Hugh McCabe Kneeling Stool

Sun, 08/01/2021 - 14:07

Hi all!  I hope someone can help.  We have a kneeling stool in St Stephen's Chapel, Stanley and it is inscribed 'In Memoriam Hugh McCabe Xmas 1941'.

I have already done a fair bit of research on Hugh McCabe.  He arrived in Hong Kong in March 1940 to work in the Hong Kong Survey Department.  He was a gunner in the HKVDC in WW2 and died in the grounds of St Stephen's College, probably near Bungalow C as his section was fighting there on Christmas morning 1941 (there were no survivors from his section).

What we don't know, however, is how this stool ended up at the Chapel, and who commissioned it, why and when.  The Chapel was built in 1949 and consecrated in 1950 so it wouldn't have been during the internment camp years (also, he wasn't really in Hong Kong that long).  The workmanship is quite fine.  Our current assumption is that it was donated by his family in the 1950s or 1960s as it was near the place where he fell, but that is just an assumption.  I'm hoping somewhere here can cast some light on this!

This is part of a wider project to catalogue some of the historical artefacts in the Chapel.

Date picture taken
unknown
Author(s)

Comments

I believe the cross came from the peak church. When I was secretary at Saint Stephen chapel I wrote up a history of the Peak Church. Will Newman can give you my contact info

Hi Derek,

A couple of suggestions:

  1. There was likely a dedication service when the stool was first installed. Do you have church newsletters from those years you can skim through to see if it was mentioned? It may have been mentioned in the local newspapers too, and the SCMP archive has a good search engine so you could search for news about McCabe or St Stephen's: https://gwulo.com/comment/60007#comment-60007
     
  2. I've made a page for Mr McCabe at https://gwulo.com/node/55580 under your account. If suggestion #1 doesn't work, I recommend you add as much information to Mr McCabe's page as possible. It's a longer-term approach, but eventually a family member will likely be googling for information, see that page, and hopefully answer your question.

Good luck with your search, and please let us know what you discover.

Regards, David

Lawrence Hugh

http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Cambridgeshire/CambridgeUniversityPeterho…

Gunner DR/182, 1 Battery, Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps. Died 25th December 1941. Aged 25. Son of Edward John McCabe, and of Hilda McCabe, of Finchley, Middlesex, England. B.A. (Cantab.), F.R.G.S. No known grave. Commemorated on SAI WAN MEMORIAL, Hong Kong (China). Column 33.