Going Home: The Baglin – Shelley photographs

Back in 2014 I posted the photo shown above, and wrote:

“I bought a collection of photos recently, hoping they'd have lots of views of Hong Kong. Instead they're almost all photos of people, that really belong in a family album. I'd rather see them back with the family, so I'm hoping one of Gwulo's readers can help put them in touch.”

The post generated a lot of interest on Gwulo and Facebook, and we identified the mother and daughter as Ms Baglin and her daughter Marie. Readers remembered Marie was also known as Vickie and that she married Tony Shelley, a Hong Kong policeman.

Several people said they knew the family and would get in touch, but I never heard back. I guessed that, for their own reasons, Marie’s children didn’t want to make contact. Still, I hoped another relative would be searching the internet for family information, find the page and get in touch.

That’s where we left the story, til a few weeks ago when an email arrived from Jean Louis Lecoeur in France. He included this photo:

It was an exact match for one I’d posted in the original article!

Over to Jean Louis:

Bonjour,

I am writing from France. I just discovered your site about Old Hong Kong and especially the part regarding the Baglin family pictures.

The "top right young lady" is Genevieve Baglin. She was my aunt, born in 1904 in Colombes (near Paris, France). She died on August 12th 1982 in Newcastle upon Tyne (GB) where she lived.

Formerly she lived in Hong Kong from 1935 to 1950, she had a daughter with her partner Yoc Ma, a Chinese man she met in Paris.

This daughter was Marie Anne Victoria Baglin who lived in USA Arizona, she died in 2013. She had two children with Anthony Shelley, but they are not much interested by their family story.

Attached are some documents (in French, of course) illustrating the above remarks and much more. They are from a huge CD-Rom I made in year 2000, where I gathered all the documents about my genealogy.

On a picture you can see Ivana, my mother. So, you can understand my extreme interest in the family album you discovered.

As the latest posts on your site are dated 2014, I don’t know where you are with your request. Please tell me.

Very happy and surprised to have found your site.

Best regards.
Jean Louis LECOEUR

I've been exchanging emails with Jean Louis since, and he has sent more information about these two ladies’ lives. I’ve included extracts below, adding my comments in italics along with the photos I’d posted previously.

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Genevieve Pauline Baglin

Genevieve Pauline Baglin was born on July 18, 1904 in Colombes, a suburb of Paris in France.

Her first two years were spent in France, before the family moved to Durham in England in 1906. They moved several times, ending up in Sheffield. While in England she and her sister Helen attended a school run by nuns.

That explains the note on the back of this photo, “Taken one Summer’s day in Sheffield”:

In 1920, her mother Senora left her husband: she could not stand his bad temper or his stinginess any more. Mother, sons and daughters returned to Paris, with Genevieve aged 16 years old and speaking French with a charming accent. They lived in their house La Garenne Colombes. 

Senora strived to continue to offer his daughters the quality education they received in England, and enrolled them in Sainte Genevieve Institution in Asnieres. However their father cut funding. 

Genevieve, like her sisters, had only learned watercolor and piano, But she found work in Haute Couture, training in sewing on the job. She mastered all aspects, including drawing, for which she had a natural gift like all the family. She found work in various fashion houses of Paris as a saleswoman speaking English.

Then came the 1929 crash, and for some time she was a saleswoman in one of the first "Prisunic" (cheap chain stores) which opened in Paris.

In the 1920s, she was a young girl very lively, very happy, very warm. Brunette with dark brown eyes, she was soon surrounded by boys, especially students, particularly Asians coming to France to complete their education in the Parisian faculties, Montparnasse Boulevard and University City. At that time, after the carnage of the Great War, there was a shortage of young men in France. However it was a time when foreigners moved to Paris, attracted by the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties.

Genevieve in Paris in the 1920s:

Genevieve met one of these foreigners, Yoc Ma. He was a salesman, selling delicate embroideries made in China by orphans gathered by nuns.

In this photo, Yoc Ma (centre) is shown standing at the gateway to the Po Leung Kuk orphanage in Hong Kong. Perhaps they were one of his suppliers?

Genevieve was tired of sewing wedding dresses for her friends and was persuaded by Yoc Ma to follow him in Hong Kong. In 1936 she embarked on the ship "Champollion" for the five week voyage to Hong Kong. There she earned her living as a seamstress and opened a French fashion house. Her letters to her French nephews arrived bearing exotic stamps with images of British sovereigns.

Genevieve in Hong Kong in 1936, with the South China Athletic Association in the background:

In 1937, she gave Yoc Ma a pretty little daughter: Marie Anne Victoria.

Photos of Marie Anne Victoria with her father, and her mother:

 

War came to Hong Kong, and it was invaded by Japanese troops. As a French citizen, she was not considered an enemy of Japan, and so was not interned. However, she was asked to record propaganda messages for the Japanese radio to broadcast to French Indochina. (We think she could not say "no" to the Japanese…, but we don't have any evidence.)

Several photos show Marie on the balcony of a house on Leighton Road. Looking at her age, this is where the family lived during the war years:

 

 

 

Read more of Jean Louis's account of Genevieve's life.

If you can spare 30 minutes, help us record Hong Kong's history by typing up a page of the 1921 Juror's List.

Marie Anne Victoria Baglin

As a young girl she was called Marie-Anne or “Fifi”, but in later years she was known as Vickie.
She married Anthony Shelley, in 1954, when she was aged 17. They had two children together.

Tony and Vickie:

In Hong Kong she worked in cinema. Fluent in Chinese, English and French, she used her language skills to provide translation and administrative services to French film crews who worked in Hong Kong.

Anthony and Vickie moved to Phoenix, Arizona. There they bought apartments, renovated and then re-sold. Later Vickie worked as a realtor in a large real estate agency.

She died in June 2013, at home in Scottsdale (Az), USA.

Read more of Jean Louis's account of Vickie's life.

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Many thanks to Jean Louis for getting in touch and sharing his research with us. I posted the photographs to him on Thursday, so they'll be back with home with family in the next few days.

If you can add any memories of Genevieve or Marie-Anne / Vickie, we’d love to hear from you.

Best regards, David

Gwulo meetup: join us for lunch on Monday, 14th November. Readers ask for information (photos, facts, memories, etc.) about: Do you recognise anyone in these photos of Douglas and Ann Crozier Silver Wedding in 1959? Searching for people with the last name of "Heang" Tessa Hulls is researching her grandmother, Sun Yi's life and is looking for information about "the Hong Kong Times newspaper, which my grandmother wrote for, and its Editor in Chief Lee Chui Sun, who was my grandmother's boyfriend". New on Gwulo.com this week: Details of the almost 200-strong Mexican population in Hong Kong in WW2. 老實公司 Lo Shut (i.e. Honest) Company on Shanghai Street. Photos of the inside of Dragon Lodge, 32 Lugard Road. Old aqueduct near Tai Tam Gap Map of Lindsay Tasman Ride's escape route in 1942 Bonham Towers, Bonham Road King Wah restaurant, Nathan Road "Old Hongkong" by "Colonial". A fascinating series of articles from the 1930s, available to read online. Herbert ("Ginger") and Sue Angus. More about those pineapples!