City Hall, Coolies, and the Peak Tram

A few weeks back we saw a view of Pedder Street, one of a set of four photos. Today we'll look at the other three, starting with this view of the old City Hall [1] and Dent's fountain [2].

City Hall straddled the sites of today's Old Bank of China and HSBC buildings. The HSBC end of the building housed a theatre, the Theatre Royal [3]. You can see a couple of "TONIGHT' signs for the theatre's shows on the columns at the left:

There's an interesting note on the back of the photo:

So whoever bought it was performing there. Who could it have been?

One possibility is The Hongkong Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC) [4], as they put on shows there each year. The advert above was for a show in 1908, and here's a photo of them performing at the Theatre Royal in 1918:

But the ADC was made up of Hong Kong residents, which rules out whoever bought these photos. Their note on the Pedder Street photo showed they were just visiting.

Here's the Pedder Street photo again:

The building site on the left gave us c.1908 as the date the photo was taken, so were there any overseas performers visiting Hong Kong at that time?

I found a mention in The China Mail for January that year [5]. They reported the opening of the "Mother Goose" pantomime at the Theatre Royal, performed by the Pollard Lilliputian Company from Australia. As the name suggests, they were a troup of child actors. I doubt any of the children would have bought these photos, but there's a chance one of the adult members of the troup would have.

Only a very slim chance though, as the other two photos in the set show we can't rely on the 1908 date. The third photo they bought is this view looking up the Peak Tram tracks.

A couple of bridges mark the location of this photograph. First is the bridge in the foreground that carries the tram lines across Kennedy Road. It is shown by a gap in the embankment:

The other is the Macdonnell Road bridge, crossing the tracks just above the tram.

If this photo was taken in 1908, I think we'd see Kingsclere [6] on the right of the photo. It was a large building on the hill between Kennedy and Macdonnell Roads, built around 1900. It is clear to see in this 1911 postcard:

Kingsclere is the large, light-coloured building above the tram, and the pink building behind it is the building to the right of the tram in the black & white photo.

One more clue that the black & white photo was an old one is the line running down the photo, starting about two thirds of the way across the top. Whoever printed the photo was using an old glass negative that had a crack in it, and it's the crack that makes that line. I guess the photo is from the 1890s.

The last photo shows two cheerful men carrying water:

The handwritten note on this one just says "Coolies", so not much to go on. But remember in the 1908 photo, one of the clues to its date was this man's hairstyle:

He still had the queue and shaved forehead that identifies the photo as one taken before the 1911 revolution. At first glance, the two men in the "Coolies" photo have a full head of post-revolution hair. But looking closely at the man on the left, his hair is very short at the front and he's got a few strands of much longer hair visible at the back:

Could it be that this photo was also taken before 1911? Maybe the men in the countryside took a more relaxed "once a month whether it needs it or not" approach to shaving their foreheads?

To wrap up, these four photos came from a small set bought by a performer visiting Hong Kong. It's not clear exactly when they were bought, but certainly no earlier than 1908.

If you can spot any thing else of interest in the photos, please let us know in the comments below.

Regards, David.

References:

1. City Hall (first generation) [1869-1936]
2. Dent's Fountain [1864-1933]
3. Theatre Royal
4. The Hong Kong Amateur Dramatic Club [1860-c.1941]
5. "MOTHER GOOSE" AT THE THEATRE ROYAL, reported on page 4 of The China Mail, 1908-01-03.
6. Kingsclere / Kingsclere Hotel [c.1901-1923]