HF: Can anyone supply further information about The Oriental Construction Company which the 1905 advert below says were Consulting and Supervising Engineers and Contractors with branches in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Manila. The ad says the company were specialists in railways, mines, water supplies, reinforced concrete and concrete piles. Their 1905 Hong Kong office was in the Alexandra Buildings. This […]
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Elizabeth Ride has sent the Naval section of a British Army Aid Group (BAAG) Waichow Intelligence Summary (WIS 19) dated 17th February 1943. This covers shipping movements in and out of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation in World War Two during early February 1943 (? Only two items have a date attached.) These reports also describes time spent by vessels […]
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HF: “The third reservoir in Hong Kong, the Wong Nai Chung Reservoir, was built at Tai Tam Reservoir Road in Wong Nai Chung in 1899. The reservoir dam followed the topography of the valley. It was 50 feet high, 270 feet long and was boomerang-shaped. The reservoir had a small water storage capacity of just 27 million gallons, only 38% […]
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A tenuous, but intriguing, connection to Hong Kong’s disposal of sewage and refuse in around the 1880s. Can anyone confirm this link and suggest which of William Warner’s methods were adopted here? “The firm of Goddard and Massey started with Henry Goddard and appears to have had its origins in Nottingham between c1844-48. In 1848 Henry Goddard is listed as an ironmonger […]
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“Only one person has ever been given a jail sentence – and that was suspended – since incarceration was included in the industrial safety law in 1989, even though hundreds of workers have been killed while transforming Hong Kong into a modern city. The confirmation by the Labour Department prompted calls from labour activists for Hong Kong to learn from […]
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“Ingham Sutcliffe who had only recently set up in business as a consulting engineer in Siam, was previously engaged as assistant chief mechanical engineer and superintendent of workshops on the Royal State Railways of Siam. He had held this appointment since 1919 and resigned from government service in 1930. He was born at Bradford in 1880, and after serving as […]
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Elizabeth Ride has sent the Naval section of a British Army Aid Group (BAAG) Waichow Intelligence Summary (WIS 18) dated 12th February 1943. This covers shipping movements in and out of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation in World War Two during late January 1943. Apologies for the poor legibility of the report. These reports also describes time spent by vessels […]
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HF: Ricky Rowe, from Scotland, has sent these photographs showing a presentation at the retirement from Kowloon (HK & Whampoa) Docks of A M Calman on 30th July 1948. I presume Mr Calman is the gentleman wearing white trousers in the centre of the front row. And judging by the turnout he was a reasonably senior figure at the Dock. […]
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Ho Fan’s 何藩, extraordinary black and white photographs have appeared in several SCMP articles, linked below. He was born in Shanghai in 1937 where he started to take photographs when he was very young. He says the first thing he shot was the Bund taken with a Brownie, a “very simple, old-fashioned camera”. He immigrated with his family to Hong […]
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Elizabeth Ride has sent the Naval section of a British Army Aid Group (BAAG) Waichow Intelligence Summary (WIS No.17) exact date unknown but January 1943. This covers shipping movements in and out of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation in World War Two during January 1943. Please note the first page of this report has been deemed restricted by the Ministry […]
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