Charles Batten HILLIER [1820-1856]

I have a substantial amount of information about my great great grand-father, Charles Hillier and his wife, Eliza (nee Medhurst) and their life together in Hong Kong, 1846-1856, which I'm happy to share with anyone interested if they wish to email me. Since it exceeds 10,000 words, it is too voluminous for this site. It includes some 60 letters from Eliza to her younger sister, Martha Medhurst, whose married name was Martha Saul. I deposited photocopies of these letters with HK PRO (12 January 1998), when I was there some years ago and never heard anything since but assume they are still there somewhere. Of their children, Walter (Consular Service, 1868-1896)), Harry (Customs Commissioner, 1895 - 1911) and Guy (Peking Agent of Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, 1891-1924) all served in China. Harry was Kowloon Commissioner, 1895-1899, when the New Territories were acquired and was heavily engaged in those events. There are several hundred photographs of the family but only one of Charles and five of Eliza. I am currently researching the family for a PhD at Bristol University under Prof. Robert Bickers - 'Three Brothers in China, A Study of family in Empire'. I would be v. interested to hear from anyone who wishes to discuss any of this.

A FAMILY STORY IN OLD HONG KONG

When it was announced, in October 1847, that Charles Batten Hillier was to be the next Chief Magistrate of Hong Kong, it came ‘as a bolt from the clouds’. As Norton-Kyshe says, whilst the post required a properly-qualified lawyer, Hillier was wholly untrained although, as assistant magistrate, he had acquired a fair amount of Chinese. Now aged 27 and married to the daughter of the LMS missionaries, Walter and Betty Medhurst, almost nothing was known of his origins, save that he had arrived as the Second Mate of a merchant ship which he had left to join Ferguson Leighton & Co. When the firm failed, he had come under the wing of William Caine and owed everything to him. Untold until now, his story is a good example of how with a little initiative and a slice of luck, such young adventurers could make their way in the fledgling colony.

Hillier came from a family of Naval Pursers and had been brought up in a tradition of strict discipline and evangelical piety. With Britain at peace, a career in the Royal Navy was not open to him. Instead, he was enrolled in the Free Trade East India Service which had been established following the ending of the East India Company’s monopoly. At the age of fifteen, he joined the Minerva, a former East Indiaman, and there he spent the next five years, sailing between London and Madras.

By August 1840, the Opium War had begun and troop reinforcements were required. At the end of the month, the Minerva was requisitioned to transport a contingent of the 37th Madras Native Infantry to Hong Kong. Now, Second Mate, Charles had no choice but to comply with the orders. Having survived a typhoon, the ship reached the mouth of the Canton River in November 1840 and in early January, six hundred men were disembarked just south of Chuenpee.  During the ensuing attack on the forts, there was appalling slaughter which must have been witnessed from the decks of the Minerva. Subsequent events are too well-known to be repeated: on 26 February, the island was annexed and further bloody engagements took place so that, by 15th March, most of the defences south of Canton had fallen. Many of the Madras Infantry had fallen sick and there was a large hospital encampment on the shore. Whether Hillier had also fallen sick is not clear. What is clear is that when the Minerva was ordered to sail on 16th March, he was no longer on board. The ship’s log reads. ‘Hilliar [sic], C.B. 2nd m. deserted’ (TNA BT 112/29/253).

It seems improbable to me that he did desert, although this may seem like special pleading by a descendant. Desertion would have been a serious offence in time of war and there would have been little chance of hiding in the island’s small Western community.  One explanation is that he was one of the many who were struck down by fever at the time and was being treated on shore when the orders arrived and some explanation had to be entered in the ship’s log for his absence. The event is not mentioned in any of the family papers – on the contrary, the family story, albeit apocryphal, was that he was one of those who first raised the Union flag on the island.  Whether he was the originator of that account is unclear. What is clear is that these events did not blight his subsequent career.  

Three other ships had sailed with the Minerva, one of which was lost in the typhoon. On board one of the others, the Sophia, was Duncan McPherson, a doctor in the Madras Army, who had the grim task of tending the sick and dying. On his melancholy way back to India after the war had ended, he wrote his account of these events in The War in China, Narrative of the Chinese Expedition, which quickly ran into three editions.

He and Hillier must certainly have known each other. What they did not know was that Mcpherson’s grand-daughter, Maggie (daughter of William and Christian Drummond, née McPherson) would meet and marry Hillier’s son, Harry Mason Hillier, in Shanghai in 1888.  To complete the circle, in 1895, Harry was appointed Customs Commissioner for Kowloon and he, Maggie and their children moved into the Commissioner’s newly-built house on the Peak. When Harry left four years later, it was just under sixty years since his father had first arrived as a young adventurer, on the island.

Andrew Hillier
28 January 2016
Anyone wanting references to support the above is welcome to contact me at hillier@11kbw.com