Early photos of Hong Kong people

Thank you to Martyn Gregory for sharing these old photos of Hong Kong people with us. They date from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

You can click on any photo to visit its page. There you can zoom in to see more detail, read any notes about the photo, and add a comment if you can tell us anything about the photo.

The first set shows posed scenes of Chinese life. I doubt if the tourists who bought these photos ever saw the scenes in real life, but no doubt they were a good source of stories when they got back home again.

Then we've got a couple of law-and-order photos. The first one I've seen in several different collections while I've been looking for photos for the Central Police Station project. It's still a great photo to see again, showing six policemen in the old style of Chinese policeman's uniform, and clear enough to see some of the numbers on their collars:

???     203     ???
218     123     ???

The second photo shows a criminal in the stocks:

We've also seen this photo before, and identified the date of the photo and his crime (see http://gwulo.com/atom/16814).

Next is the Governor, showing off his 8-man sedan chair:

Does anyone recognise him?

I think it could be Governor Blake (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Arthur_Blake.jpg for comparison).

There wasn't any practical need to have 8 men carrying a sedan chair, so this is all about making a statement of power. Come to think of it I don't remember photos of any other 8-man sedan chairs in Hong Kong. Was there a rule preventing anyone else from owning one, or was it just understood to be "not the done thing"?

Here's another Governor photo but a different Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy.

He's the man in the middle of the front row, one of the few men in the photo without a beard or a moustache. The reason for this photo is the man on Hennessy's right, King Kalakaua of Hawaii, visiting Hong Kong in August, 1881.

And finally, a photo titled "Water famine. Hong Kong":

This scene, people queuing up for water during a water shortage in Hong Kong, would be repeated many times over the following years.

Thanks again to Martyn for sharing these photos from his private collection.

Martyn is a specialist in 'China Trade' paintings and pictures related to the Far East: that is, works of the period 1700-1900, by both Western artists and Chinese artists who painted 'in the Western manner' for the traders and ships' officers who visited the China coast. You can learn more at: http://www.martyngregory.com/