Not untidy - looked after by assorted amahs and servants your room is tidier than you've ever known. But as a young man arriving in Hong Kong in 1900, there's a good chance you'd live in a bachelors' mess.
The latest jurors' list from 1900 got me thinking about this. Several addresses list different family members living together, but we also find groups like this:
c | Barrett | William Curwen | Assistant | Butterfield & Swire | Lugensland | Peak Road | |||
c | Harley | William Frank | Assistant | Butterfield & Swire | Lugensland | ||||
c | Ross | John Adam | Assistant | Butterfield & Swire | Lugensland | Peak Road |
The link here isn't family, but employer, suggesting that Lugensland (aka Luginsland) was the Bachelors' Mess for Butterfield & Swire at the time.
Why live in a mess?
I'm guessing it was an essential part of the hiring process. Convincing a young man to travel to the other side of the world would be a lot easier if they knew food and accomodation were taken care of. A kind of early expat package.
There's also the suggestion it was valuable for the company, allowing them to keep a close eye on their new staff, and mould them into the company's culture. Here's a view of the mess's role in HSBC:
"[...] Indeed, before the communications revolution, personal knowledge of all executive members of the staff was the real basis of the chief manager's (CEO's) control.
This last assumed a socialization period for future executive staff in the London office, the Bachelor's Mess in Hong Kong's Peak district, the P&O's long passage to the East, and the continued stress on sports during years of routine tasks while juniors, apprentice-like, learned their profession."
Why "mess"?
The dictionary gives the definition:
a : a group of persons who regularly take their meals together; also : a meal so taken
b : a place where meals are regularly served to a group : mess hall
Certainly the food was an important element. Here's a description from Singapore:
"Bachelors staying at a company mess had a portion of their wages deducted towards food and lodging. The payment was not onerous and the lodgings were comfortable."
Then by extension 'mess' came to describe the place where the food was served, and the group of bachelors that ate it.
What was it like?
Hopefully we'll hear more about tjhis in the comments below, but at first glance it seems they were not too far removed from how the men would have recently lived at private schools, or university. HSBC again:
"Equally enjoyable is the story of the naked man in a bed from the bachelors’ Mess who is spotted by the wife of the bank’s Chief Manager in her rose garden in Hong Kong while having breakfast, and when she asks her amah to have the gardener remove the bed, she is told that the man had been left there because “he is one of ours”."
When were they common?
For at least a hundred years:
- In 1862, Charles Wilday Austin 'lived in Jardine's Mess at East Point'.
- A 1936 advert in the Singapore's The Straits Times: 'WANTED from Early April, young man to complete Bachelors' Mess. Well situated well furnished house. modern sanitation, etc. Write Box No. 396 Straits Times for full particulars.'.
- And here's a recent comment from reader Mike H:
I worked with Dodwells in Hong Hong from 1970 to 1975. When I arrived the Head office was in the old HSBC building in Queens Road C, although the had other offices in Ocean Centre and Queens Road. At that time the Bachelors Mess as in Dodwell Mansions adjacent to HoTung gardens/Stewart Terrace,
So they were still going strong into the 1970s. Do you know if any companies still use 'bachelors' mess' to describe their shared accommodation for new hires?
Any other memories or information about the Bachelors' Mess gratefully received - please leave a comment below.
Regards, David
PS Can you help us? We're typing up the jurors' lists to make them available online, and encourage people to share more stories and memories of old Hong Kong. It only takes around 30 minutes to finish a page, so please join in if you can. Click here for details.
Comments
Cloudlands - Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Junior Mess
Cloudlands - http://gwulo.com/node/5441
From the 1895 Peak Directory
Bank Junior Mess
Mess - satire
read the original eBook - 1905
by Rev. E. J. Hardy
Owing to this scarcity of wife material, as well as to impecuniosity, young European men, instead of marrying, form themselves into bachelor messes. Just before leaving Hong Kong, I dined at one of these establishments. It was monstrous. There were six mere men daring to have as nice a drawing-room, as well arranged a table, and as good servants as any house I have seen run by that old institution — a wife. It was unnatural, and a committee of women ought to break up the mess before the offenders get too much into the habit of celibacy and make a mess of their lives. The poor fellows are starved at heart, however replete in stomach, and each starts a dog for a companion. Alas I some of them go to the dogs in other ways. A ten-thousand-miles-away- from-home feeling has many temptations connected with it.
11 Mountain View - P. & O. Mess
1895 Peak Directory
Mess life
As well as the badly skewed male:female ratio, attraction of an "expat package" etc, messes naturally evolved as many (perhaps even all) hongs explicitly prohibited young male expat employees from marriage in their employment terms - this policy was standard until some time after WWII. See, for example, Paul Cunningham's At the Peak, which also contains quite good descriptions of mess life in those days, eg:
- A typical "day in the working life" of a young expat
- Leisure activities, including descriptions and photos of the Fanling Hunt mentioned elsewhere on the site (http://gwulo.com/node/6493), and
- The wild horseplay within mess walls, as the mess effectively became an extension of its occupants' former school dormitory, e.g. friends from other firms invited to one mess party had to, upon entering, negotiate corridors booby trapped with flour bombs and other "imaginative" ambushes before reaching the main party area!
Bachelors mess
When I arrived in 1970, most of the Hongs had Messes. HSBC was Cloudlands, Jardines had a couple of flats in May Road and Stewart Terrace, Swires had a flat in Old peak road[can't remember the Block name], even EAC and RIL had flats used as Messes. The HSBC guys used to throw a Black Tie bash around Christmas time each year.
M.H
Its 1884 - and a mess
It seems that Woodlands in 1884, was a single house - and, before 1901, was then redeveloped into Woodlands Villa, Woodlands Terrace & Lower Woodlands
Mess life
Whilst not 1900, its the 1950s, the following link to "The Obedient Banker", should give some insights to Mess life.
I have ordered my copy.
http://www.authorhouse.co.uk/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?Book=295050