V48).

5.
Yorick Murrow of the Daily Press was found guilty of libelling Sir John Bowring. Murrow was fined and sent to prison for six months, where he was lodged in debtor��s prison. He continued to attack the government from prison.

6.
The acting colonial secretary, Dr. William T. Bridges, was accused of

corruption in regard to his relations with the opium monopolist whom he was advising in his private capacity as a barrister.

7.
Anstey instigated an enquiry into the conduct of Daniel Caldwell, registrar


general and protector of the Chinese, by declining to sit on the bench with him as a justice of the peace, citing Caldwell��s long connection with a notorious
pirate, Wong Ma Chow, and his involvement in speculations in brothels and
brothel licences.
8. William Tarrant, owner and editor of the Friend of China, was accused of libel by the lieutenant governor of the colony, Major William Caine. He was
defended by Anstey who had already been suspended from being attorney general. He was found guilty and sent to prison. Questions were asked in Parliament. The British premier newspaper, The Times, complained about Hong Kong:
It is always connected with some fatal pestilence, some doubtful war, or some discreditable internal squabble; so much so that, in popular language, the name of this noisy, bustling, quarrelsome, discontented and insalubrious little island, may aptly be used as a euphonious synonym for a place not mentionable for ears polite.
The article continued:
Any attempt to deal judicially with these congeries of intrigues, accusations and animosities here in England must signally fail�K. It is the case for a dictator.17
These scandals would have been of little importance to the history of Hong Kong if they had not, when united with the fear of the Chinese mob, reinforced views, both in England and in Hong Kong, that the governor needed to be in a position of great strength with the backing of the merchants and armed forces if he
was to be effective. The political aspirations of those who would have liked to see
a more democratic kind of government that would have given a voice to the rising
middle classes and even perhaps the richer Chinese, were set back indefinitely.
The animosities and bitterness evoked by the scandals led to some soul searching. The editor of the China Mail blamed the lack of education and narrow interests of the leaders of society combined with the competitiveness of a community that lacked the civilizing outlets of a more settled community:
With wealthy men alone at the head of society, there springs up a system
of ruinous competition. Since everyone is reckoned by his wealth, there is a constant display of luxury and would-be magnificence: well enough for those who can afford it but disastrous to those who cannot.�K Alas for this unfortunate place! There are none of the safety valves by which the extra and dangerous steam of life can escape, and the common engine go its way more easily and more safely. There is neither great space of land, nor diversity of occupation, nor civilized neighbours into whose country a trip can be made. There are none of the thousand civilizers that walk side by side with a man during his life��s journey in Europe; and above all there is no female society.18


The Second Opium War: 1856�V60
The mood in Hong Kong, at the end of 1856, is captured by Dr. William Maxwell Wood, surgeon on the USS San Jacinto who established a hospital for wounded American sailors on the slopes of Wan Chai just above Ah-lum��s E-Sing bakery:
Arrived in Hong Kong, we found the place in great anxiety; most of the British force was up the river. There had been rumours of a general massacre and burning of the city by the Chinese who, even in that English town,
were in overwhelming masses. The $100 value on foreign heads still existed;
the ��Thistle�� (a packet-boat) too, had been captured and burnt; and the
opportunity for plundering the city alone invited to conflagration, so that each
day closed in apprehension as to what might happen before morning, and every day seemed to bring news of some unexpected tragedy. The inhabitants

2.4. Camp of the Sikh Cavalry at Kowloon. (Illustrated London News, 6 October 1860.)

felt more unsafe than if upon a savage frontier, because to treachery and ferocity were added the resources of a great empire and the devices of a partial civilization.19
The mood was not improved
when, on 15 January 1857. Dr. William Wood was urgently called for. ��On both sides of the long ward the men were suffering violent
and distressing illness and all naturally in a state of great alarm��.20 The cause of this distressing illness was the bread baked by the E-Sing bakery. A large quantity of arsenic had been added to the dough and some four hundred Europeans, as well
as the American sailors under Wood��s care, had eaten the arsenic-laden bread for
breakfast. ��The medical men of the Colony, whilst personally in agonies through
the effects of the poison, were hurrying from house to house, interrupted at every
step by frantic summons from all directions��. 21 In the panic, no-one had warned the governor, whose family were badly affected: ��It left its effects for some days in racking headaches, pains in the limbs and bowels etc. In my family, my wife, daughters, three guests, my private secretary and myself, besides several servants, ate of the poisoned bread��.22 Arsenic is said to have got into Lady Bowring��s lungs
and she died of the effects soon after in Devonshire. Luckily the amount of arsenic
added to the bread was too large so it induced vomiting instead of death. Rev. James Legge, who himself ate the bread, ��soon getting rid of all the noxious matter through violent paroxysms of sickness��, thought that ��had Ah-
lum [the owner of the bakery]
been caught at once, he would have been lynched beyond a doubt��.23
The sombre and anxious mood was not lightened by the special supplement of the China Mail of 25 March 1858 which devoted over five pages to the Indian mutiny and the massacre at Cawnpore and the fact that those troops destined for Hong Kong were being diverted to India.

The Second Opium War demonstrated that the Chinese authorities had learnt a lot about Western military expertise from the First Opium War. The opposition was more serious, the casualties worse and the British suffered their first major defeat at the hands of the Chinese at the battle on 25 June 1859, when
they tried to break through the Chinese defences at the mouth of the Pei Ho River
to force their way to Beijing. It was the heaviest defeat suffered by the Royal Navy
throughout the entire nineteenth century, ��with a casualty list exceeding that of the
Battle of St. Vincent against Napoleon in 1797��. 24 Whereas in the First Opium War
only a handful of sailors are commemorated in the Cemetery, in contrast a total of at least 168 sailors are mentioned by name on monuments raised in memory of the
dead from individual ships in this Second Opium War. Among the twenty-four
individual headstones to those who lost their lives in the war, William Thornton Bate [13/8/7], captain of the Royalist, was one of those whose death brought home to the community the seriousness of the situation.
A popular commander and a good officer, he had been in Hong Kong since arriving on HMS Clio at the time of the First Opium War and had even conducted services in the cathedral in the absence of the bishop. He had been instrumental in surveying parts of the China and Borneo coastlines. The captain was respected and liked by the entire community. An officer was overheard saying about Bate,
��My pluck is quite different from Bate��s. I go ahead because I never think of danger;
Bate is always ready for a desperate service because he is always prepared for death��. His death in the attack on the walls of Canton
is described by George Wingrove Cooke,
correspondent of The Times newspaper:
Several high-ranking officers were assembled in a small mud-built cottage outside the walls of Canton. The area
was under heavy fire. It was necessary
that someone should cross the open patch ... and look down into the ditch, to see where the best point, for placing

2.7. Headstone in memory of Captain
the ladders would be. Captain Bate
William Thornton Bate R.N.
at once volunteered to go�K. Bate had run across the open patch and was looking into the ditch when a shot traversed his body.25
Dr. Anderson and his coxswain, who saw him fall, braved the gunfire in an attempt to rescue him, but it was too late: ��The stricken man never spoke again��. His funeral, together with that of a midshipman Henry Thompson [20/16/6], is described in the diaries of another midshipman, Samuel Gurney Cresswell. Thompson, aged seventeen, was killed under the walls of Canton and, according to the inscription on the monument to the sailors who lost their lives while serving on HMS Non Pareil, ��His body is interred beneath this monument��. Cresswell described the scene at the funeral:
The afternoon was lovely, the magnificent bay like a polished mirror, all the ships in the harbour had their flags at half-mast. H.M.S. Tribune��s barge had her band on board, and towed a cutter with the body, the coffin raised well
above the gunwale and the sailors pall (Union Jack) drooping gracefully over
the coffin and boat. Then another cutter with the remains of the poor little
midshipman. As they left, the ��Dove�� and the ��Tribune�� commenced firing minute guns, the barge and cutter passed down the two lines of boats pulling very slowly, the band playing the Dead March of Saul�K. All the troops and marines were fallen in to receive and join the procession ashore. The Bishop
read the funeral service, the volleys were fired over the grave, and we looked
into the narrow home of the gallant fellow that four days before had been on board my ship full of health and vigour.26
Captain Bate��s epitaph reads: ��Mark the Perfect Man and behold / the upright for the end of that man / is Peace��. Bate is also remembered in a plaque on the outside of the cathedral wall on the left-hand side if one is facing the cathedral doors. Three young midshipmen are also buried in the Cemetery, two of whom, Henry L. Barker [10/5/5/] and E.C. Bryan [10/6/1], died at the running battle of
Fat-shan Creek in June 1857. The Royal Navy were aiming to capture or destroy
the mandarin junks at anchor there. The youngest sailor to die in the war and be buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery is fourteen-year-old Vincent Edward Eyre [20/16/5], a midshipman from the Calcutta. In addition to these memorials is the massive monument raised to the Brigade of the Royal Marines [21A/1/7] to commemorate the marines who fought in the war. Their losses totalled 243, of whom 214 were privates. The number of wounded is listed at 220 men. The list of the dead includes the aging Dr. Turnball, chief surgeon of the Expeditionary Force, who was decapitated in Canton after going to the aid of two wounded soldiers.


Individual graves of army officers who lost their lives in the storming of the walls of Canton on 28 December 1857 include three from the 59th Regiment. Ensign T.F. Bowen [4/10/8] was hit by a gingall ball which pierced his chest, coming out close to his spine. Poor Lieutenant Frederick Hacket [4/8/3] had his head cut off. The third, Lieutenant James Cockell [10/1/4] died earlier on board HMS Fury. Two unfortunate officers died in an operation to exact retribution for firing on the flag of truce that had been taken to Namtow at the request of the governor. Captain W.F. Lambert [4/5/3] was climbing the town walls when he was hit and mortally wounded ��by the accidental discharge of a firelock by one of their own men�� as they crowded up the ladder after him. The second, Ensign Robert Danvers [9/3/4] of the 70th Bengal Native Infantry, was also hit by a bullet from one of his own men, a gun lascar, when about to re -embark.27 He was described in the notice
of his death in the China Mail as a ��hero of Quebec��.

Chapter 3 How Early Hong Kong Society Arranged Itself
So as to make sense of the society as it manifests itself in the Hong Kong Cemetery, it is necessary to have a clear idea of how the men and women who made up the early society judged themselves and others and allotted ranks and degrees. The ordering of society in early Hong Kong proceeded on two levels, the formal and informal. The two levels proceeded side by side, categorizing and
fixing the inhabitants�� position in ��That appointed chain, / Which when in cohesion it unites, order to order, rank to rank, / In mutual benefit, / So binding heart to heart��. 1 When this English ideal of hierarchical structure was translated to Hong Kong society, the community there lacked both the numbers needed to interact and the backing of landed wealth and culture that bolstered the rankings back in Britain. The result was a lack of acceptance of people��s rankings, which turned ��the cohesion that unites order to order�� on its head. The society the colony generated seems by any standards to have been peculiarly fractured and fractious. A Petty Juror in a letter to the Friend of China posed the questions concerning the formal and informal ranking system that will be addressed in this book:
Can you tell me, Sir, how is it that some persons are addressed Esquire and
others plain Mister? Can you tell me the necessary qualifications for a special
juror and also for a common juror? Can you tell me the qualification for a Justice of the Peace? Can you tell me what constitutes the gentleman-ship of an enterer or a rider at the Hong Kong races?2
The Formal Level
The formal level followed rules which already existed. A known and promulgated system for ruling the colonies had grown up over more or less a century of British
rule in the West Indies, Canada, Australia, India and Ireland. According to
David Cannadine, ��The regime established in Dublin in 1800 provided a pro-
consular prototype for what was to evolve on the imperial periphery, in India, in the dominions of settlement and eventually in the dependent empire��.3 At a formal level, the hierarchy of government in colonies like Hong Kong had the governor at its apex representing Queen Victoria. He was bolstered by all the pomp and ceremony that went with the position of the representative of the monarch, Queen��s birthdays, Queen��s pardons, birthday honours�� lists, processions, special
dress and so on. For example, on the Queen��s birthday on the 26 May 1859:
The ships in the harbour were all dressed out in colours�K. At twelve to the minute the larger British men-of-war gave a salute of twenty-one guns in thundering style�K. In the evening there was a grand review on the Parade-ground of the troops in the garrison�K. The troops, European and Indian drawn up in a long red line with their colours decorated with garlands �K presenting a front which the Chinese will not easily forget.4
The governor had the sole authority on the formal side to say who should or should not be given any particular rank. Under the governor were the justices of the peace who were always addressed as the ��Honourable�� and were chosen from the ranks of the elite merchants and civil servants by the governor. In Hong Kong, this appointment was almost entirely honorary, the holders being only in the early years occasionally required to sit on the bench. Sir Henry Pottinger had set the precedent when, in June 1843, hoping to gain the support of the merchants, he had appointed almost the entire merchant class to the rank, in a list which included forty-three names. A further division was introduced when ��unofficials�� were elected or chosen from the ranks of the justices to sit on the Legislative Council. As a small sop to those paying taxes and therefore demanding representation, Sir George Bonham allowed the justices to elect two of their members. The
subsequent choice of justices in November 1849 by the governor did not improve
the cohesion of the community:
When Sir George selected fifteen of the unofficial Justices of the Peace,
summoned them to a conference, and thenceforth frequently consulted them collectively or individually, he virtually created �K an untitled commercial aristocracy. Unfortunately this select company had no natural basis of demarcation. Merchants, formerly of equal standing with some of the chosen