Can you identify where this house was and tell me the name of this school?

Submitted by Mouton on Mon, 08/05/2013 - 23:09

Hello! Just wondering if anyone can help me out with this photo. I want to know whereabouts in Hong Kong this house might have been (I imagine it's been well and truly flattened by now!).

This house belonged to my g-grandfather and g-grandmother, Samuel and Elizabeth Baker (nee Kerr). Samuel was an engineer at the East Point Sugar Refinery and before that he worked for Jardine-M's Indo-China Steam Navigation Co (1890s-1910s), so I imagine he would have wanted to live close by to those places of work. 

The house is right by the water, and the picture could have been taken at any point between 1900 and 1927. 

In addition, their daughter (my grandmother) was sent to a school in Hong Kong until she was 8 or 9 and the family moved to the UK. There's a picture of her here with some of her school friends... anyone know where the school might have been or what it was called?

Baker House

School photo

The sugar refinery was located in present-day vicinity of to the west of Victoria Park, around East Point Road/Sugar Street in Causeway Bay.  That house could be located around there for sure.  I'm sure those experts here could help you out.

What a cute photo with your grandmother, and so clear.  No idea where that might be though.

Hi,

Samuel Baker is on the Hong Kong Jury List of 1915, which gives his address as East Point. I just checked that one at random. If you run through the Jury Lists from around that time, one of them may be more specific. You could also look at the Carl Smith collection of Index Cards to see if he was ever in the newspapers, or for any civil records.  See the "Where to Find Hong Kong's History" link at the top of the main page here for instructions, etc.

Lovely photos, by the way.

Adam.

Nice photo of the East Point house and the corresponding match up with the photo from the hong kong memory project.

The buildings in the background appear to be on Causeway Road.  I think the one on the left with the lookout is Kennedy's Stables. Opposite it would be  today's St. Paul's Convent School.

I've already had a look through the juror lists and newspapers. There's not a great deal, just an obit after he moved back to the UK. We do have a fair bit of information about Samuel Baker, including his engineers' certificate of competance! I understand he worked on several merchant navy vessels during his career (before moving to the sugar refinery) - one of the vessels was the S.S. Kau (or Kan - and sometimes written Kum!) Sang. Sadly we don't have any pictures of that boat. 

We do, however, have some more pics of his and his family's time in HK. Some of them will inevitably be pictures of people rather than places, but if anyone's interested, I'll ask my dad if he'll share them here too. 

I'm sure a fair number of people here would be very interested to see them. I wouldn't be surprised if more info on that ship comes up, too.

Yes please, I'd enjoy seeing more of these photos. The two you've posted are both unusual, so we haven't been able to add any useful information to them. But that makes them all the more interesting to see.

If there are any more views of that lawn / building behind the girls' photo, they'd be good to see to try and identify it.

Regards, David