Forgotten Souls: A Social History of the Hong Kong Cemetery

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

The T urning 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 workhungry 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 Chapter 2 Events Affecting Hong Kong as They Involved the Lives of People Buried in the Hong Kong Cemetery Lim_txt.indd 59 28/12/2010 4:15 PM Forgotten Souls 60 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-singmoon 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 agentgeneral 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 2.1. Headstone in memory of Charles and Hugh, sons of John G. Austin-Gardiner, immigration agent for British Guiana and the West Indies and later a leading member of the Hong Kong government. Lim_txt.indd 60 28/12/2010 4:15 PM [3.131.13...