Hello,
A friend in Hong Kong recommended I peruse your Gwulo: Old Hong Kong website.
It looks very rich. However, after I got a temporary pas number (emailed to me by Gwulo) I was unable to use the SEARCH function, I'm not sure why. I would love to be able to use it so perhaps someone can clue me in.
Sincerely, Allen Scheuch
Connecting Photos and Places makes it easier for readers to learn more about the Places shown in a Photo, and to quickly see the photos we have that show a certain Place. eg here are all the photos on Gwulo that have been connected to the Place for Happy Valley Race Course.
There are two different ways to connect a Photo and a Place. The first technique works for photos you've uploaded, while the second works with any photo regardless of who uploaded it.
1. Connect a Photo that you've uploaded
2. Connect any Photo
Two of the photos that David comments on Gwulo include rat bins https://gwulo.com/atom/19435 and https://gwulo.com/atom/19412 Previous correspondence has focused on how late rat bins remained a feature of the Hong Kong landscape. Some current readers still remember them.
My grandfather, Charles Warren, joined the PWD post-Plague in 1895 and spent the first five years of his career as Overseer and Inspector of Nuisances. I’m interested in finding out the nature of his responsibilities, which must have included rat control among them. From what I read in the government reports, although there was a rat bounty of 2 cents per head at the beginning of the century, actual rat bins were not introduced until 1908.
Does anyone know whether the idea of rat bins originated in Hong Kong, or whether they had already been introduced in India? (I see that the Indian Plague Commission’s report of 1908 is referred to) As far as I can tell, rat bins were first introduced in Hong Kong in 1908. I am copying below extracts from the Hong Kong Government reports of 1908 and 1909, which are the first to mention them.
1908 Report
Plague
There was a recrudescence of this disease during the year 1908, the total number of cases being 1,073, as compared with 240 in 1907 and 893 in 1906. It has frequently happened that cases of mild and severe Plague in the Colony have occurred alternately, so that the1908 epidemic may more justly be compared with the 1906 than the 1907 outbreak. (…)
The special staff of rat-catchers was abolished at the end of January, 1908, as it had been found that the cooperation of the Chinese could not thereby be obtained and it was not till near the end of the epidemic that a substitute scheme was adopted by which some 2,000 traps were distributed and several hundred special rat-bins put up throughout the City and Kowloon for the reception of rats caught by the people.
The rats are collected daily from these bins and sent for examination, and if any are infected the locality they come from is known, though not the individual house. This enables the Sanitary Department to watch for warnings of Plague in the different localities and if necessary to adopt special measures.
The reports of the Indian Plague Commission have been duly followed with the result that former measures of the disinfection of houses with disinfectants of the coal tar derivative series have given place to special washing of houses with a flea-killing mixture of water and an emulsion of kerosene oil with soap. Late in the year a large quantity of rat poison was obtained from India and it was decided to keep down the numbers of rats about houses by laying down a very large number of poison baits at one time and to continue to systematically lay down poison throughout the City and Kowloon.
1909 Report
Some 650 small bins have been fixed to telephone and lamp standards throughout the City and Kowloon and in the more important villages for the reception of dead rats. These bins are one-gallon drums with hinged covers and are filled two thirds full with a 5 per cent. solution of carbonated creosote, which is changed once a week. The native population is encouraged to put all rats which they may catch or find dead on their premises into these bins. These bins are visited once daily in the cool weather and twice daily in the hot weather by rat collectors (one for each of the ten health districts) and the rats duly ticketed and delivered to the mortuary for classification and bacteriological examination.
When a plague-infected rat is found in one of these bins, men are especially detailed to fill up all the rat runs in the houses adjoining such bin, rat poison is offered to all the neighbouring householders and special attention is paid to the integrity of all gratings for the exclusion of rats from the houses.
During the year 60,113 were caught or found dead in the city of Victoria and 16,022 in Kowloon; on bacteriological examination 399 of those found in the city and 108 of those from Kowloon were found to be infected with plague.
"Early Photographs of Hong Kong 1860 - 1927, a collection of original photographs"
On show Friday 31 March - Saturday 29th April 2017 at the Wattis Fine Art Gallery, 2/F, 20 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong. Tel. 2524 5302; E-mail. info@wattis.com.hk. www.wattis.com.hk
Sample photos:
I wasn't sure where to post the link to this ebook but here it is:
Picturing Hong Kong: Photography 1855-1910
http://ebook.lib.hku.hk/HKG/B35840201.pdf
Some of the pictures are already posted elsewhere but still a good source.
As part of the preparations for war, certain buildings around Hong Kong were designated as Relief Hospitals, to help cope with the increased number of hospital patients expected during fighting. Where were they located?
Here are mentions of "Relief Hospital" on Gwulo, but please let me know of any mistakes, or of more that I've missed:
KOWLOON
1. La Salle College [ANS]
2. The Peninsula Hotel
HONG KONG ISLAND
1. St. Paul's (Causeway Bay and / or Glenealy) [ANS]
I asked Henry why he thought it may have been St Pauls College in Glenealy, rather than the one in Causeway Bay. He replied:
The reason I think Florrie was posted to a relief hospital located in St Paul’s College which was located next to Bishop’s House in Glenealy is that I don’t think she was in Causeway Bay. This is close to our home in Happy Valley. If she had been in Causeway Bay we would undoubtedly have seen more of her during the battle. Also the hospital in the French Convent complex already existed and was not a relief hospital – it had a permanent staff and many of the nuns worked there, so I don’t think the ANS was involved. And when the battle ended I would have expected Florrie to come straight to us in Happy Valley, but she did not appear until some time after, with her mother (who had been evacuated to Queen Mary Hospital from the relief hospital in the Jockey Club stands), and brought to the door by Dr Selwyn Clarke.
2. Hongkong Hotel, Central [VAD]
3. St. Stephen's College, Stanley [VAD]
4. Stands at Happy Valley Racecourse [ANS]
5. Hong Kong University [???]
Irene Braudé also mentions an Auxiliary Hospital at St Albert's Convent / Rosary Hill. I'm not sure what the difference was between an auxiliary hospital and a relief hospital.
Their appearance c.1908 is described on page 330 of "Twentieth Century Impressions of Hongkong, Shanghai, etc.":
The cathedral contains some excellent examples of stained glass. The east window is filled by a memorial to the late Mr. Douglas Lapraik, who died on March 24, 1869. The subjects—the Crucifixion and the Ascension—are treated with a fine breadth of feeling and colour. The clerestory windows in the choir were presented by Lady Jackson, in 1900. In the north transept is a window to the memory of the late Dr. F. Stewart, a former Colonial Secretary, the subject being the sufferance of the children, whilst in the south transept it has been decided to insert a window as a memorial to the late Bishop Hoare.
The upper portion of this window is designed to show St. John in the Isle of Patmos, writing the Revelations, as instructed by an angel sent from God. In the top centre light appears the Lamb enthroned, and upon the Book with Seven Seals, worshipped by the elders, and surrounded by hosts of angels, who sing, "Amen, blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, and honour and power and might be unto our God for ever and ever." Encircling these are "they which came out of great tribulation,"&c., holding palms (Rev. vii. 14). At the base of the window, pictures relating to the sea are placed; on the left, Christ calling the disciples, St. James and St. John, whilst mending their nets in the boat; in the centre, Christ stilling the tempest; and, on the right, Christ walking upon the sea and appearing to the disciples in the boat. In the window will appear the inscription: "To the glory of God, and in grateful memory of the episcopate of the Right Rev. Joseph Charles Hoare, D.D., fourth Bishop of Victoria. Born November 15th, 1851; consecrated St. Barnabas Day, 1898; died September 18th, 1906." The cost of the window has been borne by the community, and the designs are in the hands of the well-known Westminster firm of Morris & Co. An additional memorial to the late bishop is the brass tablet, erected by his wife. family, and relations in England, which sets forth the tragic manner of his death.
A window depicting the perils of the deep, in memory of Hongkong residents who perished in the wreck of the s.s. Bokhara off the Pescadore Islands, on the night of October 10, 1892, fills one of the smaller lights; another, representing St. Peter receiving the keys, is to the memory of the Hon. Mr. Donall, who died in 1873; a third was erected by the students of St. Paul's College as a tribute to Bishop Smith's devotion to the Colony; and, in a fourth, honour is paid to Elizabeth Frances Higgin and Emma Gertrude Ireland, two hospital sisters, who lost their lives whilst in the execution of their duty during the plague outbreak of 1898. In the baptistry, two windows of exquisite workmanship are erected to the memory of the wife of Edmund Sharp, a former trustee of the cathedral. In the north aisle are two windows presented by the officers and men of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment, "in memory of their comrades who died in China between October 24th, 1858 and December 18th, 1860." A window to the memory of the widow of Henry Kingsmill, depicts women of Old and New Testament mention.
The stained glass was removed during the Japanese occupation, and replaced with clear panes. The pieces of stained glass pieces survived til the liberation of Hong Kong, but were never re-used. Stuart Wolfendale explains:
A. S. Abbott, in combative mode, wrote to the dean about putting an end to 'the jigsaw puzzle games' with the surviving window frag-ments and commissioning a new one. There had even been a suggestion that surviving pieces of the Bishop Hoare memorial window from the south transept could be incorporated into the cast somehow. On 8 August that year, Dean Rose wrote to James Parnell and Sons of London about making a stained glass east window. 'We still have the glass which was removed by unskilled workmen and stored badly. Can it be used again?' he asked. The answer was that it could not." As Marjorie Bray believes, the pieces were thrown away.
Page 190, "Imperial to International: A History of St John's Cathedral Hong Kong"
The trick is to link to the best level - not too broad or too detailed. Let's use a couple of photos from Wellcome Images and Discuss.com.hk as examples.
1. Too broad - the site
You give the website as the source, eg:
Source: Wellcome Images
The problem is that each of these sites has thousands of images, so the reader has a hard time finding out any information about the photo.
2. Too detailed - the image file
You link to the image file, eg:
Source: http://n2.hk/d/attachments/day_151116/20151116_31fb3623dab9c4cc8d9fhw2G3...
The link looks better, but in fact it's worse, as we still don't have any information about the photo or who posted it, and we can't even see that the photo was posted to the discuss.com.hk site.
3. Just right - the page where the image was first posted
For a library site like Wellcome Images, each image has a catalogue page that gives all the information about it that a reader needs. That's the best page to link to, eg
Source: Wellcome Images - http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1187516
For discussion sites like discuss.com.hk or uwants.com, images are loaded directly into the discussions. We're looking for the first post that the image appears on, as that shows who uploaded it, eg:
Source: http://www.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=19871416&page=81#pid430013902
4. Bonus tip - use text reference and link
Links often stop working over time, so if there's any reference shown, mention that too. eg on the page for the Wellcome Image above, I see:
Cite as Wellcome Library no. 29675i
Even if the link stops working, it should be possible to track down the photo if we know the reference number "29675i", eg:
Source: Wellcome Images - their ref: 29675i - http://catalogue.wellcomelibrary.org/record=b1187516
(This article originally appeared in the April 1977 edition of the Peninsula Group magazine, and is reproduced here with their permission.)
He lives in a large house in Kowloon Tong, one of Hong Kong’s fashionable residential districts, watching his plants grow and talking to his parrot who, in-between squawks, utters a civilized “hello”. He’s a big man, hearty despite his 85 years. And he smokes two packs of cigarettes a day. “But I don’t inhale,” he says. “It’s not good for you.”
Clifton James Triggs was, perhaps, The Peninsula’s longest-staying, non-paying resident. As Chief Engineer of The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd., he and his family lived “for some 35 years” in The Peninsula. If anyone knows The Pen, its ghosts, its every nook and cranny, and those of The Repulse Bay Hotel and the old Hongkong and Peak Hotels, Mr Triggs does. “My memory is not good,” he apologises, occasionally referring to a list he has made of important events during his career with the company. In fact, his memory is very good.
He remembersJames Taggart, the company’s director for many years before his retirement shortly before the Second World War, as a kind, generous man with a fine mind. “Because he was a Scotsman,” he adds with a smile. Mr Triggs is Scottish, too, in part. His mother was Maori and Scottish and his father, English. He was born in 1892, in Mandalay, Burma, and spent 14 years there before being sent to Dumbarton, Scotland, to study engineering. In 1924, while working on a merchant ship as First Engineer, he met Mr Taggart, who was sailing to Indonesia to purchase French liqueurs for the hotels in Hong Kong. “I got to know him,” he recalls, “and he offered me a job”.
“’How much are you getting?’ he asked me.
“’$2,000.’”
“’Suppose I double it?’ he asked. “Will you work for me?’
“”Certainly, sir,’ I said, and he gave me his card and said I could stay in The Hongkong Hotel when I got off the ship. When I arrived in Hong Kong I had no money. He was so kind to me. Gave me a month’s salary in advance and showed me where I could stay. Of course, I showed him I could work, too.” Thus began an excellent working relationship.
After one year, Mr Triggs was made Chief Engineer of the Company and Mr Taggart doubled his pay. “He was a good man,” says Mr Triggs. “Do you know, when he retired, he gave me 500 shares in the company. I still have them today. Though now, of course they’re worth much more than they were then.”
The year Mr Triggs was made Chief Engineer, 1925, was an eventful one for Hong Kong and The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. “There was a big strike that year,” Mr Triggs recalls. Hong Kong labourers, believing they could get higher wages in China, quit their jobs and attempted to cross the border. “When some of our staff walked out I remember being in my quarters and finding out there was no one in Repulse Bay to manage to heating system. I had to find someone and show him how to operate it so the guests could have hot water.” That was a minor event for the company compared to a fire the same year that destroyed a good part of the old Hongkong Hotel. “That used to be the hotel in Hong Kong.” Mr Triggs remembers. “All the big shots in town would meet and entertain there. After the fire, it was renovated and they made an even better hotel of it, with a roof garden and modern architecture.
The pride of the company, however, was no doubt The Majestic Hotel in Shanghai. Sent up there to repair the floating dance floor in the ballroom, Mr Triggs remembers it as a “beautiful hotel. Its art and designs were gorgeous and most expensive. And it had a lovely garden with beautiful flowers. It used to be called The Paradise of the East.”
In late 1925, The Peninsula was nearing completion when labour unrest in Shanghai led to strikes against foreign-owned business. The Coldstream Guards were sent out to protect British interests and they commandeered The Peninsula before it had the chance to open. “When they handed the hotel back to us,” says Mr Triggs, “we practically had to completely renovate. I think they must have kept their guns in the bathtubs, which had to be replaced on all floors. And the army boots were very rough on the floors. The army paid for the repairs, but it took some time before they left and the hotel opened in 1928.
“That was a day!” he reminisces. “December 11th, 1928. They made more money that day than they ever expected to make. People came in to buy drinks and food. A lot of the food had been imported. Everyone was enjoying it.”
During the Second World War, the Japanese occupation army took over The Peninsula and The Repulse Bay Hotel. Mr Triggs meanwhile moved his family out of The Peninsula and into his sister-in-law’s house on Hong Kong Island. “When the Japanese took over,” he recalls, “I went home to stay put and after one week they came up and took me in a truck to The Peninsula with bayonets all around me. They were very nice to me. They knew I was shivering in my pants. They showed me the refrigeration system. A very nice officer drew his sword and saluted me. I thought he was going to cut off my head. But instead he said to me, in perfect English, ‘You see this machinery was damaged by somebody. I want you to make it right.’ I said yes and then he became very friendly. He was very stern at the start.
“So I examined the machinery. I told him the material I wanted and got all the machinery running in one week’s time – the refrigeration, plumbing, sewerage had all been damaged. I worked for them for one year. But they didn’t trust me. Wherever I went, they always had a guard go with me."
After a year, Mr Triggs got permission to go with his family to Macau, where he spent the remainder of the war working as an independent engineer. When the Japanese had gone, he returned to Hong Kong, and to the Company.
One of the Company’s casualties from the war was The Peak Hotel, which once stood near where the Peak Tower now stands. Mr Triggs remembers it as a very comfortable hotel, with fire places in every room, resembling an old English home. It had to be abandoned during the occupation because of the heavy shelling it had undergone during the fighting. After the war, the property was sold and the building torn down.
Mr Triggs remembers Hong Kong’s labour strike of 1962, when he had to recruit his wife and her friends to help out in the kitchen of The Peninsula, much to the guests’ delight.
Former Manager of The Peninsula, Mr. Leo Gaddi, placed a
chef's hat on Mr. Trigg's head as he put the finishing touches
on his daughter's birthday cake in the Hotel's kitchen.
He remembers intrigues in the hotels and other events, which seem rosier in retrospect, such as the time a disposal pipe burst over him in The Repulse Bay and he had to make a beeline for the beach.
The charm and graciousness of The Repulse Bay Hotel remain to this day,
over 20 years after this photograph was taken on the Hotel's Verandah.
In 1968, he fell from a ladder at home and broke his leg. Though the company was still growing, with the construction of the new Hongkong Hotel, and needed a man of his experience, it was too difficult for him to manage. After 43 years with the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd., Mr Triggs retired.
Thanks to the late Dan Waters for holding on to these old magazines, to Annemarie for finding them a new home, to Phil for scanning and transcribing the article, and for The Peninsula for letting us give the article a second lease of life here on Gwulo.
If you remember Mr Triggs, please let us know in the comments below!
Readers ask for information (photos, facts, memories, etc.) about:
New on Gwulo.com this week:
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Notes & resources for a discussion:
Introduction
Gwulo is a community of people building an online record of Hong Kong's history. See Directory for main themes, Gwulo in 2017 for stats.
Old paper maps
We use old maps to answer questions. eg
Online maps & database
We combine Gwulo's database with modern online maps. eg
Combine old paper maps with modern database
We combine the two:
Summary
The SMO is a good source for historic maps of Hong Kong. The SMO kindly spent time to explain their services to me. Here's a summary of my understanding:
1. Finding the map you want
1.1 1:600 scale topographic maps, c.1922-1970s.
There are two sets of sheets. The first covers the years c.1922-c.1935, the second covers c.1935-1970s. Not all maps are available for all years.
You can see an outline of what each sheet covers, and view a low-resolution copy of each sheet online. Start at https://www1.hkmapservice.gov.hk, choose your language, (if you see a "Checking for configuration..." with a scary-looking alert notice, just click "Continue") and you should reach the "Hong Kong Map Service" website.
Click Paper Map Product > Products > Topographic maps. Choose the series you are interested in and click the green arrow. Now zoom in on the map to see the reference number for the sheet covering the area you are interested in, choose that sheet from the drop-down list, and click the green arrow. It shows a list of years available for that sheet. Click the magnifying glass icon on the line for the year you are interested in to see a low-resolution copy of the sheet.
If you follow the same procedure on one of the SMO's map kiosks, they show you high-resolution copies of the sheet. You can either note down the information you need, or order a copy of the sheet. Kiosks are available at all of the map sales outlets.
1.2 Other historic maps, 1845-1970
The SMO also have an assortment of approximately 400 maps of Hong Kong from the 19th & 20th century. To see these, you need to visit the Map Publications Centre (23/F, North Point Government Offices, 333 Java Road, North Point. Mon-Fri 08:45 a.m. – 05:30 p.m.)
At the counter you can either ask for the "Index of historical maps" (a printed spreadsheet listing details of all the maps), or the "samples of historical maps" (folders with printed, reduced-size copies of all the maps).
You can note down the information you need from the samples, or order a copy of the sheet. The printed copies are larger than the samples.
2. Ordering a copy of the map for private research
The 1:600 maps can be ordered online from the Hong Kong Map Service website described in 1.1 above, or at any map sales outlet. The other historic maps should be ordered at the Map Publications Centre.
You can order a printed copy @ HK$47 per sheet. (Digital copies of these historic maps are not available to purchase.)
3. Posting a map online to Gwulo or another website
The SMO have two different processes, depending upon who was the original publisher of the map. You can find the publisher for each map by looking it up in the "Index of historical maps".
3.1 Publisher is The Government of HKSAR
Maps in this category have one of the following descriptions for "Publisher" in the "Index of historical maps":
The Government charges for the display of any of their maps online, even their historic maps. This is explained on their "Internet Map Permittee (IMP) Service" page.
I don't have the resources (cash & manpower) to handle the administration of this, so for now we cannot show historic maps where the publisher is The Government of HKSAR.
3.2 Publisher is not The Government of HKSAR
Maps in this category have one of the following descriptions for "Publisher" in the "Index of historical maps":
In this case, once we have ordered a copy we have to work out whether the original publisher allows the map to be displayed on a public website or not. As the maps are so old I believe there won't be any problem with this, but we'll have to investigate for each the different publishers listed above.
Congratulations to Patricia for a very successful book launch last night.
The launch was hosted by the Irish Consulate here in Hong Kong, and they did a marvellous job. Here's their Consul General, Peter Ryan, giving an introduction:
Patricia also spoke, telling us about the "Fairytale beginning" to the whole project:
Then it was time to for me to catch a photo with the stars of the evening, Patricia and her new book:
More information about Patricia's book: Policing Hong Kong – An Irish History
Ellen Hunter:
I am wondering about the events occuring at the time of my relative's death in November of 1944. She was buried at the Catholic Cemetery, and an inscription was added to her mother's grave which is also located there. They appear to both be in Section 3 of Saint Michael's. Her mother, Emma Hunter is in grave #5877 and is listed in the register as James Hunter, Female, age 56 ( assuming Mrs ) interred June 15 1933. Her daughter Ellen was interred Nov 21 1944. and is registered as grave #9347 but she buried with a Chinese name. The two graves are cross-referenced to each other in the register book. Ellen Hunter's obituary lists both her English name and a Chinese name. Strangely, the obit has just three characters, but the register at the cemetery has four. I am told that the extra character represents her married name "NG" but she was not married. Her obit lists her as a spinster with out the "NG" character. I wonder, and I am somewhat amazed that a record even exists today, since Nov of 1944 Hong Kong was under Japanese control. She does not appear on the internment list for Stanley Camp as far as I know, at least not as "Ellen Hunter" So, where was she living? Her father and other family were dead or in camps in Shanghai. I say that she was "Eurasian" but that is an assumption due to her name. Her father was James Hunter, ( now confirmed as probably having Asian blood ) and one of the four children of "Anne Hunter" alias Goot Choy, Kot Choy, etc who appears under a seperate heading on this website. The four children are all assumed to have had some Asian genetics as it has been passed down the line in a significant enough percentage to leave little doubt. This search has turned into a real mystery and I go many months without any clues at all. I recntly stubled across a couple of clips from the South China Morning Post again, and that's what got be back in the driver's seat. The cemetery regisrty books are on Familyseach.org. Any help that anyone can offer would really be appreciated. I will try to add some clips if I can remember how.
Thanks so much,
Brian Hunter Beesley
Hi All
does anyone know what has happened to the apartments in Magazine Gap rd. I remember you had to reach the flats by travelling in this old lift going up at a 45 degree angle.
Thanks
Michael
A page for any notes about the project to document Hong Kong's cinemas
Hello! Does anyone know what year the iron gate on Stubbs Road that leads into Hong Kong Cemetery was built? I'm sorry I don't have a picture yet, but I'll try to find the time to take one next week. I have enquired at the Hong Kong Cemetery and the HK Museum of History, but no one knows. There is no date marked on the gate either. I would be so grateful to find out! Thanks in advance!
I have failed to find any reference or photos of the Married Quarters on Sunderland Road, Kowloon Tong. These were on the east side of Wateloo Road and north side of Hereford Road.
Tom Powell
