Can anyone help with some information? My partner claims his Mother's Aunt's husband's first wife was the last woman to be executed in Hong Kong. There is some truth to this, but I suspect she wasn't the last... All I know is that this execution took place in Hong Kong in the late 1940s, and it involved a woman who poisoned her children and workers in the shop the family owned in Western district. The husband survived, went on to remarry and had a second family. The first wife was seldom if ever dicsussed. <Read more ...>
Colonial rugby. Hong Kong in the Early Sixties. John D'Eathe shares his memories of rugby in Hong Kong during the years 1958-66. It was an exciting time, with rugby changing from a game played between the various teams in Hong Kong, to a one with a much more international flavour.
Missing copies of the Wartime Diary emails.
The Wartime Diary emails weren't sent out on four days last week, while the Gwulo website was being moved to a new server. If you'd like to fill in the gaps, here are the missing pages. (The 1945 dates cover the news of Germany's surrender reaching the Stanley Camp internees.)
The move to the new server is all finished - apologies that it took several days rather than the several hours I'd originally expected. As far as I can tell everything is working properly, but please let me know if you find anything is broken.
The new server gives us additional RAM and disk storage, so we'll be able to run the old and new versions of the website at the same time during the upgrade.
I've spent the last week getting the Diaries working on the new site, and also made some improvements that make it easier to navigate a diary's pages. Next on the to-do list are Timelines and Events.
The hosting company has finished moving the Gwulo website to the new server. It has more RAM and storage available, in preparation for the upcoming website upgrade.
Everything should be working the same as it did on the old server, but if you see any problems then please let me know.
Sir John Keswick had instructed me to “see the old Empire” on the way. So early in 1958 I arrived in The Crown Colony of Hong Kong, first class on the MV Victoria; heady stuff for a 22 year old! I was joining Hongkong Land Co. and they housed me in their central Gloucester Hotel. <Read more ...>
1958-65: Creating the first Mandarin Hotel. John D'Eathe worked at Hongkong Land during that period, and gives a detailed account of how the hotel came to be. (Also see this video taken during the hotel's construction.)
Upgrade update: A slight change of plan - I've finished the core pages for Photos, Places, and People, and had originally planned to open up the new site for feedback when I got this far. I've decided it is better to get the rest of the pages (Organisations, Streets, etc.) working before I open up the new site, then I can concentrate on responding to feedback instead of trying to juggle that with finishing the other pages. I'm currently working on the 'Book / Document', and 'Page(s) from Book / Document', and then will work my way through the other page types until they are all done.
At the same time I've put in an order to the hosting company to move us to a larger server, so it has enough space to host both the current and the upgraded websites at the same time. The Gwulo website will be offline for several hours during the middle of this week, while the hosting company makes the changes.
Places
Kowloon
LizB has been busy documenting Kowloon's industrial sites. If you can add any photos, facts or memories to these places, please click through to their page and leave a comment there.
In 1958, Hong Kong was a relatively quiet British Colony coping with effects of some changing political arrangements in China, hidden behind its borders. The population had grown to an unprecedented 2.5 million people. The Japanese occupation was still a topic of conversation. The territory was far more isolated in every sense than it is now. The economy was generally weak. <Read more ...>
Upgrade update: I'm still working on the new site's Person page. This week's rabbit hole was a bug that stopped me adding photos to the page. In the end it turned out the photos weren't causing the problem at all, and instead the bug lies in some new date-picker software I'm using. Finding the real cause is what took the time, then thankfully the fix is quite straightforward. Onwards!
A note even though all libraries are closed at the moment. There may be bed mites in the spines of the books. That includes ALL books in local public libraries as they are being circulated around the city. Once those bugs got into your home, you may not recognize it immediately. You may not notice it untils months later until they are grown. <Read more ...>
Henry Qualtrough was a good friend of mine and we saw a lot of each other in the early 1960s through rugby. In my early days he was a colony selector and kindly selected me a couple of times to play for the colony.After that he ran the referees and I became secretary of the union so we drank a lot of beer together! For a fun account of those times Read "Tokkie Smith and the colour of rugby" , a historical rugby book I wrote leading up to the Hongkong Sevens. It's easy to get on Amazon kindle. Cheers John D'Eathe, West Vancouver. <Read more ...>
