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Doctors, lawyers, architects and newspaper editors are included in this group. All four professions while continuing to practise privately at this date, moved into and out of government service as needed. The conflicts of interests that arose from this anomaly underlay some of the scandals that rocked the colony in the later years of this period. For example as mentioned earlier, Dr. W.T. Bridges, a barrister, was in his private capacity representing the Chinese opium farmer in an enquiry into malpractices at the same time that he was acting as colonial secretary. At this period, professionals did not enjoy high status in society. They moved in much the same circle as the second echelon of civil servants and the wealthier tradesmen. They lived in modest houses around Queen’s Road, D’Aguilar Street and Hollywood Road. Only three lawyers are found in the Hong Kong Cemetery from this period. The charges for their services were high, particularly to the Chinese who needed their help to defend themselves from little understood and sometimes unfair cases brought against them in court. Most lawyers made good money and had the necessary funds to pay their passages back to Britain if illness threatened. The first to be buried in the Cemetery was James Brown [10/8/3], a solicitor of the Supreme Court and public notary. He was articled to William Gaskell [16Cii/7/14], who practised in Hong Kong from 1846 to his death in 1868, by which time he must have been one of the longest practising professionals in the colony. Brown was admitted locally in 1855, becoming a partner in the firm Gaskell & Brown in 1857, but he died in the same year, aged thirty-five. He was one of the first hundred men to volunteer for military training in the face of the Russian threat in 1854. He himself was prosecuted and fined $25 for flogging an unfortunate Chinese bookbinder. The bookbinder happened to share his shop with a shoe-maker whose night-time tap-tapping had disturbed Brown’s sleep. 1 The second lawyer, John Day [20/19/1] from Milverton in Somerset, who died in September 1858 aged thirty-nine from an attack of acute dysentery, was a barrister from the Middle Temple. He arrived in Hong Kong in 1855. He was asked to be Chapter 6 Professionals Lim_txt.indd 143 28/12/2010 4:15 PM Forgotten Souls 144 examiner in the first Caldwell inquiry and then, in August 1857, was appointed attorney general. According to his obituary he kept aloof from colonial matters and was therefore all the more trusted for his ‘common sense, legal acumen and gentlemanly feeling…. It would be well if we all considered how mean, how miserable our petty strivings for wealth, influence and position are, and sought more singly to live worthy lives’. 2 The heartfelt finishing lines of the obituary sum up the editor’s feelings about animosities that plagued the colony at the time of his death. Day was succeeded by Frederick Green [4/7/7], another practising barrister, who first joined the government from the private sector as deputy attorney general in 1855. Illness had affected the performance of Day’s duties and on his death ‘the vast mass of documents to be dealt with and arrears of business were passed over to Mr. Green’. He may have been overwhelmed by the amount of work because only three months later Green resigned on the grounds of ill health and died in February 1862. The only architect from this period, Thomas Larkin Walker Esq. [10/5/2], has a fine carved headstone that must have impressed John Smithers [40/4/7], the sexton, whose headstone is an almost exact replica. Walker, who had a private practice, was co-opted locally to act as deputy surveyor when the surveyor general, Charles St. George Cleverly, was absent on leave recuperating from illness. He was responsible for the surveyor’s report in the Blue Book of 1856. In May 1860, he was nominated by the governor to sit on the board of cathedral trustees together with the colonial secretary, William Mercer, Cleverly, and Henry Kingsmill, a barrister, whose wife, Frances Kingsmill [40/5/4], is buried in the Cemetery. 3 A short account of the profession of journalism is included here because of its importance in the colony, although no journalists from this period are found in the Cemetery. John Carr, the second editor of the Friend of China, described the position...

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