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Chapter 13: Women and Children
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
- Chapter
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The average age of death of the fifty-four women, including the four army wives, found in the Cemetery for this period is just over thirty-one years. Twenty of the fifty-four died in their twenties, four were under forty, and six died between the ages of forty and fifty-seven, the fifty-seven-year-old being Sarah Murphy [9/8/13], the tough wife of a colour sergeant. The pattern of young deaths points to the vulnerability of women living in Hong Kong, whatever their social ranking. This was demonstrated to all in 1852 when Bishop Smith preached the Sunday sermon on the uncertainty of life. 1 Three wives had died within four days of each other. Rosalia Clarincia Gordon [9/10/6], the wife of Robert Gordon, who was one of the original ninety-nine volunteers and probably a manager at the Hong Kong Club, died of dysentery on 1 February 1852. Sarah Ann Markwick, wife of the auctioneer, Charles Markwick and daughter of another auctioneer, J.B. Watson, succumbed aged thirty-three on the same day. 2 The third of the trio was Caroline Preston [9/9/7], the wife of Dr. William Preston, one of the dispensers at the Hong Kong Dispensary. She was the daughter of a solicitor from Southsea near Portsmouth, She had arrived in January and survived in Hong Kong less than one month, dying on 3 February aged thirty-one years. It is easy these days to forget to what an extent women were slaves to their reproductive systems. In this period, giving birth so far from home, in unhygienic conditions and without the help of trusted mothers or midwives, must have been a risky, frightening and lonely event. Chapter 13 Women and Children 13.1. Headstone in memory of Caroline, wife of Dr. William Preston, apothecaryd, d. January 1852. Lim_txt.indd 269 28/12/2010 4:16 PM Forgotten Souls 270 Yet some European women in Hong Kong gave birth almost yearly. Isabella Dundas Cay [40/3/1] arrived in July 1845 with three sons and a daughter and two female servants, a year after her husband, Robert, the Scottish registrar general. She then proceeded to add to her family year by year. Albert arrived in 1846, George in 1848, Margaret in 1849, Isabella in 1850 and Dundas in 1851. Isabella died in 1851 aged forty-one years, having given birth to nine children. She is buried together with her youngest son in the centre of the largest plot in the entire cemetery. The wide granite railings enclose such a large area that the flat ledger stone in the centre looks quite insignificant. There are numerous examples in the Cemetery of women succumbing to childbirth, or becoming weakened in health due to childbirth. A sad epitaph records the death in September 1860 of Mrs. Hotson [9/3/9], the wife of a sergeant in the Royal Regiment. She was born in Gibraltar, and was only twenty-four years old when she died ‘leaving an infant fifty-eight days old to lament her irretrievable loss’. 3 The father was in North China on his way to the sacking of the Summer Palace. When Mary Federica Irwin [16Ci/4/9], wife of the colonial chaplain, died in July 1857, it was said in her obituary: Mrs Irwin was far from strong at any time after the birth of her last child some fifteen months ago; though the immediate cause of her disease was dysentery, labouring under which she was confined to her room for ten days only. When two or three Sundays ago, it was remarked of the upper notes in the chant of the Te Deum that they were given with a force and thrill through the holy pile never before heard, little thought those who then attended St John’s Cathedral that so soon the voice of the singer would be hushed in the gloom of the grave. 4 Rev. James J. Irwin soon married again and his second wife, Emma Maria [16Ci/4/10], died in January 1861, aged only twenty-one years. The two wives are buried in a joint family plot. 13.2. Bodystone and kerbs in memory of Isabella, wife of Robert Dundas Cay, registrar general, d. 1852. Lim_txt.indd 270 28/12/2010 4:16 PM [44.212.39.149] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:55 GMT) Women and Children 271 The deaths of a number of the husbands of women living in Hong...