Dairy Farm Company employees – a compilation

HF: This newly posted article begins what I hope will become an expanding resource of employees of the well known Hong Kong company, Dairy Farm.

Dairy Farm was set up in 1886 by Sir Patrick Manson, a Scottish surgeon, and five well known Hong Kong businessmen. They initially aimed to improve the health of Hong Kong people by providing them with non-contaminated cows’ milk and to import a herd of dairy cattle so as to decrease the price of milk by more than half. The farm was located in Pok Fu Lam.

If you, or a relative of yours, worked for Dairy Farm I would be delighted to add your information to this compilation of company employees.

Jackson, Peter C. The following was emailed to me by Nick Jackson, Peter Jackson’s son, Nick has also kindly sent the images shown below: My father, Peter C. Jackson was one of the Dairy Farm employees required to work for the Occupation Forces during WWII. He possibly held the title of Assistant Farm Manager, working for Mr Ted Lunson?

I did contribute to the Company History some years ago – as I happened to be on a visit to HK in the mid-1980s and I met with Mr Cameron. The Company kindly arranged for a former manager to take me to see something of what remained in Pokfulam – the Office complex, for example, where I was privileged to meet two employees who had worked with my father.

( A humbling moment occurred when my host later took me into one of the remaining octagonal cowsheds and, as a courtesy, spoke to an employee sweeping up in the milking parlour – at this the old man turned and bowed to me. I asked what the exchange had been about – and he said something akin to, “I explained who you were and why you are here… and he had worked for your father…’)

Have the dams in the hills survived? At some stage my father – who had started in about 1933 – had arranged for simple small concrete dams to be built in gullies in the hills to capture rain water – presumably to serve as a source of water for grazing cattle? I know he would sometimes picnic up there with friends & colleagues.
Might these pools still exist or is the concrete long-perished?

With others, my father helped in re-establishing the Dairy Farm in the difficult days after the war. He married in 1947 and returned to the UK in 1951. However he soon realised that all his experience with Cattle was in the tropics and so departed with his wife and young family on a new adventure in East Africa. He died in 1978, aged 74.

I’m proud that one of my given names is that of a dear friend from his HK days.

This article was first posted on 23rd April 2022.

Related Indhhk articles:

1. The Dairy Farm Ice and Cold Storage Company, HKBRAS article
2. Dairy Farm Company
3. Dairy Farm Company – a timeline
4. Dairy Farm Company – Post WW1, the Japanese occupation and immediately post WW2
5. Dairy Farm, Pokfulam
6. Dairy Farm, Pok Fu Lam – Ming Pao article, effort to preserve what remains…
7. Dairy Farm, Pok Fu Lam, museum – SCMP article
8. Dairy Farm, Pokfulam village – close links to DF 1886, SCMP article