The disappearing assistant
The number of Assistants on the Jurors Lists dropped from 479 to 265 over just two years. Did they all go to that great photocopier in the sky?
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The number of Assistants on the Jurors Lists dropped from 479 to 265 over just two years. Did they all go to that great photocopier in the sky?
This is a guest post by Hong Kong writer and editor Adam Nebbs.
A few resources if you're looking for information about relatives who worked in one of the Swire companies (Taikoo, Butterfield & Swire, etc):
Pre-WW2
Rob Jennings, Manager of Archives and Public Affairs at John Swire & Sons Ltd. may be able to help. Here's an example he told recently on the Swire Mariners Association Visitors Book:
With the border closed and the entrepot trade dying, the question was asked - what was Hong Kong to do to feed and house all its refugees?
The British Government's solution was to consider handing Hong Kong back to China, just at the moment when Uncle Sam had stopped telling them to do that.
There was another idea, though.
Time to introduce a hero of the Right throughout the world, the architect of the Hong Kong Economic Miracle, Sir John James Cowperthwaite:
He, for it was surely a man, was British (or just possibly Portuguese), worked as an Assistant at a Sugar company, lived on Hong Kong Island, and was most definitely in the minority.