What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General

• The 'Peak Tram Passing Loop' is where the ascending and descending Peak Trams pass each other. How it works is explained in What keeps the Peak Tram on the tracks and avoids halfway collisions?
   
• Walking down from the Peak via the tram tracks after a typhoon
   
• I was very sorry to hear that Bill Lake passed away this week. We're indebted to Bill for his labour of love untangling John Charter's wartime journal to make it readable - it is one of the key wartime diaries here on Gwulo. But I'll also miss catching up with him and Phil, to be regaled with tales from Bill's very colourful life. R.I.P.
   
• Readers ask:
  • Why is Gwulo's spell-check feature often disabled?
     
  • Who was the J. W. McCleod who appears on the KCC's Roll of Honour?
     
  • Looking for photos of the Central Escalator Link Alley Shopping Arcade, before it was re-developed into Street Food Central.
     
  • Looking for information on Admiralty's 'golden clock', the original 'Gum Jung'
     

  • Can you identify anyone in this photo. HKU c. 1929 

    

     

  • Hoping to contact the families of C. H. Jackson (father) & Thomas Jackson (son), and George Ahmed. They were involved in the s/s Sai On incident in Macau on August 19, 1943, and are shown in the photo below: 

    

Places

Back in July 2010 I sent out a newsletter titled: Untapped history - can you help? 

I’d found that the old Jurors Lists were valuable resources for researching Hong Kong’s history, but the scans of the original documents were difficult to search. Here’s a sample page from the 1940 Jurors list:

Imagine squinting your way through pages and pages like that, trying to find a building name. Wouldn’t it be great if we could convert them to a text format like this:

That would be so much easier to search, and also expose the lists to a wider audience by making them accessible to Google, Bing, etc.

I asked Gwulo’s readers for help: if they could type up a scanned page and email it to me, I’d assemble all the parts into a year's list and post it here on Gwulo. The first list we completed together is the Jurors List for 1894.

Naively I thought we’d complete the project in a year or so. Instead, it has taken nearly 16 years!

That's partly because the amount of work to process a list varies immensely. The shortest list is from 1856, and fits on a single printed page:

While the longest is the 1940 list I mentioned above. It runs to 84 pages!

So it has taken a while, but we have finally typed up all 1,769 pages. On Tuesday I posted the last list here on Gwulo, and I’m very happy to report we now have searchable text copies of the Jurors Lists from 1854 right through to 1941.

Thank you to Hong Kong University for making the scanned copies of the original lists available as part of their Hong Kong Government Reports Online (HKGRO) project. We couldn't have started without them.

And of course a huge thank you to everyone who has given their time to type up pages from the lists to help future researchers. I’ll post a full list of everyone who contributed below.

Best wishes,

David

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General

• Voume 5 of my book series Old Hong Kong Photos and The Tales They Tell is back in stock at Amazon UK (affiliate link).
   
• Dr Patrick Hase's upcoming talk in London has been rescheduled from 13 June @ 2:30pm to 20 June @ 2:15pm - full details & how to book.
   
• A list of scanned copies of publications related to Eurasians in Hong Kong
   
• Hu Shih's whirlwind visit and talks in Hong Kong (1935)
   
• If you visit the Gwulo website and look at the top of your web browser, you'll see that the browser tab now shows the Gwulo logo, making it easier to spot if you have many tabs open.
   
• Readers ask:
  • Looking for any memories of sailing on the Fairstar cruise ship
     
  • Is the 1990s address '180 Nan Shan Village Sai Kung' given in the Probate for Christopher Paul D'Almada E Castro the same as the present-day '180 Nam Shan San Tsuen Road'?
     
  • Where was the exact location of the Quan Lee Shipyard or Quanlee Shipyard? It is believed to have been somewhere in Yau Ma Tei.
     

  • Is the lady in the photo below Princess Alexandra from the UK, or Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands?

    

Places

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General

• Too Hot for Comfort - War Years in China 1938-50: extracts from Bill Ream's memoir of the war years in Hong Kong.
   
• What the chimneys on the wartime stoves above Quarry Bay looked like.
   
• Hedda Morrison's photos of Hong Kong from 1946-7
   
• Readers ask:
  • Looking for any information, photographs, memoirs, documents about the Greek population of Hong Kong from the 19th to the 20th century.
     

  • What is the origin & purpose of these concrete footprints?

    

     

  • Looking for information about Hong Kong artist Cheung Chung Tak (張宗德?):
    • Does anyone know who Cheung Chung Tak was, and whether he was a well-known artist in Hong Kong?
    • Was it common in the 1970s for Hong Kong artists to travel abroad and paint in front of live audiences?

    • Does anyone have records of similar paintings or exhibitions organised through 73 Lorne Street, Auckland around that period?
       

      

Places

What's new and updated on the Gwulo website:

General

• Argyle Street POW Association Directory (1968)
   
• Argyle Street POW Association Directory (1977)
   
• Connections of Botanic Gardens with the world, 1884
   
• In the previous newsletter I asked for your help to let friends know about my talk in London on 25 April. I'm happy to report we had a full house, so a big thank you to everyone who helped spread the word. Thanks also to the Friends of East Asia for hosting us. (Their next event in June looks at another aspect of Hong Kong's history - see their Forthcoming Events page for details.)
• Photos from the 25 April talk:
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• Several people have asked if I could give a talk in North England, somewhere in the Manchester - York area. Is that something any other readers would be interested to attend?
   
• Readers ask:
  • When was the war crimes investigative / interviewing team set up in Hong Kong after WW2?

Places