Walter Meredith DEANE [1840-1906]

Submitted by Admin on Tue, 05/07/2013 - 14:37
Names
Given
Walter Meredith
Family
Deane
Sex
Male
Status
Deceased
Born
Date
Died
Date

I'm looking for photos of Walter Meredith Deane, to be used in the Central Police Station project. If you know of any, please could you let me know in the comments below?

He's of interest because he was the longest serving head of the police force. The Police's "Offbeat" has an article that mentions him:

[...] when Walter Meredith Deane succeeded Mr Quin in 1867, a precedent was set of having a Cadet Officer from Britain to head the Hong Kong Police Force.

Mr Deane was the longest-serving Captain Superintendent to date, holding his appointment for 25 years. When Mr Deane retired in 1892, Major-General Alexander H. A. Gordon, who was the Superintendent of Victoria Goal, filled the post of Captain Superintendent of Police. Major-General Gordon was on sick leave in February 1893, and died in that month. Francis Henry May who succeeded Mr Gordon in 1893 was also a Cadet Officer, and the Assistant Colonial Secretary before his appointment as Captain Superintendent.

The article has a small photo of him, cropped from a larger one:

http://www.police.gov.hk/offbeat/772/images/f04e1.jpg

He served in Legco several times: http://app.legco.gov.hk/member_front/english/library/member_detail.aspx?id=339

Dates of birth & death taken from his family tree: http://www.geni.com/people/Walter-Deane/6000000003370214452

He didn't have a police background, instead he was one of the first three Hong Kong cadets, arriving in Hong Kong in 1862. The other two were Cecil Clementi Smith and Malcolm Straun Tonnochy. (Source: Governing Hong Kong. Administrative officers from the Nineteenth Century to the handover, 1862-1977)

 

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The cropped photo comes from a larger one that appears in quite a few books, such as Criswell/Watson's police history (p.69). There's also a bit about him on a few pages in The Great Fire of Hong Kong. I was going to do some more on him, and somewhere have details of his retirement in the UK. His wife was refused a payout from the civil list after his death, when their daughter went mad, as I recall. 

cheers,

Adam

Hi Adam, thanks for the extra info.

I've seen a couple of copies of the larger photo. There's one in the Police Museum, and one in the Museum of History's collection.

Hopefully there are some other photos of him out there somewhere!

Regards, David

It's been a couple of years since I looked at his background closely, but my notes suggest he was an internationally noted whist player, and the uncle of comic writer PG Wodehouse, through marriage to the sister of Wodehouse Senior (who himself later reached the top of the police force).