Monday, December 17, 2012 | By: rudi butt

Inspecteur Quincey And His Master Dramatist Son

Updated December 15, 2022

Preface


A photograph by an unknown artiest titled, “William Quincey, Hong Kong Police, on his 65th birthday, Shanghai, China, 1913” Credit: National Galleries Scotland. The Stewart Lockhart Photographic Archive, on loan from George Watson’s College to the Scottish National Photography Collection.
William W. Quincey was the first Chinese inspector in the Hong Kong Police Force. Yes, Chinese inspector. I wrote about him some months ago in another post and have thought of him all along as Inspecteur Quincey from the land of Jacques Cousteau and indeed Jacques Clouseau, which his name did suggest. In fact, Quincey's true ethnic identity was so well hidden (perhaps not by design) that not a single government document or journalistic report from his era that I have read has offered any hints in that regard. Obviously, though, I was not looking in that direction. Bored with doing nothing else for weeks except updating an old article on early doctors in Hong Kong, I recently reopened my investigation on Quincey going through old materials and browsing new ones however unrelated they may appear. I am totally amazed with the amount and the incredible contents of information I am being presented when my dig progressed deeper and wider. I thought I was looking for information to update the article I wrote months back, I was wrong. A story so eager to be told is unfolding right before me the moment the Chinese identity of the police inspector has been recovered. I simply can't wait until it is finished to share it, so here goes the story of Inspector William W. Quincey and his fifth son Professor John Wong-Quincey. (12/8/2012)



Explanatory Notes
  1. An image zoom plugin has been installed to enable detailed viewing of images. A magnifying glass will appear when the cursor hovers over an image.
  2. The term "dollar" and the dollar sign "$" refer to the Hong Kong dollars.
  3. The expression "It is unknown..." and the abbrecivation "unk." generally mean it is unknown to me.
  4. Names of certain persons, establishments, and places are added in Chinese characters for the benefit of others researching similar stories as this one, particularly when reviewing papers in the Chinese language.
  5. Braces are used to indicate pinyin pronunciation, e.g. Li Hung-chang {Li Hongzhang} 李鸿章
  6. Writings, some lengthier than the others, about certain contemporaries of William and John Quincey can be found in footnotes under the relevant sections.
  7. Since the size of this post is fast reaching the preset limit dictated by Blogger for a single post, I've therefore placed the appendix and the selected bibliography in a separate post. Click here to view the supplemental notes.
  8. The recently updated contents are highlighted in blue color for easy reference; these include citations [cit] which are displayed in hover text.


Acknowledgment

I wish to extend my most sincere thanks to Mr. Frank Cuffman, who is the great-grandson of Mary Agnes Wong-Quincey, Inspector Quincey's third daughter, and Mr. Mikael Carroll, who is grandson of Lewis Patrick Quincey, Inspecter Quincey's sixth son, for their contributions of information as well as family photos, and for their untiring answers to my endless questions. My special thanks also go to Ms. Jane Church, whose GGGF's first cousin, Lawrence Bernard Boyack, married Mary Agnes mentioned above, for reaching out to me and for sending information.



PART I. WILLIAM W. QUINCEY

The Orphan Prince of Quinsan


A recent photo of the serene Kunshan. Credit: ww.mafengwo.cn.
Quincey was a native of Quinsan {Kunshan} county in Jiangsu Province 江蘇省崑山縣 (present day Kunshan City 昆山市), born shortly before or right about the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) [According to the caption of Quincey's 65th birthday photograph, he must have been born in 1848. (11/15/2017)][When Quincey was baptized in Malta in 1869, he had 1851 written as his year of birth. (11/16/2017)]. Quinsan, a canal town famous for its scenic beauty in peaceful times and for its cultural richness[1], witnessed, in close-up, some of the heaviest fighting during the bloodiest civil war in human history. According to most historians, some 20 million people perished as a result of the Taiping Rebellion. The town was located 155 km east of Nanjing, capital of the Taiping regime, and 56 km west of Shanghai, Imperialists' most important stronghold next only to the national capital, thus making it an invaluable bridgehead for both sides. In fact, the two major Taiping attacks on Shanghai (1851 and 1861) were both springboarded at Quinsan. When the rebels lost control of the town, which they had held since 1860, to the Imperialists in 1864, it was the beginning of their end. Within months, the Heavenly Kingdom was no more. It was against this backdrop of wartime turmoil that Quincey had spent his childhood.


1864 photograph of Charles George Gordon, a.k.a. China Godron, posted in Qing full dresse uniform under his own military banner that marked him as the Regional Commander of Kiangsu Province, China; Commanding Officer of the Forever Victorious Army. Credit: China.com.
It is reasonable to assume that Quincey had become an orphan[2] at the time when his path crossed with that of Charles George Gordon 戈登. Gordon (b. 1833, London -d. 1885, Khartoum), commonly known in the Western world as "Chinese Gordon" after 1864, was a major in the Royal Engineer Corps. He arrived in China in September 1860 as a part of the reinforcing forces to the British fighting contingent in Tientsin (Tianjin), and Peking (Beijing) towards the end the Second Opium War. His unit was redeployed to Shanghai in 1862 to protect the European settlement from the Taiping Rebels. In the year that followed, he was seconded to the Qing Imperial forces, the enemy he was fighting not long ago, under the command of Li Hung-chang {Li Hongzhang} 李鸿章 (b.1823-d.1901). On March 24, 1863 Li gave him the command of the Ever Victorious Army 常勝軍 (EVA). In just 14 months after assuming EVA's command, he had the principal fighting elements of Taiping suppressed shy only from the capture of Nanking. He did not take part in the final push to the Taiping capital, it was said, for two reasons. First, he felt the final victory and the credit for ending the 15-year civil war belonged to the Imperialists. Secondly, he wanted nothing to do with the mopping up operations, which no doubt would be very bloody. That decision made and with Li's permission, Gordon disbanded EVA in May (or June) 1864 at Quinsan where the army was last based. He returned home a celebrated hero, bearing decorations and commendations awarded to him by the Houses of Hanover and Aisin Gioro. Award from the Dai Qing Empire had included 10,000 taels of silver, which Gordon refused to accept. Some time between 1862 and 1864, Quincey, a nameless orphan [Quincey should be 14 to 16 years old by then and therefore must know his own name (11/15/2017)], was founded most probably in Quinsan by Gordon who took him in under his care whilst campaigning in Jiangsu. The records I reviewed showed a dispute over the Gordon-Quincey relation. Quincey's sons, John Wong-Quincey 王文顯 and Peter Quincey Wong 王文昭, M.D., said their father was adopted by Gordon, yet no less than two other sources said Quincey was a servant kept by Gordon. A newspaper article in 1897 likewise referred him to as Chinese Gordon's old "Boy". Either way, when Gordon returned to England in November, 1864, he took Quincey with him[3] and there he gave the young Chinese an English education. I do not know whether that meant Gordon had arranged and paid for Quincey's education or he had made him a student of his ragged school in Gravesend. In the matter of Quincey's education in the UK, John Wong-Quincey mentioned that Gordon had provided his father 11 years of education, which as I am to explain later it doesn't add up. Peter had yet a different version on this subject and said that Gordon had sent Quincey to an English military academy, a matter echoed in Quincey obituary in The North-China Herald (August 25, 1923). It said that Gordon had sent Quincey to Aldershot for five years. Only Aldershot was, and still is, an army base with dozens upon dozens of barracks but no military academy[4]. A Chinese source I chanced upon says that Gordon had sent Quincey to Aldershot to live with one of his sisters. Helen Clarke (Gordon) Moffitt (b.1838-d.1919), Gordon's youngest sisiter died in Southampton, Hampshire. Could she be the sister in matter, i.e. if the information is correct?

So how did Quincey get to be called Quincey? The official version, according to an interview of John Wong-Quincey by the Geneva Times published on October 23, 1957, Gordon gave this nameless Chinese orphan he took in the name "Wong of Quinsan", which meant Prince of Quinsan (whether or not there was a teasing aspect in this name is something I will leave to the readership to ponder). In time, Quinsan became Quincey either by means of evolution (nickname, easier to pronounce and remember the name Quincey than Quinsan, etc.) or due to lost in translation say at the time when Quincey was asked of his name by immigration when entering England. These assumptions become more probably when one considers the pronunciation of the word "Quinsan" in the Kunshan dialect, which is "kʼuəŋ se" in IPA and roughly "quainse" if deciphered in English letters. The Chinese elements in his name diminished further with the addition of William, the Christian name, and a step further still when he shortened the name Wong into an initial "W". There you have it, how a Chinese came to have a name William W. Quincey. [For that matter, Rudolph S. Butt was the name that appeared in all my business cards since I had one printed for me the very first time. But then, this is not a story about me, is it?] What is fascinating writing about the Quinceys is that there is always a twist to almost everything while nothing was what it seemed. Fact finding becomes an endless effort as a newer version, often contradicting existing information, is right around the corner waiting to be discovered. In the name matter, Peter, as can be expected, had his own official version. He said Quincey on return to China had actually been able to track down his family root and had identified his own surname, which was Wong, or Wang (pinyin). The China Mail of April 8, 1902 went further to providing Quincey's full Chinese name as Wang Chin-nien. Since this information came from an English journal, I will need to look somewhere else to see if I can find the correct Chinese characters of the name. [According to Eddie Wang, Quincey's Chinese name was Wong Jingnian. Mr. Wang identifies himself as the great grandson of Quincey - the grandson of Thomas Quincey, or Wang Wenguang, Quincey's eldest son. (5/19/2014)]

A report on the March 25, 1902 edition of the Shanghai Shun Pao 上海申報 led me to believe the Chinese characters of Quincey's name i.e., Wang Chin-nien, to be 王經年. The report says, "有王經年者,籍隶苏州府,属昆山县,幼赴外洋,遂占西籍,前年遄回本国,充南市捕房捕头..." [cit], roughly translates as, " a certain {Wang Jing-nian}, belonging to Kunshan, went overseas at young age, thus assumes a foreign nationality, returned to this country several years back, took the position of inspector of south city police station..."

Three days after I wrote the above, I stumbled upon a 1800-1900 list of British residents in Malta on the web (the list had also included entries of certain non-British foreign residents), in which I found the following entry:

William QUINCEY, born 1851, baptized 4th April 1869, the son of Lang Wang Quincey, a Chinese farmer [According to Eddie Wang, Quincey's father was born in Quinsan in 1828 and died in Jiangsu in 1863, who went by the name of Wong Hao-nan. (5/19/2014)]


Church of the Holy Trinity, Sliema. Credit: The Anglican Church in Malta
I wrote to the person responsible for the site, Aldo, and asked of him to find more information on Quincey of Malta. Aldo, most kindly, replied within hours and told the unfortunate news that there isn't any further information available except that Quincey was baptized at the Anglican Church of Holy Trinity, in Sliema. There were 244 persons, Quincey including, who were baptised by the Army Chaplain in Malta, some were attached to military units, others weren't. Quincey's name has no military affiliation.

[I've also made several attempts to email the chaplain of the Holy Trinity Church, but the mail returned with a message that said it could not be delivered. I will try other means later, only that I will not resort to writing a letter on paper, which I've not done for decades. (3/28/2013)]

Were these two Quinceys the very same person? I think it is odd if they weren't, judging from the resemblance. This new piece of information on Quincey's identity overturns much of what I previously found and seasons this story with a considerable measure of mystery. What was Quincey doing in Malta? Why was his father named Quincey? For a moment, I let my imagination run wild and comes an interesting scenario. Was his father in reality not a farmer but a Taiping band leader in Quinsan[5] whom Gordon had killed in battle? This line of thinking may not be too wild after all. British mercenary Samuel Halliday Macartney, for example, married the niece of a Taiping prince not long after the poor prince was beheaded by order of Macartney's Chinese employer[6].


Kunqu actress applies makeup backstage. Credit: demona.pixnet.net.
[1] Quinsan was the home of Kun Opera {Kunqu} 崑曲, one of the oldest existing form of Chinese opera. It was developed during the Song Dynasty and became the most popular type of operatic performance between the 16th and 18th centuries, so much so that it acclaimed the fame as the "Mother of all Chinese Operas". Kunqu was proclaimed UNESCO Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2001.
[2] Information I found recently from the Suzhou Chronicles 蘇州地方志 says Quincey wasn't orphaned by the war, rather he had been separated from his family when Gordon "rescued" him. (1/4/2013)
[3] It was not uncommon at the time for Western military officers (or civilians) to take home young orphans from China. I don't have to look far to find an example. Colonel Edward Forrester 法爾思德 (b.1832-d.1901) of Clayton, New York, mercenary and EVA's second in command since 1859, resigned his commission in 1862. He returned to the U.S. with a young Chinese he named Usa (as in the USA) H. Forrester [Forester](b.1849-d.1931). The young Forrester moved to Lansing, Michigan in 1869 and, years later, became, as well as the owner of a wholesale and retail business at Washington Avenue, a prominent citizen. In 1887, Usa Forester was acclaimed "Lansing’s Pride!" along with eleven other manufacturers, merchants and tradesmen on the 50th anniversary of Lansing's founding.
[4] I have made an online inquiry through the Aldershot website to see if records of Quincey's existence there could be traced. I am very grateful for the kind assistance Gina of Hampshire Archives and Local Studies and Gill of Hampshire Museums and Arts Service have afforded me. Unfortunately, nothing has turned up so far. (1/3/2013)
[5] Prince Lang (Lang Wang) of Quinsan sounds very impressive but the fact is Taiping did not have a Prince Lang. Nonetheless, Quincey's father could still be a senior Taiping officer whom Gordon respected.

George Macartney, KCIE[a], grandson of a Taiping Prince. Credit: Fascinated by the Orient: Aurel Stein 1862-1943.
[6] Samuel Halliday Macartney 馬格里 (b.1833-d.1906) of Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway, was a British army surgeon who served in the same unit as Gordon and the two had arrived in China together. Gordon had him transferred to the EVA in 1863 and no sooner had he settled in his new unit than he was made a combatant commander, an unusual change of profession - from curing to killing. As if it wasn't dramatic enough, months later, he left the British Army and let himself hired by Huai Army 淮軍 commander Li Hung-chang. He took part in the siege of Soochow (Suzhou) in 1863 as a Huai Army officer. The Taiping brigadier charged of the Soochow garrison, Gao Yongkuan 郜永寬 (b.1839-d.1863), a Heavenly Kingdom royalty, who was styled the Prince of Satisfied, or "Na Wang" 納王, was executed despite a prior safe conduct agreement [b]. Macartney married Lady Gao, Na Wang's niece (most likely his daughter, a false identity might be given for her own protection; no one seemed to know her name, she was simply referred to as Lady Gao), soon after the prince's execution. Their son, George Macartney 馬繼業 (b.1867, Nanking – d.1945, Jersey), became the British Consul General at Kashgar in 1891. I doubt if Macartney had known Lady Gao before the fall of Soochow. The marriage was probably the only way to spare her from the executioner's blade, or something far worse. Macartney wanted her spared, I surmise.
[a] Knight Commander of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire.

Gordon's bodyguard in EVA. Credit: ENI Collection.
[b] Gao agreed to surrender Soochow to Li Hung-chang conditional on Gordon acting as guarantor in the safe conduct agreement, which Gordon did with his soldier's honor. Gao and the leading officers of the Taiping garrison in Soochow were summarily executed upon Li's order, once the garrison forces laid down their arms. When Gordon found that out he got so furious that he went to Li's camp revolver in hand with the express intent to shoot and kill the commander of the Huai Army - his boss. Li got wind that Gordon was coming for him but instead of having Gordon arrested, he just went to another camp to evade the English soldier he had so much infuriated. Unable to find Li, Gordon went back to the EVA field headquarters and relinquished his command of the army. Exactly what transpired after that was unknown to me, but in a matter of days, Li and Gordon were back in business again.

Descendant of the Intrepid Wong Princes

818 days after the date when I first published this "seemingly never ending" story, I chanced the following brief biography of John Wong-Quincey which was printed on the back panel of the dust jacket of Chinese Hunter, a book written by John, which was first published in 1939. (3/14/2015) Here are the image and the transcript of the biography that offer intriguing information on Quincey's family background:


Chinese Hunter, back panel, dust cover, published in the United States, 1939. Credit: douban, Tyger Tyger.
J. Wong-Quincey is the son of a Chinese protege of the famous British general known as "Chinese Gordon". The father, last descendant of the intrepid Wong Princes, was found as a child wandering at the place where his relatives, leaders of the long Taiping Rebellion, had been massacred. Though General Gordon himself had trained the Chinese army that ended the rebellion and forced the Wong Princes to surrender, he was so chagrined and humiliated at the massacre, which occurred against his orders, that he adopted the orphan as atonement. To him he gave the English name "Quincey" from the name of his birthplace, Quinsan, near Soochow.

Young Quincey was sent to England and spent his most impressionable years with the British Army. Returning to China in the seventies, he joined the Hong Kong police and was twenty years a detective there and in other cities. From Britishers on their way home after living in China, he gradually acquired a great collection of fire-arms, which his sons learned to handle. No other youths in the whole of the Far East ever had such a wide choice of weapons.

The youngest but one of the six sons is the author of this book. He went to college at Tientsin, and then in 1908 to the University of London, where he studied for five years. In 1913, after a diplomatic mission in Europe, he returned to China to engage in literary work, and two years later became a teacher of literature at Tsing Hua University near Peking. Until 1957 he served continuously as education administrator and professor of Literature. In 1926, he spent a year in graduate study in Yale. His special subject is the Shakespearean drama, and he is himself the author of a number of plays.

He is at present living as a refugee in Tientsin.


Self-reproach is perhaps too heavy a word, but I do feel bad for not discovering this information much earlier with the fact that it is so readily available. On the other hand, however, I was quite happy that I didn't for it afforded me the opportunity to made a few assumptions about Quincey's family background. As it turns out I was right on track. The question remains unanswered is who were the "Intrepid Wong Princes"? According to the Official Biography of Li Hung-chang 李鴻章傳 written by Liang Chi-chao {Liang Qichao} 梁啟超, the eight Taiping military commanders who plotted together and surrendered Soochow to Li were: Prince Na, Gao Yongkuan 納王郜永寬; Prince Bi, Wu Guiwen 比王伍貴文; Prince Kang, Wang Anjun 康王汪安均; Prince Ning, Zhou Wenjia 寧王周文佳; and four Heavenly Generals 天將軍, Fan Qifa 范起發, Zhang Dazhou 張大洲, Huan Wuba 環武八, and Wang Youwei 汪有為. All eight of them, together with over one thousand of their close followers were summarily executed on the same day they opened the city gate and laid down their arms. I have no idea to whom Quincey was related.

I mentioned earlier that there was no Prince Lang in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. I was wrong. There was. Prince Lang (Liang) 梁王, a man named Zhang Zongyu 張宗禹, was the commander of the Western Nian Army 西捻軍, a rebel army affiliated to Taipin. Despite the fact that it didn't come under Taipin's chain of command, the Nian Army did carry the military color of Taiping. Zhang was Qing Court's most feared rebel. He was famous for annihilating the 11,000 men strong Mongolian Cavalry Division, Qing's most elite cavalry unit, in April 1865 and killing its commander Prince Sengge Rinchen 僧格林沁. Sengge was the 26th generation direct descendant of Jo'chi Qasar, the brother of the mighty Genghis Khan. Zhang fought all his battles in northern and north-western China. He was a native of Guoyan County 渦陽縣 in northwestern Anhui 安徽省. I found no record so far that linked him to Soochow or Quinsan. Zhang disappeared after having been defeated by Qing army in 1868 and was never seen again. Was Zhang, Prince Lang, the same man whose name Quincey had provided for his baptize certificate as his father: Lang Wang Quincey?

According to Denny Wong, the great-grandson of Charles, Quincey's seventh son, Quincey was the son of Gao Yongkuan, Prince Na of Taiping. Gao was one of the eight Taiping princes executed after they had surrounded Soochow to the Qing Imperial forces despite a prior safe conduct agreement, in which Gordon acted as a guarantor. I have consulted several sources including the Dai Qing Shilu (The Official Dynastic Histories of Qing) and found that Gao had an adopted son named Gao Shengbiao 郜勝鑣, who at the fall of Soochow was taken in by Gordon to protect him from the onslaught of the Imperial forces. This took place in December 1863. More than a decade later in 1880, Gordon visited China as a guest of Li Hong-chang and while in Tientsin, he met with some old friends in China including a man he called the son of Prince Na. Gordon further mentioned that the man was then a “Red Button Mandarin”, which means he became a Qing court official. If the person Gordon met in 1880 was Gao Shengbiao, then Quincey he was not. There were also records that said Gao had a son named Gao Tchin-tang, the Chinese writing could possibly be 郜覲堂. No further information could be found about this person.

H.W. Croker, III, the author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire” has this to say about Charles Gordon, Quincey and Wang

Gordon's Wangs
… As part of his Christian life, Gordon, throughout his career, took in orphaned boys. Some became his servants during the Taiping campaigns; one he named “Quincey” and paid for his education (Quincey later became a Shanghai police officer). In England, he dubbed his collection of orphans or boys from poor or fatherless families his “wangs”. He had his housekeeper scrub them clean, bought them clothes, gave them pocket money, and set them onto careers (often at sea). He was proud to chart their lives and fortunes, sticking pins in a map to mark their travels....

Honestly, I will take this matter (relevant to Quincey being a descendant of a Wang, or Wong, or indeed a prince) no further except to report these findings. (11/17/2017)

Wang and his keeper at the Gordon Boys' Orphanage, Robert Robinson. Credit: chowtales.com.
Gordon not only named orphans he took in Wang, he also gave this name to one of his dogs. The dog in matter was one of the three Chow Chow puppies he brought to England from China in 1885. He gave Wang to Winifrieda Jane Ayde, the eldest daughter of his old friend, John Ayde, who was then the Governor of Gilbraltor and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. When Winifrieda and her husband, William Henry Armstrong Fitzpatrick Armstrong, who in 1903 became Baron Armstrong of Bamburgh and Cragside, left Gibraltar for London, she gave Wang to a Major Sell of the King's Regiment. Sell later gave Wang to the Gordon Boys' Orphanage in Dover. Wang died at the orphanage in around 1901. (11/17/2017)

Police Sergeant or Batman?

By calculation based on records in Hong Kong, Quincey entered the Hong Kong Police Force – HKPF [HKPD would have sounded a lot better] in 1870. The timing of this event contradicted what John Wong-Quincey was quoted as telling Danish explorer, Frits Holm, back in 1907 that his father received 11 years of education in England. If the Hong Kong records were correct, Quincey could not have spent more than 6 years in England. If the son was right, Quincey couldn't possibly enter HKPF before 1875. On top of that, don't forget, was Quincey's unexplained residency in Malta. Since these are unresolvable for now, I say we move on and leave it that Quincey joined HKPF in the 1870s[1].

I know of a quotation befitting a moment like this; it says, "History is mostly guessing; the rest is prejudice-guiding interpretation". Shri Parakash, the man who came up with this line, is Indian but not a guru; he teaches management technology[2].

HKPF was actively recruiting rank and file officers in the UK in the beginning of 1870s, because the Captain Superintendent, Walter Meredith Deane 田尼, was unhappy with the results of hiring (European officers) locally or from Continental Europe. The excessive diversity in races and creeds among the officers, and the lack of uniformity in their background and training had made managing the Force incredibly, and unreasonably, difficult. The international recruitment program, which Deane himself initiated three years ago when appointed police chief, returned more faults than merits. He now wanted something streamlined: native Chinese to be managed by imported Britons. Only he had no idea he was to import a Chinese from England. I did a quick search on government reports dated between 1868 and 1878 trying to find Quincey's hiring record and came away empty-handed. The single relevant item I was able to find is a recruitment list attached to the 1876 Annual Police Report. On the list were names of 45 recruits from Scotland in 1872, and another 20 from London a year after (see Appendix I). The name of Quincey was nowhere to be found. This doesn't mean Quincey wasn't hired in the UK. Contrarily, UK would be the only place where Quincey would be hired for a post in HKPF since, I believe, he was privately placed rather than recruited through open channels. Who else would help Quincey jump start a career if not Chinese Gordon, his adoptive father / master. Gordon, in 1871, was about to take up his first overseas assignment since returned home from China; he was appointed British Commissioner on the European Commission of the Danube. He considered, I imagine, it was a good time to find Quincey a job at a place best fit the young man's background; Hong Kong topped his wish list. It is however questionable if Gordon had specifically had a police job in mind (unless Quincey did went to a military school as Peter said); I believe he just wanted to find Quincey a position with the Hong Kong government.


Arthur E. Kennedy. Credit: State Library of Queensland
I have no idea with whom Gordon made this private arrangement, but knowing Gordon (it's just an expression, I know not much about him), he would go straight to the top, meaning either a colonial governor or a governor designate. My guess is Gordon went to see Arthur Edward Kennedy 堅尼地 (b.1809-d.1883), the 7th Hong Kong governor (1872-1877) and former army captain, basing no more than a weak circumstantial evidence from the time frame being discussed. The first written record of Quincey in Hong Kong stated clearly that he was a police sergeant in position, but an attendant at the Government House (where colonial governors lived and worked) in reality. Unless my guessing work fails me, we can safely assume that Quincey came to Hong Kong on Deane's payroll while working as Kennedy's batman. Batman is a term referred to a soldier assigned to a commissioned officer as his personal servant in the British military tradition. Records I went through did show that Kennedy had the habit of keeping Chinese attendants as part of his personal staff whom he would bring on overseas assignments. Kennedy was at one time stationed in Corfu when he was in the army, so was Gordon's father, Lieutenant-General Henry William Gordon (b.1786-d.1865) of the Royal Artillery. They were both there on the Greek island in around 1842/43. This could possibly be the connection. Gordon was with his father in Corfu but was probably too young to be acquainted with Kennedy on his own.


I've been keeping this photo of Arthur E. Kennedy (1st) and King Norodom Prohmbarirak (Ang Reacheavoddey) of Cambodia (2nd), who visited Hong Kong on July 16, 1872. The man on the far left, dressed in white uniform and standing in front of the door, caught my attention when I took a closer look of the photo recently. The man looked like a servant to me. Could he be Sergeant Quincey? (8/15/2016)

[1] A document titled "Civil Establishment of Hong Kong, for the Year 1883" I just found confirms that Quincey joined HKPF in October 1870, classified as "appointment under the Colonial Government". (9/23/2013)
[2] The Parakash, I've just found out, was only quoting American historians Will Durant(b.1885-d.1981) and Ariel Durant (b.1898-d.1981) who wrote in their book, The Lessons of History (Simon & Schuster, 2010), "History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice." (1/12/2013)

The Celebrated Inspector Quincey

The August 21, 1880 issue of the Hong Kong Daily Press carried the following report:

We learnt that Sergeant Quincey has been transformed by His Excellency the Governor into an Inspector, and that considerable dissatisfaction prevails among the members of the Police Force at the appointment, more particularly since he has, though nominally a sergeant, acted as an attendant at Government House.

What this reporter did not know was that Colonel Charles George Gordon, the Suppressor of Taiping, was in Hong Kong[1] on the very same day he filed the report about Quincey's unpopular promotion, or "transformation" as he had termed it. While here, Gordon, who probably was staying at the Government House as a guest of Kennedy's successor as governor - John Pope-Henessy 軒尼詩 - and Quincey had the opportunity to catch up and the colonel was discernibly unhappy that Quincey had made no progress in his career during the past eight years (more likely was not given the opportunity to) and remained a batman. He decided it was time for a gear shift and took the matter up during a casual conversation with Pope-Hennssy. The unorthodox governor[2] was more than happy to entertin the suggestion of the "Great Soldier" (an affectionate name given to Gordon by British journalists). And, instantaneously, Quincey, the batman, became Police Inspector William W. Quincey, the only Chinese inspector in the 666 men strong HKPF, and Hong Kong's very first[3]. [Quincey's appointment to be an inspector was dated August 1882 according to the 1882 Government Bluebook. What exactly happened between 1880 and 1882 with respect to Quincey's inspector position was unknown to me.]


William Quincey (3rd, back row), ca.1885 photo. The officer sitting in the middle was Walter M. Deane, Chief of Police. Credit: Voices from the Past: Hong Kong, 1842-1918.
From there, it was downhill all the way for Quincey; he was promoted to the impressive position of detective-inspector in 1884 and drew an annual salary of $720[4]. He had two men to thank for his success (in addition to Gordon and Pope-Hennessy, who although put him to the inspector post, were like AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, i.e. fire-and-forget). Before we go on and discuss who these two persons were, let's look at some news coverage of Quincey in major Hong Kong papers. I am posting all the clippings I could find, there were quite a few, which I find rather unusual. [I found several more after I finished writing this part; they are now kept in the appendix. 1/8/2013] Quincey's greatest fan in the media was clearly China Mail chief editor and publisher George Murray Bain, who had portrayed the soon-to-be middle age inspector as an overachiever, and the rising star of the HKPF, no less. Bain 貝恩 (b. 1842, Montrose, Scotland – d. 1909, Hong Kong) came to Hong Kong and joined the China Mail 德臣西報 (1874-1941; 1946-1974) as a sub-editor and reporter. He was subsequently appointed to the editorial chair, and, in 1872, became proprietor. A well-known critic of Pope-Hennessy, Bain, it was said, advocated a policy of upholding British interests and maintaining an impartial attitude towards other nationals. Bain also owned Wah Tze Yat Po 華字日報 (1871-1941; April – July, 1946), Hong Kong's second Chinese newspaper.

The China Mail, November 16, 1883, Local and General
Inspector Quincey has again defeated a possessor of an immense quantity of smuggled opium. The case is remanded and we have been asked not to publish details as we are informed, the bad characters in the island learn the contents of the English papers, and not unfrequently get a tip or two from them.
The China Mail, December 9, 1884, Local and General
Last night, about 8:30, Inspector Quincey and Sergeant Butlin very opportunely dropped across a Chinaman fully equipped as an incendiary. These officers, with a lukong*, were going along Queen's Road West, in company, when the lynx-eyed Quincey observed a man lurking under a verandah in Fat Hing Street. Being suspicious of the man, the Inspector told his lukong to hail the man. This was done, when the man took to his heels as fast as he could. He was stopped by Sergeant Butlin and searched. Concealed in his left hand sleeve were two packages, containing about 1 lb. Of powder, rolled in paper saturated with kerosine; a bundle of brown paper also saturated with kerosine, inside of which was a box of matches. He was also armed with a very formidable looking dagger, and on being searched in the Station, a bundle of eight skeleton keys and two pawn tickets were founded on him. This morning he was taken before Mr. Wise, and charged with being in possession of the articles found on him with felonious intent. He was also identified by the Compradore of the Hongkong Dispensary as having been employed as a coolie there in the soda water manufactory for five months. He was discharged on the 1st November. The Police are of opinion that he is the person who attempted to set fire to the Hongkong Dispensary about the end of September, a packet of powder, about ½ lb., rolled up in a paper, to which was attached a lighted joss stick, was found in the laboratory, to which the coolie employed in the soda water manufactory had access. The case was then remanded  until tomorrow morning. But for the opportune capture of this deliberate scoundrel, a serious fire might have had to be recorded. A few individuals of his stamp would soon convert this city into a most undesirable residence. * A lukong is a Chinese constable.
The China Mail, July 17, 1886, Local and General
Three Chinese dealers were charged at the Police Court this morning by Inspector Quincey with the possession of light scales and measures. One was fined $10 and the other two, $15 each.
The China Mail, August 21, 1886, Local and General
Beltran, it appears, has eluded his captors again. Inspector Quincey having been unable to track him returned to the Colony from Canton this afternoon. It is to be presumed the knowledge of his whereabouts declared to have been got at Canton must have been a rather hasty assumption.
The China Mail, March 2, 1887, Local and General
Two dealers in the Pak Kop Piu lottery, who were arrested by Inspector Quincey and Sergeant Mann, were fined $100 each at the Police Court yesterday. One stumped up the dollars at once, and the other will very likely find the money in a day or two.
The China Mail, March 7, 1887, Local and General
Two Chinese servants of Messrs. Blackhead & Co. were arrested on Saturday by Inspector Quincey and Sergeant Macdonald on a charge of stealing various articles to the value of $17. Their boxes were searched and the missing articles found in them. They were both sentenced to three months hard labor. [There was a follow up story.]
The China Mail, September 7, 1887, Local and General
Inspector Quincey has arrested other three men, who he says he has reason to believe were concerned in the burglarious attack on Messrs. Blackhead & Co.'s house at Tsim-tsa-tsoi. They were brought up at the Police Court today, but the case was remanded for further investigations to be made.
The China Mail, September 12, 1887, Local and General
At the instance of Inspector Quincey six men were charged, before Mr. Wodehouse in the Police Court today, with public gambling. The first defendant was fined $50 with the alternative of six weeks' imprisonment, while the others were sentenced to pay a fine of $5 each or suffer fourteen days imprisonment.
The Hong Kong Telegraph, September 18, 1890, Local and General
The keeper of a gaming den that was raided on Saturday night by Detective Quincey and Haddon, was convicted at the Police Court this morning and sentenced by Mr. E. Robinson to four months' imprisonment with hard labor.
The China Mail, October 24, 1890, Local and General
The two gambling club managers, arrested in the den in Stanley Street which was raided by Inspector Quincey and a party of police yesterday, were brought before Mr. A. G. Wise in the Police Court today. The case was remanded and bail was fixed at $250 for each prisoner.
The Hongkong Telegraph, November 19, 1890, Local and General
Detective Inspector Quincey and Sergeant McIver returned from Macao this morning having in custody the absconding Joa(s)qulm Xavier who will have to face the music at the Police Court tomorrow in respect to the embezzlement of $1,000, the money of the Supreme Court, in June last.
The China Mail, June 16, 1891, Local and General
Another man who is wanted by the Chinese authorities was arrested by Inspector Quincey and Sergeant Hadden last night.
The China Mail, November 16, 1894, Local and General
An account of an eating house in Bonham Strand was charged by Inspector Quincey before Captain Hastings at the Magistracy this morning with selling intoxicating liquors without having the requisite license. The case was dismissed, the Magistrate holding that there was no legal sales within the meaning of the Act.
The China Mail, May 3, 1895, Local and General
This morning Inspector Quincey was instrumental in saving the life of a Chinaman at Yaumatie. A couple of natives were skylarking in the water until they lost their tempers and one of the men was pushed under the water. He sank twice before Inspector Quincey reached him in a sampan, and was so thoroughly exhausted that artificial respiration had to be resorted to. In about ten minutes, he was out of danger. Another Chinaman was rescued from the Harbor last night, and was brought round by means of artificial respiration.

Almost all of these 13 articles spoke favorably of Quincey, but not one had mentioned that Quincey was a Chinese. I suppose this will continue to puzzle me until I can find a reasonably probable answer.


This Enfield 0.476 Double-Action Revolver MkII was most likely the kind used by Quincey.
On March 13, 1887, Quincey shot and killed by mistake a Chinese bystander, when he fired his revolver at a criminal he was pursuing but failed to overtake. This had invited the first press coverage of him by an overseas paper – the Brisbane Courier. The real significance of this event lied in the fact that Quincey was the first Chinese police officer armed with a revolver, no others were given the entitlement until the 1920s[5]. Setting the "first" records, he was Hong Kong's first Chinese officer involved in a police shooting; the first Chinese police officer to shoot dead a person; and the first Chinese police officer to be charged with manslaughter.

The Brisbane Courier, April 22, 1887
An inquest has been held on the body of the Chinese fruit hawker who was accidentally shot by Inspector Quincey, of the Hong Kong Police Force, whilst firing at an escaping thief, and a verdict of accidental death returned. Inspector Quincey was charged, at the instance of the relatives of the deceased, on a summons, with manslaughter, but the charge was afterward withdrawn.

My surmise is that the family of the fruit hawker dropped the charge against Quincey for one of the following three reasons: 1). they were paid off; 2). they were scared off and; 3). they were paid off and threatened. Was Quincey a bad shot? Possibly. He was not chosen to represent Hong Kong at the Interport Rifle Match held at the Kowloon Ranges on October 28, 1896 but instead asked to act as umpire for Hong Kong. The event was a one-day match between Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. Hong Kong won by scoring 916, 16 points more than the first runner-up - Shanghai[6]. This is another piece of evidence that Quincey was popular among foreign residents in Hong Kong, perhaps even in the region.

I wrote earlier that Quincey had two men he owed his success in HKPF. The first man was Captain Superintendent Walter Meredith Deane (b. June 22, 1840, London - d. August 2, 1906, Somerset), as any other police chief would give Quincey a job in the back office, pushing pencils and counting paper clips. That should satisfy, even if only marginally, the governor while, more importantly, assure the boat was steady and not rocked. But that wasn't for Deane, he put Quincey on the street, teaming him with other British officers, sergeant and constables including; that, had to be the biggest coups in the HKFP history since its formation in 1844. Deane was clearly a different breed of police chief. When placed at the top post of HKPF, Deane was but a 27 years old government administrator with 5 years work experience in total, who had no prior police training and did not come from a police family (his father was a school master and his grandfather, a Light Dragoons captain). He had an elite education (B.A., 1862 and M.A., 1866 from Trinity College at Cambridge) and was recruited to join the Hong Kong government as a cadets[7] while still in university. His entire adult life was exposed only to two institutions, namely, his university and his employer for life – the Hong Kong Government. He spoke fluent Cantonese and had a reasonably good and first hand knowledge of what's going on in the Chinese quarters of the city. I cannot tell what significant effect, good or bad, Quincey's role as an active member of the European team had for HKPF, but judging from the above news clippings, it may be fair to say that Deane had made a good decision there. [A good thing about historians - I am not one - is that they are almost always right, "See, I told you Deane had made a good decision"]. In fact Deane was quite accustomed to making good decisions, he should, as the longest serving chief of police in the history of Hong Kong (1868-1891).

The second man Quincey needed to be thankful was himself as he was a truly remarkable man. To say that he stood out like a sore thumb in HKPF is clearly an understatement. Quincey's appointment was, I imagine, completely unacceptable to the British inspectors, not only he was a Chinese but also because he had not earned the rank - he had absolutely no experience in police work. He was a peer they detested having. To the inspectors' compatriots in the Force's lower echelon, i.e. sergeants and constables, the installation of Quincey, a Chinese who now outranked them was completely incomprehensible. Only when it had sunk in, they began to see themselves as the subject of ridicule, as they, the colonial masters, had now had to salute and take orders from a Chinese. Remember this was the 1870s, an era in which racial segregation was practiced in Hong Kong – legally sanctioned. At the other end of the stick, Quincey fared no better among the Chinese contingent of the Force. Put simply, he was not one of them. He was a ngoigonglou 外江佬 (literally: the bloke from a foreign river), an outlander from the north (anywhere in the Mainland is generally considered north, except Hainan); a man with no name but a shameful one of a Fan Kwae; and worst of all a laquais - by nature a snitch - of the colonial masters. Had not for his adapting the local tongue of Cantonese while working at the Government House, the Mandarin-and-Kunshan-dialect-speaking Quincey could not even communicate with the Chinese constables without a translator. He, I reckon, could not read and write Chinese and so did 90% of the Chinese members of the HKPF at the time; so that verbal exchange was the one and only item in his repertoire as far as communicating in Chinese was concerned.

Perhaps regulated by human temperaments, most people would be thoroughly demoralized, if not defeated completely, when clouded from all sides by disapproval, distrust, disgust, and even hatred. These temperaments fought against Quincey but did not prevail over him, for before long, he had became a well-liked and popular figure in and outside of the Force. What was at work were Quincey's strong stomach, accurate intuition derived from an acute survival instinct, his positive and composed disposition, wittiness, and above all, a quintessential Quincey quality: his Chinese rooted amiable demeanor and a well acquired English sense of humor. [Do I begin to sound like a fan of Quincey?] Still, all these were not sufficient to turn things around, not in a short while anyway. I was almost certain I missed something in my research as there had to be an "ice breaking" event that involved Quincey and through which he came away a chivalrous character. He was no longer Gordon's Chinese boy; he had proved himself to be a brilliant pupil of the Great Soldier.


HKPF detectives, ca.1920. Credit: HKPF. Unfortunately, photos of an earlier date cannot be found.
Quincey was a shrewd judge of character, no less of himself. Once he had identified niches in the Force best suited his background and special qualities, he pursued them. I noted he had excelled in at least three such roles: one official and two not quite. He was promoted to be a detective-inspector in 1884 and according to several news articles he was actually in control of the entire Chinese detective contingent at some points after 1884. He was crafty and street smart and most importantly the only police inspector who could blend into the crowds, and for that matter go undercover.

I have no idea how it all began, but Quincey was made the liaison between HKPF and Qing China's law enforcement bureaus. So close was his relation with the Qing authorities that he was allowed to go across the border into China and arrest felons wanted in Hong Kong, reciprocally he would, with the permission of HKPF, arrest Mainland criminals hiding in Hong Kong and handed them over to the Canton authorities. The liaison position was not official, also to the best of my knowledge there was no extradition treaty between Britain and Qing. As such, the cross-border arrests that Quincey had been effecting might not be "exactly" legal, but back then punishing criminals for their crimes was more important than technicality issues; or so I thought. In 1881, Quincey, acting on request of the Qing authorities, arrested 13 men in Hong Kong wanted for murder in the Mainland. The alleged murderers were detained by the Police Court but later set free by order of Pope-Hennessy (rightfully, I believe, as the men had broken no laws in Hong Kong). The Qing authorities were quite unhappy about it and took the matter to London through diplomatic channels. In 1883 (after the departure of Pope-Hennessy as governor of Hong Kong), HKPF was directed by London to rearrest the same men set free two years ago. It was clearly a recipe for a mission impossible, but miraculously Quincey got all of them in a single operation... only that four of them were not among the original 13 arrested the first time. These four, however, were said to be alleged to have been implicated in the offense and were prosecuted just the same. A cold case turned hot, and Quincey, the magic closer, won yet another battle for justice. Further details of this case can be found in The Hong Kong Daily Press clipping I placed in Appendix IV.

The third role was governmental social secretary but in this case he was like a humbler version of Jeremy Bernard (and I didn't mean Quincey was gay) and Fredo Corleone (in Godfather II, while working for Moe Greene) rolled into one. Quincey took care of government visitors, no matter what their pleasure were. The following story from the September 21, 1897 issue of the Straits Times gave a pretty good description of what Quincey did in this role, not without flattering.

... many persons who have at various periods visited the colony. When any globe-trotter of distinction arrived, a Duke, Earl, or Marquis, it was always Inspector Quincey who was told off to show him the sights of China-town, and, when our military or naval friends made up parties to go to the native theaters, the same officer's services were generally impressed as cicerone. By his courtesy and his sense of humor he added largely to the entertainment, and always commanded the kindly feelings of those whom he accompanied. In the course of his career he has received testimonials and letters of thanks from various celebrities, among them being H.R.H. Prince Henry of Prussia, the late General Grant, ex-President, United States of America, the late King Kalakaua, of the Hawaiian Islands, Lord Wicklow, Lord Cadogan, and various other well known public men. The late General Gordon was, as everyone knows, a great friend to Quincey, who has, in addition to three or four recommendations, many private letters and documents from the great soldier which are of great interest.

[1] On June 6, 1880, Gordon, while raveling in India, received a telegram from Li Hong-Chang inviting him to go to China. He went to Hong Kong on July 3 and after a side trip to Canton, went to Shanghai and then Tientsin, where he and Li met on July 21. Gordon returned to Hong Kong on or shortly before August 21. on his way back to England. [cit]


John Pope-Hennessy, wood engraving, ca.1891. Credit: State Library of Victoria.
[2] John Pope-Hennessy (b.1834-d.1891), Irishman, pious Roman Catholic, MP (Tory), medical doctor, barrister-at-law, husband of Eurasian woman (British father and Malay mother), governor of Hong Kong from 1877 to 1883, is said to be the most unpopular colonial governor in the history of Hong Kong among British residents. His anticolonialism beliefs and practices, the core of the conflict between him and his compatriots, were clearly too avant-garde for his time. "Unthinkable" acts and measures, implemented during his governorship were many, I will now list a few: the appointment of the first Chinese Justice of the Peace, and later member of the Legislative Council, Ng Choy 伍才, a.k.a. Wu Tingfang 伍廷芳 (b.1842-d.1922); the appointment of a German missionary, Ernst Johann Eitel (b.1838-d.1908), to be Hong Kong's first Inspector of Schools; the appointment of a Danish astronomer, William Doberck (b.1852-d.1941), to be the first director of the Hong Kong Observatory; the (unsuccessful) appointment of a Portuguese chief cashier of the Treasurer's Office to be acting Colonial Treasurer (which bundled with a seat at the Legislative Council), Januario Antonio de Carvalho (b.1830-d.1900); the appointment of a Chinese to be inspector of HKPF, Quincey, and the arming of Chinese constables; approval of naturalization petitions by non-British residents in Hong Kong including local Chinese for the first time since the passing of the naturalization ordinance 35 years ago (all of Eitel, Doberck, de Carvalho and Quincey[a] had been approved by Pope-Hennessy to become British subjects); invitations extended to non-Europeans to visit Government House; abolition of racial segregation in museums; the lifting of racial segregation of Central to Chinese settlement and ownerships; abolition of the penal sentence of public flogging; and revision of brothel laws to protect women.

So bad was the relations between the governor and the British community that the latter had staged a public demonstration against him (though officially the demonstration was to oppose high crime rate in the city) on October 7, 1878 on the cricket ground (present day Chater Gardens), whereat a resolution was passed asking that a commission to be sent from London to review the administration. This British protest evoked a counter demonstration from the Chinese inhabitants, who on October 20, 1878, organized an address signed by 2,218 shop-keepers to the Queen in support of the governor. The resolution and the address were duly forwarded to the Colonial Secretary in London. At the end, no commission was ever sent from London, but when Pope-Hennessy went to Europe for holiday in 1883, he was ordered not to return to Hong Kong. He was later sent to Mauritius as its governor.
[3] According to the document "Civil Establishment of Hong Kong for the Year 1883" mentioned earlier, Quincey's inspector appointment only became effective in August 1882. It would be interesting to find out what causes the discrepancy of two years... when I have time.

The HKPF, in 1882, was comprised of 117 Europeans, 172 Indians and 197 Chinese, and 183 men from the Water Police, a majority of whom, I suspect, would be Chinese. Here is a breakdown in positions and pay scale of the European contingent; 1 Captain Superintendent ($3,840), 1 Adjutant (Army secondment), 1 Chief Inspector ($1,440), 12 Inspectors (4 First Class ($1,200), 3 Second Class ($960); 4 Third Class ($720), 1 unclassified - that being Quincey ($540, plus $60 for good conduct and $108 for special service, totaling $708)), 11 Sergeants ($540) and 88 Constables ($480). [Essentially, Quincey was under the pay grade of an European sergeant. An Indian sergeant received $270, and his Chinese counterpart $300.] (9/23/2013)

There was a 1887 record of a police inspector by the name of John Lee who was granted leave of absence in that year. He was appointed to be inspector under the Women and Girls' Protection Ordinance on April 7, 1891, working for the Registrar-General's Office until he retired on pension on April 1, 1902. John Lee sounds Chinese to me (that said, Christopher Lee is no Chinese, neither was Laurie Lee). There remains the possibility of Lee being the second Chinese inspector of HKPF.
[4] In comparison, the Chief Inspector of HKPF was paid $1,440 a year (in 1879). I also found a record that showed some inspectors of police had forwarded a petition for increase of pay to John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley, Colonial Secretary in London, on September 28, 1881. The petition was redirected to Pope-Hennessy to handle. Unfortunately, I found no follow up stories to be able to tell the outcome of the petition. [Thanks to David Deptford, a reader of this story, for providing the following information, which he found in the HKPF Blue Books.] Quincey, appointed an Inspector 3rd Class in August 1882, drew a salary of $840 in 1887. He was made Inspector 2nd Class in 1888 with a pay rise, the new salary was $960, which again went up to $1,092 in 1891. According to the Civil Establishments of Hong Kong for the Year 1896, Quincey was appointed Inspector 1st Class on December 4, 1895, drawing a salary of 1,368. He was paid at the same scale as other European inspectors of the same class.
[5] Pope-Hennessy ordered firearm training for selected Chinese constables in the beginning of 1878. By September the same year, 30 to 40 Chinese constables were armed with rifles whilst on night duties. No sooner had Pope-Hennessy left Hong Kong in 1883, than the protocol was revoked. The arming of Chinese policemen would only be reactivated in the 1920s.

George P. Lammert (1908). Credit: Twentieth Century Impression of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Other Treaty Ports of China.
[6] The Hong Kong team was captained by Arthur Chapman (Assessor of Rates since 1889; appointed captain (Field Artillery) of Hong Kong Volunteer Corps in 1896) and its members had included: Captain Ferguson, Captain Charles Lionel Patton-Bethune (of the Chinese Regiment; became Inspector of Chinese laborers in the Transvaal between 1907 and 1910), E.C. Shepherd, W. McDonald, Major Hugh Edmund Wrottesley (of Rifle Brigade), Corporal Wooldridge, George P. Lammert (owner of the auction house Lammert Brothers Ltd., which is still operating in Hong Kong today), W. Stewart, D. McLennan, and [s.n.] Robertson. Wooldridge and McLennan both scored the highest marks of 96.
[a] The following legal instrument of Quincey's naturalization was published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 22, 1882. His naturalization proceedings were completed on March 24, 1883.
An Ordinance enacted by the Governor of Hong Kong, with the advice of the Legislative Council thereof, for the naturalization of William Quincey.

Whereas William Quincey has petitioned to be naturalized as a British subject within the limits of this Colony, and whereas it is expedient that he should be so naturalized; Be it enacted by the Governor of Hong Kong, with the advice of the Legislative Council thereof, as follows:-

William Quincey shall be, and he is hereby naturalized a British subject within this Colony, and shall enjoy within this Colony, by not elsewhere, all the rights, advantages and privileges of a British subject, on his taking the oath of allegiance under the provisions of the "Promissory Oath Ordinance, 1869."

I wonder what kind of travel document he had been using before the naturalization. Quite certainly, no travel or identification document was applied for him when he left China with Gordon.

The Plague Detector

An outbreak of plague occurred in the Yunnan Province 雲南省 in China in 1855[1], which, in the next few decades, spread randomly throughout China, and in 1890s it reached the southern port of Canton (Guangzhou). The first recorded case of plague in Canton was diagnosed by Dr. Mary West Niles on January 16, 1894. Niles (b.1854-d.1933) was a medical missionary from Watertown, Wisconsin, who worked at the Canton Ophthalmic Hospital 廣州博濟醫院. By March, the spread of plague had reached an epidemic rate in Canton and yet it had attracted little attention in Hong Kong. There was but one report in a Chinese-language newspaper of the plague epidemic in Canton, which also noted the city government's response to the epidemic: the ordering of street cleaning. That measure, sadly, did almost nothing to stop the disease. The death toll of the plague in Canton had risen to the level of 60,000 by the end of June 1894.

The first alarm of the imminent plague infestation in Hong Kong was raised by Quincey on April 26, 1894 at a meeting of the Sanitary Board. He told the Board he was informed by his sources of an overwhelming numbers of sick and dead in Canton. Acting on Quincey's disturbing report, the first order of business the Hong Kong government had taken was to send Dr. James Alfred Lowson 婁遜, acting superintendent of the Government Civil Hospital, to Canton to assess the situation. No sooner had Lowson returned, in fact, it was exactly 12 days after Quincey had blown the whistle, than he diagnosed the first case of plague in Hong Kong. A quick inspection at the Tung Wah Hospital on the same day had turned up another 20 suspected cases. The date was May 8, 1894. Foul Bills of Health was issued by George Digby Barker 白加, Commander of British Forces in Hong Kong and Acting Administrator of Hong Kong Government, on May 10, 1894 declaring Hong Kong an infected port. The measure put in force under the proclamation was however valid for a period of one month[2].

Police Captain Superintendent Francis Henry May 梅含理 deputized himself, Quincey, Sergeant McIvor, Acting-Sergeant Smith, P.C. McAuley, and nine Chinese detectives on May 9 as sanitary officers and embarked on a "house-to-house visitation" of the known infected districts. Infected persons (or persons suspected of being infected, since no medical personnel accompanied the spotting team) were removed to the hospital hulk Hygeia 病人躉船"懈齋亞", a.k.a. 海之家, and the Kennedy Town [glass Works] Hospital, while the dwellers of their residences vacated. The mortality, during the first week after the proclamation, was roughly 60%. No fewer than 98 deaths from plaque occurred in the first seven days. As it was difficult to enroll Chinese laborers to convey the dead to the China Merchants' Wharf 香港招商局倉碼 for conveyance to the burial-ground, May and Quincey had themselves, as described by the Adelaide Advertiser, "put the blackened and decomposing corpses in the coffins." Quincey continued to be in the spotting team until that responsibility was taken over by the Sanitary Board on July 31, 1894, by which time, there had been 2,442 deaths. No fewer than 7,000 persons were dispossessed of their homes, and 350 houses were condemned and sealed off[3].

The worst was over by September and it wasn't until the second quarter 1985 that the government became vigilant once more, clearly learning from the horrific onslaught of the disease in the same period the previous year. Quincey, from May 17 through July 31, 1895, commanded a detachment of Chinese detectives whose duties were to keep watch of ferries arriving at night from Canton, and stalk arriving passengers to their lodgings so that people coming from China were marked and "theoretically" traceable. In December the same year, a medical missionary, John E. Kulne 柯納, who worked at the Rhenish Mission Church Hospital in Tungkun 東莞禮賢會普濟醫院, brought the news that the death rate in Shek Lung (Shilong), a small town in Tungkun {Dongguan} 東莞石龍鎮, was escalating at an alarming speed; he feared that the plague might be returning and Shek Lung the epicenter of an impending epidemic. A fact finding team was quickly assembled and sent off to Shek Lung in the latter part of December 1895. The team was composed of an army doctor, Sinclair Westcott; British Vice Consul in Canton {Guangzhou}, Frederick Samuel Augustus Bourne 波恩 and Quincey, with Dr. Kuhne as their guide. The Plague did return to Hong Kong in a matter of weeks with the first case occurred on January 4, 1896. A total of 675 cases was recorded during the first four months in 1896; the death toll: 602. The plague would continue to haunt Hong Kong, off and on, for the next 30 years. But it would no longer be Quincey's concern after August 1897, at least not officially.


The Hong Kong Plague Medal. Credit: British Army Medal.
The Plague Medal

In 1895, the Hong Kong government issued a Hong Kong Plague Medal and awarded them to both military personnel and civilians, for services during the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1894. The medal was issued in gold to officers and eminent civilians, and in silver for other recipients. Approximately 40 gold and 350 silver medals were awarded (see Appendix III). Quincey was among the (uniformed) civilian recipients; a brief account of the circumstance of his awarding of the medal was kindly given by a reader of this story, Karl Spencer. Karl has in his possession a full list of police recipients.

The report provided by Karl stated, "Inspector Quincey was employed on actual plague work for a few days only, his state of health not permitting, but he rendered valuable services as an interpreter in obtaining information on all matters connected with the movements of the Chinese and otherwise."

On March 1, 1895, Quincey received his Plague Medal from Governor William Robinson at the parade ground of the Central Police Station together with Chief Inspector John Mathieson, and Inspectors George Hennessy, George Kemp, Alexander Mackie, John William Hanson, Aeneas Mann, and acting Inspector William Baker.

[1] The 1855 Yunnan outbreak was later determined as the source of a major Bubonic plague pandemic known as the Third Plague Pandemic. The pandemic went on for the next 100 years rampantly killing more than 12 million people along the way. It wasn't until 1958 that the World Health Organization finally proclaimed it inactive, when the annual death toll dropped below 200.
[2] William Robinson 羅便臣, the 11th Governor, had it renewed for an additional month on June 9, 1894, and he went on to renewing it monthly until September 3, 1894, the day he revoked all proclamations remained in force, i.e. those dated May 10 and August 9.
[3] Clearly it was impossible for a team of 14 to undertake the task on its own. There were parallel spotting teams of deputized sanitary inspectors made up of personnel of the garrison. The visitation caused numerous complaints from the Chinese community for it was rumored that racketeering was rampant [paid up or got sent away], and far worse that the foreign sanitary inspectors had sinister and unspeakable desires on the women and children. A deputation of local residents petitioned William Robinson to call off the visitation. When that was denied, an anti-government poster campaign was launched. Robinson's reaction was to order the torpedo gunboat, HMS Tweed, to station off Tai Ping Shan, and offer an award for information leading to the arrest of persons engaged in the poster campaign. Overwhelmed and scared, those who could manage it, physically and/or financially, within Chinese community began a mass exodus to the Mainland. Robinson told the Home Government in his dispatch on June 20, 1894 that an estimation of 80,000 had departed. The abrupt labor scarce had crippled commercial interests in Hong Kong, he said.

The distrust of the Hong Kong Government in its handling of plague patients was taken on a national level in China, and openly in the press. Here I've found an editorial published in the June 15, 1894 issue of North China Herald.

Plague in Hong Kong: Brandy, Ice, and Floating Hospitals
As for Hong Kong, the plague there is being dealt with solely by the foreign officials. A friend who arrived at Canton from that island yesterday, spoke of the enormous number of fatalities there, and the foreign methods of dealing with the plague, which appear to us ridiculous enough. He said that when a person is stricken with the plague at Hong Kong the foreign officials take them to the floating hospital moored in the mid-stream. First they make the patients swallow 12oz. of brandy, mixed with some kind of liquid medicine. Then they put six pounds of ice on top of the patient's head, while the chest, hands and feet are also loaded with a pound of ice each. In this manner, not one person out of ten manages to leave the floating hospital alive. Searchers are also sent during the day time into various dwelling-houses and if they happen to see some one in a recumbent position or taking a nap, he is pounced upon as having been plague-stricken, and the unlucky person is forcibly taken to the floating hospital where the remedies above mentioned his life is soon taken away. In this way numberless persons have met an undeserved fate.
Chinese editorial in the North China Herald,
Canton, June 15, 1894

[If the said Chinese editor were more learned, his view might carry a little bit more wright... about 12oz.?]

Freemason

[Quincey was a Freemason. As well as a member, he held elected offices in various lodges under either the English or the Scottish Constitution: Steward, United Service Lodge, 1882; Steward, Eothen Mark Lodge, 1885; Steward, United Service Lodge, 1885; Junior Deacon, St. John's Lodge, 1889; Junior Deacon, Ararat Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners, 1892; Master Overseer, United Mark Lodge, 1892. There may be more but these are what I am able to find at this point of time. It is likely that Quincey became a Freemason once he was promoted to be a police inspector.(11/23/2017)]

1885
Officers of the Eothen Mark Lodge of Hongkong, #264
Worshipful Master: E. C. Ray (ship broker, Morris & Ray)
Senior Warden: Erich Georg (broker, Cohen & Georg)
Junior Warden: P. Jordan (clerk, C.P. Chater)
M. Overseer: James Christie (chief engineer, China Navigation Co., Ltd.)
S. Overseer: William Boffey (tailor, Lane, Crawford & C.)
Chaplain: George C. Cox (sub-editor, Daily Press)
Treasurer: H. N. Mody (auctioneer and broker; Justice of the Peace)
Reg. of Marks: J. J. Gleeson (Sergeant-Major, vice president and financial secretary; Royal Naval Temperance Society)
Secretary: A. O’D. Gourdin (clerk, The Chinese Insurance Co., Ltd.)
Junior Deacon: Chasrles Grant (manager, Kelly & Walsh)
Junior Deacon: Henry Clarke
Director of Ceremonies: M. Falconer (watchmaker, G. Falconer)
Inner Guard: C. J. Brown
Steward — William Quincey
Tyler: J. R. Grimble (engine driver, Fire Brigade)

1885
Officers of the United Service Lodge, #1341, E.C.
Worshipful Master: J. Robertson
Senior Warden: W. Goulbourne
Junior Warden: George Rae (inspector of nuisances, Sanitary Department)
Treasurer: James Hatcher (chief storeman, Royal Naval Yard)
Secretary: G. J. W. King (clerk, Hong Kong Police Force)
Senior Deacon: H. Clarke
Junior Deacon: W. L. Ford
Director of Ceremonies: C. G. Haly
Organist: J. W. Hanson
Steward: William Quincey
Inner Guard: J. R. Grimble
Tyler: J. Maxwell (engineer driver, Fire Brigade)

1889
Officers of the St. John's Lodge, #618, S.C.
Worshipful Master: J. Mitchell (clerk, Butterfield & Swire)
Deputy Master: John William Croker (d., Hong Kong 1902; assistant Patent Slip & Dock Co.)
Worshipful Senior Warden: J. Stephen
Worshipful Junior Warden: J.M. Laing (assistant, Kelly & Walsh)
Treasurer: A.R. Madar (3rd clerk, Treasury, Hong Kong Government)
Secretary: F. Howell (assistant bailiff, Supreme Court)
Senior Deacon: John W. Kinghorn (engineer, Fire Brigade)
Junior Deacon: William Quincey
Organist:
Director of Ceremonies: Charles John Francis Lesbirel (assistant, National Hotel)
Steward: Hajee Ally Shirazee (broker; principal of Hajee Mahomed & Co.)
Inner Guard: James Vanstone (b.1847-d.1921, Hong Kong; verger, St. John's Catheral)
Tyler: J. Maxwell

1892
Officer of the Ararat Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners, #264, E.C.
Worshipful Com. N: Paul Jordan
Senior Warden J.: A. O’D. Gourdin
Junior Warden S.: J. Bryant
Treasurer: Pestonjee Bazonjee (manager, Habibbhoy, Ahmedbhoy, merchant)
Scribe: A. R. Madar
Senior Deacon: T. Spafford (storeman, Royal Naval Yard)
Junior Deacon: William Quincey
Guardian: Ezra Solomon (share and general broker)
Warden: J. C. L. Rouch (hotel keeper)

1892
Officers of the United Mark Lodge, #419, E.C.
Worshipful Master: W. Baker (signal sergeant, Marine Department)
Senior Warden: J. Bryant
Junior Warden: T. Spafford
Master Overseer: William Quincey
Senior Overseer: W. Bevan
Junior Overseer: Hajee Ally Shirazee
Chaplain: W.M.B. Arthur (first clerk, Land Office; committee, Horticultural Society)
Treasurer: J. R. Grimble
Registrar of Marks: W. Bidgood (overseer, Praya Reclamation Works Department)
Secretary: J. White (sexton, St. John's Cathedral)
Senior Deacon: W. Robinson
Junior Deacon: W.H. Hawkings
Director of Ceremonies: J.A. Inglis
Inner Guard: S.T. Moore
Tyler: J. Maxwell

Bad Apples

"Almost every member of the police was eager to be bribed, and willing to connive for money at infringements of the Law, especially of the Laws against gaming.", remarked Richard Graves MacDonnell 麥當奴, the 6th colonial governor (1866-1872), soon after he arrived in Hong Kong.


Francis Henry May (center)
Captain Superintendent Deane, after having been shot at and became seriously injured while leading a police raid a few years earlier, retired on November 1, 1891 for health reasons. He was succeeded by the Superintendent of the Victoria Gaol (1885-1892) Major-General (redt.) Alexander Herman Adam Gordon 哥頓 (not related to Charles G. Gordon). The new chief had taken ill the following year and was granted leave of absence to attend to his health. He died soon after. Francis Henry May, private secretary of the 10th colonial governor George William Des Voeux, was appointed acting Captain Superintendent of Police on February 10, 1893; he was confirmed chief of police a week later. May, as in the case of Deane, was a cadet, and like Dean he rose to the top echelons in the civil service in a matter of years. May arrived Hong Kong on February 27, 1883 and after passing cadet towards the end of 1886 was appointed acting Assistant Auditor General and simultaneous, acting Assistant Colonial Secretary on January 19 the following year. He was made Assistant Registrar-General before becoming the governor's private secretary on April 20, 1889. Despite the many similarities between the two chiefs of police, May, compared with Deane, had very little tolerance for lawbreaking, most particularly where lawmen were the ones breaking the law. How much of this was due to their respective upbringings could only be a matter of speculation, but they did come from quite different family background. May was the son of George Augustus Chichester May, Lord Chief-Justice of Ireland while Deane's father, John Bathurst Deane, was a school master and a director of the British Archaeological Association. [Just in case a clarification is needed here, what is being discussed are the two chiefs' tolerance policies on crime, not their respective integrity or values.]

Britain celebrated Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Joining the Jubilee Parade in London on June 22, 1897 were uniform men from colonies throughout the world, including a large contingent of HKPF officers and constables led by F. H. May's deputy [it was probably Francis Joseph Badeley]. The HKPF guard of honor, made up of European, Indian and Chinese, undertook a journey that lasted a couple of months, even though the London agenda was no more than 2 weeks. An event, promised to rock the HKPF like never before, began to unfold soon after the London-bound men had left Hong Kong. May had planned a police operation that he believed had better odds if executed during the months' long absence of these officers. He was to personally lead a major clamp down on gaming houses on the island. His second-in-command would be Acting Chief Inspector Alexander Mackie, a recruit from Scotland who joined the Force in 1872 at the rank of inspector[1]. Dozens of gaming houses were raid in June 1897 including one located at #3 East Street [known later as Tung Street 東街]. This particular raid became significant as May found what he suspected to exist, and most certainly wanting to seize -- the books of the largest Chinese gambling syndicate in Hong Kong, whose operation had included, among others, the gaming house at #2 Wah Lane in Sheung Wan 上環華里. Written in the books was a list of policemen who took bribes from the Wah Lane establishment, with underlying payoff details. The ledger named 14 Europeans, 38 Indian and 76 Chinese policemen on the take. The 14 Europeans included one chief inspector acting as deputy superintendent of police, 6 inspectors, one acting inspector, 4 sergeants and 2 acting sergeants. I would be quite surprised if all 14 of them weren't part of the guard of honor May had sent to London; he needed them out of the way so the raids could proceed in secrecy.

What followed was an in-house inquiry into the worst police scandal in the history of Hong Kong. May and Henry Lardner Dennys, Crown Solicitor (1896-1900), took charge. The panel was established at the Victoria Gaol and it wasn't until the end of August that the inquiries were concluded. Meanwhile, actions against convicted corrupted personnel were carried out as soon as they were found guilty. The following is what May wrote on February 10, 1898 in the HKPF Annual Report for the Year 1897, "One European Inspector was convicted of receiving bribes and sentenced to 6 months' imprisonment with hard labor. Three Inspectors and one Sergeant were dismissed. Two Inspectors and two Sergeant (one was Acting Inspector when the list was discovered) have been called upon to resigned. Two Sergeants and one Acting Sergeant were not re-engaged on the expiration of their terms of 5 years' service. One Acting Sergeant resigned. The Inspector, who was Acting as Deputy Superintendent, had already retired from the Force when the list was discovered."

I was hoping to compile a list of these 14 European officers, here are the bits and pieces I could manage to find: -

NameRankRemarks
Definite
Job Witchell 威祖inspectorwas tried in court on a charge of receiving bribes and was subsequently given a 6-month imprisonment sentence on August 3, 1897.
William Baker 碧架inspectorwas dismissed on August 23 for gross neglect of duty for not discovering and reporting a gaming house at #2 Wa Lane. Baker was in charge of Sheung Wan district and had been in the Force over 24 years. Baker was recruited from London in 1873, who joined HKPF as a 1st class police constable. Baker was a recipient of Hong Kong Plague Medal. In the official record, Baker was listed as compulsory retired on reduced pension on August 23, 1897. He received an annual pension payment of 361.65, which was 80% of his original entitlement, from 1897 till 1929.
George Hennessy 搴彌時inspectortook compulsory retirement on March 5, 1898 and was to immediately receive a pension of $656.47 per year till his death on September 8, 1912. Hennessy, hailed from Newmarket, Ireland, joined HKPF as a sergeant in 1873 via the London Metropolitan Police. Hennessy was so highly regarded by his peers that F.H. May had empowered him to undertake recruitment duties in Ireland. Hennessy was a recipient of Hong Kong Plague Medal. He returned home in Ireland after leaving HKPF.
John Holt 何露detective sergeantwas dismissed from the Force on August 24. There were some contradiction information on Holt, according to the Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 27, 1895, he was promoted to be inspector on April 26, 1895 and I have no idea how come he became a detective sergeant two years later. Holt's name was not found in the police pension list.
William Quincey 坤士detective inspector[as you may have guessed it] was dismissed on August 25 for the same charges as Baker. Quincey had been in the force for over 27 years. [I noted with interest that Quincey was grouped under the category of European officers.] Quincey was listed as compulsory retired on reduced pension. A pension of $568.59 (80% of his entitlement) was paid to him from August 25, 1897 till, incredibly, 1924, a year after his death.
William Stanton 士丹頓detective inspector and head of detective divisionwas suspended on July 13 and dismissed from the Force on September 2, by order of the governor. Officially, Stanton was listed as compulsory retired on reduced pension on September 2, 1897. The pension payment of $555.52, which was 80% of his original entitlement, continued until 1909. Stanton joined HKPF as acting sergeant in 1873 via the London Metropolitan Police. Eager to salvage his reputation as a learned police expert, Stanton published a number of articles in the late 1890s concerning Triads in Hong Kong. The articles were compiled and published by Kelly and Walsh as a book in 1900, titled The Triads Society or Heaven and Earth Association. It has since become an influential resource for those studying the secret society in China, and its activities in Hong Kong. Stanton had claimed the book was based on his personal experience and first-hand observation as a front line policeman, yet according Barend J. ter Haar 田海, Chair Professor of Chinese Studies in Oxford and author of Ritual & Mythology of the Chinese Triads (1998), Stanton's book contained mostly translation of Triads manuals seized by the police.
Very Sure
Aeneas Mannacting inspectortook compulsory retirement on March 5, 1898, pension payment of $415.15 per year from date of retirement till 1926. Mann's name was found on the Wah Lane pay off list. Mann was a recipient of the Plague Medal.
Very Likely, But Not Sure
Joseph Mathew Corcoraninspectortook compulsory retirement on October 10, 1897, pension payment of $780.18 per year from date of retirement till 1908. Corcoran was one of the original London recruits in 1873, he was promoted to be an acting Inspector, 3rd class in November 1876. He was appointed Warden of Victoria Gaol (vice A. Grey, resigned) on March 5, 1977. He returned to HKPF in 1979 as Inspector 3rd class, and became Inspector, 2nd class in January 1880.
Tom Foordsergeanttook compulsory retirement on March 5, 1898, pension payment of $250 per year from date of retirement; his name remained on the police pension record in 1939, the last pension list available before the outbreak of the Pacific War.
Dan Hallsergeanttook compulsory retirement on March 5, 1898, pension payment of $224 per year from date of retirement till 1909.
Angus Macaulayacting sergeanttook compulsory retirement on January 18, 1898, pension payment of $133.33 per year from date of retirement till his death on February 25, 1939.
Alexander McIverdetective sergeanttook compulsory retirement on December 25, 1897, pension payment of $201.07 per year from date of retirement till 1920. According to the Hong Kong Government Gazette of April 27, 1895, he was promoted to be inspector on April 26, 1895 along with John Holt. As in the case of Holt, he was to be listed as a detective sergeant two years later.
Possible
John Matheson(former) chief inspector[All I have on Matheson are circumstantial.] was one of the original Scottish recruits. He joined HKPF in 1872 as an inspector, third class. Mathieson was later promoted to be chief inspector, and appointed, in October 1892, acting Deputy Superintendent of Police and the Fire Brigade, sitting in for the original office bearer during (probably) a leave of absence. It was said that Mathieson was an outstanding policemen (except that he was on the take, allegedly), his distinguished service won him a gold medal [I am unsure if this was the Hong Kong Police Medal for Distinguished Service (PDSM)]. He was also a recipient of the Hong Kong Plague Medal. Mathieson retired in February 1895 and left Hong Kong on March 4 the same year. These fit the descriptions given by F.H. May, but then I could be completely mistaken. I also noted that his name was omitted from the pension list after having been posted for two years, viz. 1896 and 1897. That could only mean that either he died some time in 1897, or his pension had been stopped.
[If I am right about the above, I am still missing one. (6/3/2014)]

May also gave an account of what transpired with respect to the Asiatic personnel. The 38 Indians were either sergeants or constables. 19 were dismissed and one was not allowed to re-engage. 17 were allowed to remain in the Force [one was not accounted for]. The 76 Chinese included sergeants interpreters, sergeant and constables. 26 were dismissed and 18 resigned. 32 were allowed to remain in the Force. There were thus 48 [sic.49] Asiatic policemen still serving whose name were on the payoff list [May might not be very good in counting, but what about the man who proofread his report before it was published.].

At the core of the scandal was the detective division, to which Quincey belonged. This no doubt is a textbook example of what wholesale corruption is, in that not only the division was entirely infested by dirty policemen, it was also the corruptor at source that had been corroding the rest of the Force. As could be expected, zero tolerance was given to the division. On July 13, Quincey, Stanton and other European officers were suspended, while dozens of Chinese detectives were arrested. Eight days later, two Chinese detective sergeants and 14 detectives were arrested on banishment warrants and three other detectives were found absconded. With that, the HKPF detective division was effectively cleared out[2]. All bad apples, the whole basket of them, were now gone.

For various reasons, the European community was sympathetic towards the convicted European officers, most particularly it was because they had done nothing that was harmful to the expatriate society. After all, the local gaming enterprises that they chose not to crack down victimized only the local populace. It was felt perhaps the European officers, at least the good ones, should be given a second chance. For example, Stanton, Hennessy and Quincey were given commendations by none other than May himself in his report of HKPF for the year 1895 (I would not be surprised if similar commendations also appeared in his 1896 report, except that I can't locate the file). One of the most respected residents in the colony at the time, Dr. James Cantile (b.1851-d.1926), who was the Dean of the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (1888-1897) and the founding chairman of the British Medical Association, Hong Kong and China Branch (1890), and the famous rescuer of Sun Yat-sen (who were detained at the Qing Embassy in London from October 11 through 23, 1896), had this to say about the police scandal, "At the present moment there is considerable scandal in connection with the acceptance of bribes by European police, and men of great experience are being got ride of because they took 'tips'; surely a well-understood purloin of the police in all countries." Questions were raised on the wisdom behind the trying of former Inspector Job Witchell and the subsequent passing of a 6-month hard labor sentence, since he committed no worse crime than the other 13. Witchell pleaded clemency but it was neither granted nor even considered. This was clearly an unusually harsh punishment considering the others were exempted from criminal charges, and 11 of them were even put on the pension list including one former sergeant Tom Foord who would receive pension from the government for more than four decades, and possibly further on had it not been for the outbreak of war in Hong Kong. The European community was not impressed with May when Witchell's wife, Mary Powell Witchell, died while he was serving his jail sentence, leaving five children uncared for.

This sympathetic sentiment was certainly extended to Quincey, who was doubtless one of, if not the most, skillful PR person of his time in Hong Kong. Several newspapers, after he was sacked, went to the extent of praising his past achievements in the Force and told the readership how much he was missed in the society. Missed or not, Quincey's tenure in HKPF was over -- for good. Given Quincey's connection in the society, securing a good job in the commercial sector should be pretty easy. Even Job Witchell, who continued to reside in Hong Kong after getting out of jail, landed a job at the Deep Water Bay Brick Works, which was owned by the Green Island Cement Co. 青洲英泥, as manager. But not for Quincey. He liked police work.

[1] The dual was rather like Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) in the Untouchables. As in the case of Al Capone's accountant, Walter Payne (Jack Kehoe), Wa Lane's accountant, Sham Yeen (he was also the cashier responsible for the actual physical payoffs), was presented by the prosecution as a key witness in the May-Dennys Inquiry, and later at the trial of Job Witchell. Less fortunate than Payne, Sham Yeen received no bargain offer from the prosecution; he was given 9 months' imprisonment and a fine of $1,000, and eventual deportation to China after completing his prison term. Alexander Mackie was made chief inspector in 1898, and from September 1897 onward until his retirement in April 1903, he was appointed annually as acting Deputy Superintendent of Police and assistant Superintendent of the Fire Brigade as and when the office bearer went on leave of absence.
[2] There was at least one man remaining in the otherwise cleared out detective division. Acting sergeant Thomas Henry Gidley, most recently appointed to the division on June 16, 1897, was either too new to be contaminated or was, possibly, a snitch May had planted in the division in the eve of the stormy operation. He was made inspector within a couple of years, but died on April 28, 1904 at the young age of 31. He joined HKPF before 1893 as a constable and was made ward master of the hospital hulk, the Hygeia, in 1894, responsible for admitting plaque patients from the Tung Wah Hospital and for caring them all the way till death. His diligent work won him a plague medal, but most unfortunately, he lost one of his two children, the four years old Eugenie Esmerelda Ernestine Gidley, to the plague. Gidley was a warder of the Victoria Gaol prior to the appointment in the detective division.

So who ran the Detective Division after Stanton? Initially, it was Inspector George Kemp. He was succeed on October 11, 1897 by Inspector John William Hanson, who was previously the commander of Water Police. Hanson's post had a new name, i.e. Chief Detective Inspector. Both Kemp and Hanson were recipients of the Hong Kong Plague Medal. Additionally, Hanson received a first-class Police Medal and the King's Police Medal (1911). During his tenure in HKPF, he handled a number of complicated cases and one of them was the 1901 Gage Street Murder. School master and republican revolutionist Yeung Ku-wan, a.k.a. Yeung Kui-wan, {Yang Quyun} 楊衢雲 was gun down by emissaries from Canton on January 10, 1901 at his resident at #52 Gage Street. Yeung died at the Government Civil Hospital the following day. The lead assassin was quickly identified to be a Chan Lam {Chen Lin} 陳林, a staffer of De Shou, the Viceroy of Liangguang 兩廣總督德壽. Chan made his way back to Canton and no further action was taken by HKPF to the best of my knowledge. The case also marked the first political assassination in Hong Kong. Hanson was born in the United States. His father was originally from Denmark, and his mother Ireland. He was 17 years old, a sailor by profession, when he came to Hong Kong in 1874. He went to see Captain Superintendent Deane and asked for a job, and he was hired. Hanson [probably] was the first American officer in HKPF. Hanson retired in 1911 and was succeeded by Albert Collett. John Grant was appointed on October 2, 1923. Timothy Murphy was appointed on November 2, 1926. Murphy retired in 1938 and at that point I decided to end further researches on this subject.

Pioneering Police Work in China


Undated photo of an "old" law enforcement unit, the photo caption reads "The Peking Police Force".
Qing China did not have a police force, in the modern sense, of its own. Law enforcement on local level was placed under the purview of an assistant of a magistrate, known as Xunjian 巡檢, who in turn commanded a team of paramilitary men known as Yamen Chaiyi 衙門差役. Depending on the size of the precinct, the team would normally be divided into two to three sections, and six to eight sub-sections. Between them, they were required to carry out criminal investigations, apprehension of wanted persons - from petty offenders to felons, extradition transfers, administration of corporal punishment, and in addition, they were the court officers, gaolers, night-watchmen, morticians, coroners, official couriers (courier packages occasionally would include local seasonal fruits to be sent to the Imperial Court in Peking), and so on. The Xunjian and his team seemed quite organized to me, but not so from where the young Emperor Kuang-hsu {Guangxu} 光緒皇帝 sat. He wanted a modernized (in another word, Westernized) police force for his empire.

The first modern police force in Qing China was created in 1854. Sadly, it didn't belong to Kuang-hsu and the Qing government had no control over it. The Shanghai Municipal Police 上海公共租界巡捕房 was a police unit created by the Shanghai Municipal Council 上海公共租界工部局. It was headed by a HKPF officer seconded to the British Settlement in Shanghai, named Samuel Clifton[1]. Inspector Clifton left Hong Kong in August 1854 with 31 European policemen and estabslihed himself a couple of days later in Shanghai as Superintendent Clifton. The SMPF had since then grown in proportion to the size of the foreign population in the Settlement, more so to the ever increasing number of crimes that had taken place there. By 1936, the force had reached the strength of 4,700 men including nearly 3,500 Chinese. SMPF, and the whole of the Shanghai International Settlement, came under Japanese control in December 1941 in coherence with the Pearl Harbor attack. The force came to its final end when it was disbanded in February 1943.

In 1898, Kuang-hsu's wish had come true, not only had he got his modern police force, but also a whole package of reforms to modernize his empire. Since loosing to Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War (War of Jiawu) 甲午戰爭 in 1895, the young emperor had allowed himself to be surrounded by reformers, who advocated that procuring technological modernization alone, which the nation had been actively engaged in since after the First Opium War, would not assure the sustainability of the Da Qing Empire. What was needed was a daring structural reform that should go from government structure, to education, to macroeconomics management, to industrialization, and to the dismantlement of feudal military organization. What Kuang-hsu was hoping to get, I can only image, was a Chinese version of the Meiji Restoration.


Huang Tsun-hsien. Credit: evi.
The man who delivered the new police force to Kuang-hsu was diehard reformer Huang Tsun-hsien {Huang Zunxian} 黃遵憲, a mid-ranking official who had served as a diplomat between 1877 and 1894. Huang claimed he had a good understanding of how modern police force worked, a knowledge he said he had gained through observation while posting in Japan, USA and UK. In 1897, while posted in Hunan Province 湖南省 as acting Anchashi 按察使 [A position equivalent to the combined roles of provincial attorney general and chief justice.], he drafted a proposal for the establishment of a prototype police force and submitted it to Hunan Governor Chen Baozhen 陳寶箴, another diehard reformer. The proposal was received favorably by Chen and Huang was told to put it to work; thus on July 27, 1898, China's own police force, the Hunan Baoweiju 湖南保衛局 (literally translated as Hunan Security Department), was established in Changsha 長沙市, Hunan's capital. HSD had one central station and five precincts, each precinct was divided into six sub-precincts. There were also five penitentiaries. The department employed a total of 286 people. It is impossible to tell the degree of resemblance between Huang's prototype and the real McCoy; for one, I am quite skeptical about it. To get more bizarre, HSD was not exactly a government law enforcement agency for its establishment and ongoing operation was to a great extent funded by local gentry in Changsha. The financiers, naturally, demanded seats in the committee created to oversee the running of China's first police force, that, had to be avant garde even by Western standard. The HSD met its fate only 2 months after having been put to work for Kuang-hsu's reform movement ended in a coup d'état staged by the Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi {Cixi} 慈禧太后 (Kuang-hsu's aunt and king-maker) on September 21, 1898. [The reform was thus named the Hundred Days' Reform 百日維新.] Kuang-hsu was incapacitated and confined to his living quarters within the Forbidding City (except the period in 1900 when Peking was occupied by foreign powers during the Boxers Rebellion) until his death in 1908. Huang and Chen were lucky to have escaped the executioner's blade, both were deposed and confined to their respective place of birth until the times of their deaths.

Shanghai

How the following event was connected to the now subdued 100 Days' Reform is something I am not working on (at least not yet), but clearly, there ought to be some connection somewhere. In December 1898, which was three months after the young emperor's incapacitation and fifteen months after William Quincey's ignominious exit from the HKPF, the former detective inspector received a telegram from the Taotai 道台 of Shanghai, Tsai Gun, {Cai Jun} 蔡鈞. The Mayor of Shanghai [Qing China did not have a mayor position in its government structure, but as far as the function of the office goes, mayor is the closest equivalent, I reckon, to Taotai] had asked Quincey to go to Shanghai and start up a modern police force for him, oddly, to be known as the Taotai Police. Quincey quickly accepted the appointment and proceeded to Shanghai with five former HKPF officers, all Indians, including Jemadar Fakeer Mahomed, a HKPF pensioner (left the force on May 28, 1989, expiry of service), who would become his second-in-command. Tsai placed under Quincey's (Superintendent Quincey's, to be exact) control 50 of his paramilitary men, who would make up the new police force. Quincey was quick in getting the men organized, four most promising constables were promoted to be sergeants and the rest divided into three classes according to their abilities. He also got rid of Tsai's paymaster who had been "squeezing" no less than 20% of salary paid to the Chinese constables, so that his men were now getting the full amount of what they were promised. Two stations, each with barracks attached, were established. The central station was about half-way up the Bund, and a district station at the far southern end of the Bund. He armed the Indians with Winchester repeating rifles and the Chinese with truncheons. The men of the Taotai Police was praised, before long, as being well trained and disciplined and in these two areas, they were said to be as good as their counterparts in the Shanghai Municipal Police. So far I was unable to find documents that explained how Quincey's police interfaced with the existing Xunjian (the original law enforcement agent) in Shanghai, but found reports that said that the new police force was effective in maintaining order in the local quarters of the city and in dealing with crimes, except those involving crime syndicates, as syndicates paid well-placed city officials for protection (something surely Quincey wasn't unfamiliar with). The detective branch, although existing, was completely functionless because of the overwhelming oppositions from the local gentry, who feared that their own shady affairs might become targets of investigation.

Despite Quincey's experience and dedication, the Taotai Police, arguably the authentic version of China's first modern police force, was making steady progress towards dissolution, if only slowly. What it was up against was the  increasing voices opposing Tsai's reform (the modern police unit including) within the city bureaucratic mechanism, which had been persistent all along. To make thing worse, Quincey's employer and close ally, Taotai Tsai, was removed from Shanghai in 1899 due to his hardline attitude towards the foreign diplomatic corps, after disengaging himself in discussions in which the foreign powers demanded an expansion to the International Settlements. I found no pre-twentieth-century record of the Taotai Police in any of my Chinese reference sources, but one particular entry in the Shanghai Chronicle drew my attention. In 1895, the local gentry, through public subscription, had established an engineering company to take care of roadworks in the southern part of Shanghai. The company was named 上海南市馬路工程局 (loosely translated as Road Engineering Bureau of Southern Shanghai). Three notable events took place in the company in 1898. First, it was renamed 上海南市馬路工程善后局, with the word "Engineering" replaced by "Maintenance". Secondly, it started charging a toll for all vehicles using roads constructed and maintained by the company. Thirdly, it added a police unit, named 中國巡捕房 China Xunbufang (loosely translated as the China Police Force, "CPF"). The CPF included in its force six Indian sergeants and 50 constables, the latter were paramilitary men seconded from the 江蘇撫標滬軍營 (loosely translated as the Kiangsu Governor's Own Shanghai Battalion). It further said that CPF had established three stations along the Bund. I find it not unconvincing to think that the CPF and the Taotai Police were but the same. The next question is: had former detective inspector Quincey expanded his forte to include traffic control?

Quincey, in 1899, occupied a house at #102, Bubbling Well Road, which had an assessed value of 300 tls. (which I gather means 300 tales of silver) [cit]

Paoting and Tientsin


1900s photo of officers and constables of TSPD's Ho-tse Precinct 菏澤縣巡警局 . Credit: share.iclient.ifeng.com.
Head of traffic cops or not, Quincey, as we have learned from his days at HKPF, excelled in the game of survival. In Shanghai, he outlasted two more Taotais after Tsai, namely, Li Guangjiu 李光久 (son of a celebrated general and he himself a Taiping Rebels buster) and Yu Lianyuan 余聯沅; the latter became probably the most popular Taotai in Shanghai. The people of Shanghai petitioned Peking to construct a shrine in Yu's honor after he died in 1901. The shrine was built the following year by Imperial decree of Kuang-hsu. Quincey's fourth Taotai, Yuan Shuxun 袁樹勛, took office in 1901, the same year the Boxer Protocol 辛丑條約 was signed following the defeat of the Boxers 義和團 in the previous year. Getting prepared to take over Peking and Tientsin from the Eight-Nation Alliance 八國聯軍 was the newly appointed Viceroy of Chihli (Zhili) and Minister of Beiyang 直隸總督, 北洋大臣 (vice Li Hung-Chang, who died on November 7, 1901), General Yuan Shih-kai {Yuan Shikai} 袁世凱. Yuan, the creator and commander of Qing China's first modernized army, the New Army 新軍 (1895), was in the process of putting together a modernized police force to be stationed in Paoting (Baoding) 保定, the home base of his army. Paoting is located a mere 140km from Peking, and almost the same distance from Tientsin. In building the new police force, Yuan set before him two objectives; first, he was always looking for pretexts to expand an army loyal only to himself; secondly, he needed a military unit to guard Tientsin as well as to maintain law and order there once he took the city over. He had been told by the Alliance Headquarters that the stationing of Qing army in Tientsin was not an option. So he would send, instead, an army of policemen.



Policemen at Tientsin, 1912. Handwritten description on back reads, "Chinese City Police. These men were semi-militay. They were trained by W. Quincey [one of General Gordon's protegees] and his assistants,who were ex-London Metropolitan Police. They were pretty good at their work & well thought of. Actually they were the nucleus of China's modern police."
On April 3, 1902, Yuan, the Viceroy of Chihli, telegraphed Yuan, the Shanghai Taotai (they were not related), and summoned William Quincey and his five Indian officers (a different report said 50 Indians) to go north. Go north they did five days later on April 8. Quincey went to work as soon as he arrived in Paoting. In the month next following his arrival, the new police force was established. The Paoting Police Department (PPD) 保定警務局 had in its force 3,000 men, all with military training. Yuan appointed his henchman, Chao Ping-chun {Zhao Bingjun} 趙秉鈞, a.k.a. Chao Chib-an 趙智庵[2] as PPD's commissioner 保定警務局總辦. It is very unlikely that Chao, a former gaoler and Xunjian, knew how a modern police force worked, let alone managing it. He was simply there as an extension of Yuan. The Chinese sources I have reviewed confirm that Quincey was responsible for training and getting the men in PPD ready for their job[3]. I believe Quincey might have done more than that; he was Yuan's secret weapon as I reckon it was Quincey who crafted PPD in becoming what it was and he went on steering it from behind the scenes. I cannot begin to image how exciting Quincey must have been with this enormous task he had at hand. What I can imagine, though, was the humor the Alliance was anticipating – a fiasco, in which Yuan's imminent taking over of Tientsin would end. Perhaps, they had much to learn about Yuan. At the Viceroy's order, two third of the force marched to Tientsin on August 7 to stand ready for the transition. The remainder joined up on August 15 when the Alliance Headquarters signed off the city to Yuan. On that same day, China's modern police force of substance, the Tientsin Central Police Department 天津巡警總局, was established. Instead of Chao, Yuan gave the commissioner job to a former naval officer Tsao Kai-cheong {Cao Jiaxiang} 曹嘉祥[4]. By the end of the year, the force was expanded and a North TCPD 天津北段巡警總局 was added. Tuan Chi-kwei {Duan Zhigui} 段芝貴[5], an officer of the New Army, was made its commissioner. The original TCPD was renamed South TCPD. Months went by after TCPD was established and Qing China was ready for its second modern police force, and once again it were to be handcrafted by Quincey.

The 1905 “Directory and Chronicle for China, Japan, Corea, Indo-China, Straits Settlements, Malay States, Siam, Netherlands India, Borneo, the Philippines, and etc.” lay out the structure of the Tientsin City Police as follows:

Commissioner: Chao Ping-chun (Tsao Kai-cheong was dismissed for corruption in April 1903; Chao was reappointed commissioner)
Superintendent: William Quincey; E. Lugoski
Assist Superintendent: W. Ross(quite likely William Ross who was in the Shanghai Municipal Police between 1894 and 1902); L. Tamadah; Ghal Hassan Shah
4 Indian sergeants
50 Indian constables
10 Chinese divisional captains
10 Chinese divisional lieutenants
80 Chinese sergeants
2,400 Chinese constables
50 mounted constables
50 water police
City Police Brass Band
30 Chinese musicians
1 Chinese band master
1 trumpter major
2 band sergeants

Tsinanfu

The early success of the PPD and later the TCPD had caught the attention of Shantung {Shandong} governor Chou Fu {Zhou Fu} 山東巡撫周馥 (1902-1904). Since prior to the Shantung appointment, Chou was the lieutenant governor of Chili working under Yuan, it was easy for him to ask his former boss to have Quincey transferred to Tsinanfu (Jinan) 濟南, the provincial capital of Shantung. Helping Quincey to put together and train the men of the Jinan Central Police Department 濟南巡警總局 was a young man named Hsisan C. Liu 劉錫三, born Liu Chin {Liu Jun} 劉晉, who had some military background and was a friend of Quincey's son, Charles[6]. A Han Bannerman and civil officer, Santschi-uh {Shang Qiheng} 尚其亨, was appointed the supervisory commissioner of the JCPD 濟南巡警總局督辦, and as commissioner 濟南巡警總局總辦, Han Yaozeng 韓耀曾, an army officer and military theorist, who when served under the command of Yuan, co-authored China's first military training manual, 訓練練操法詳晰圖說, literally translated as "The Illustrated Manual of (Army) Training and Exercise". Three police academies were established in cities where Quincey set foot. There are no records that showed he was involved with the founding of these schools, but it doesn't mean he wasn't. The Paoting Police Academy 保定警務學堂 was established in May 1902, which was followed by the Tientsin Police Academy 天津警務學堂 four months later. In 1903, the Paoting school was merged into the one in Tientsin, and a new name of Beiyang Police Academy 北洋巡警學堂 was adopted. It was again merged into the Paotingfu Police Academy 保定府巡警學堂 in May 1911. In Shantung, the Tsinanfu Police Academy 濟南警務學堂 was established in May 1903; it was renamed the Shantung Police Academy 山東巡警學堂 in 1906. Quincey was listed as the Superintendent of the Settlement Police in 1908, and the police force under his purview was rather small: two Indian constables and 40 Chinese ones. [cit]

There was an interesting minor international incident in Jinan in 1905 following Quincey's taking charge of the police force there. Several German officials in Shandong complained to the Qing authorities about the appointment of Quincey who they supposed to be an Englishman. The Qing Governor responded to the Germans by stating that 'though Quincey might be said to be somewhat Anglicized, he nevertheless was a proper Chinese.' The North-China Herald's correspondent in Jinan went on to quote the Qing officials in his report for the May 12, 1905 newspaper, "Many of your readers doubtless know Mr Quincey and are aware that he is truly Chinese, having been born in Soochow, from which place he was taken to England by General Gordon, after the Taiping rebellion, and educated there, becoming while abroad a naturalised British subject. He dresses in European clothes, wears no queue and speaks excellent English." [cit]

Back To Shanghai

In 1910, Quincey returned to Shanghai[7], the city he had regarded home ever since leaving Hong Kong in 1898 (for good). At the age of 63, he accepted an appointment to be the superintendent of the Shanghai Nanking Railway Police. Railway police 鐵路巡警, in the sense of a police unit established and controlled by the relevant railway authority, independent of the government police system, was a product of 1910[8]. Bianluo Raiway (Kaifeng-Luoyang Railway) 汴洛鐵路, a railway built and controlled by the Belgium established in 1910 a small police force of its own to maintain order at the train stations. Dianyue Railway (Kunming-Hekou Railway) 滇越鐵路, a railway built and controlled by the French had its established on March 15, 1910. It was named Dianyue Railway Police 滇越铁路巡警.


Arthur W.U. Pope, General Manager (2nd) posted with Chung Mun-yew, Chinese Head Commissioner (center) and other officer on April 1, 1908 in Shanghai at the opening of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway. Credit: The Thistle and the Jade.

This was how Chung Mun-yew (center) looked in 1880. Believe it! He was coxswain for the Yale Varsity Crew in 1880 and 1881. The team won both years against Harvard in the annual boat races (after having lost three straight years). Credit: Voice of America.
The Shanghai Nanking Railway (Huning Railway) 滬寧鉄路 was built and run by the British Chinese Corporation 中英銀公司, which also financed the £2.25 million construction. BCC was a limited company incorporated in London on May 24, 1898; it had two shareholders, namely: Jardine, Matheson & Co., and HSBC. The shareholders, interestingly, acted as agents of BCC in Shanghai. [Quite incredibly, BCC continued to exist until July 16, 1996, upon that date it was finally dissolved.] The 311-km railway line ran from the Shanghai North Station to the Nanking Railway Station, with 37 stops (25 were passing stations, the remainder are flag stations) in between. The management organ of the railway was the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Management Bureau 滬寧鐵路管理局. All the officers were British, more particularly, the General Manager and the Chief Accountant were always Jardine appointees[9]. There was however a Chinese Head Commissioner 滬寧鐵路管理總辦 who acted as the liaison between the British chairman of the Board of Commissioners and the Director General of Railways 鐵路總局局長, Liang Shih-yi {Liang Shiyi} 梁士詒 (1907-1911). Chung Mun-yew {Zhong Wenyao} 鐘文耀[10] was the first Chinese Head Commissioner. There wasn't much more I could find concerning Quincey's work as the chief of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Police except that he kept the job until 1922, the year he turned 75!

I do not know what role he played in China's transition from dynastic autocracy to republic, but do know that his insight into what's going on in China, particularly in relation to Shanghai, during the Republic Revolution and the Warlord Era that followed was sought after by his British employer, who would without any doubt report such intelligence to the appropriate civil and military agencies in London. I also don't know where Quincey was and what part he played, if any, when the Kuomintang founding president, Sung Chiao-jen (Song Jiaoren) 宋教仁 was shot by a lone gunman on March 20, 1913 at the Shanghai Station of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway when getting ready to board a train. Sung was rushed to the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Hospital 滬寧鐵路醫院 where he died two days later. The 31 years old idealistic politician had just led the KMT to victory in China's first democratic election. Sung was anxious to introduce into the young republic the cabinet system of the government, which from the prospective of ROC president at the time, Yuan Shih-kai, was a clear and present threat to his power. Within a short while after the shooting, several suspects were apprehended by the French Garde Municipale[11] and the assassin was duly identified by the British staff of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway (one of them Quincey, possibly). He was an active revolutionary and a KMT member named Wu Shiying 武士英 (born Wu Fuming 吳福銘). Further investigations revealed that Wu took order from Ying Guixin 應桂馨, a Shanghai gang boss, who was formerly head of the personal security detail of Sun Yat-sen, and, at the time of his own arrest, held the title of Brevet Chief of Police of Kang-su (Jiangsu) 江蘇巡查總長. Several government officials were implicated in the assassination case, the most senior of them was the premier in Yuan's government, Chao Ping-chun 趙秉鈞 (his name appeared earlier in this story as the first police chief of Paoting Police Department, which Quincey helped establish in 1902). Wu and Ying were soon transferred from the custody of the SMPF to the ROC authority. Wu was poisoned and died while being kept in prison, which, ironically, was named the Model Prison of Shanghai 上海模範監獄. Ying broke out of the "Model Prison" months later but found himself the victim of assassination in January 1914. He was hacked to death on board a train bound for Tsintsin. Chao, ROC's third premier (after Tang Shaoyi 唐紹儀 and Lou Tseng-Tsiang (Lu Zhengxiang), a.k.a. Pierre-Celestin Lou 陸徵祥), was demoted four months after Sung's death to be the Governor of Chihli. On February 27, 1914, he was found death in his office in Tsintsin, allegedly poisoned. All loose ends were thus tied; Sung's assassination case remained cold forever.

On a lighter note, I know Quincey was in good health, happy in Shanghai, and remained, every ounce of him, a favorite of the news media. If that wasn't the case, why would the Straits Times in Singapore ran a story On March 6, 1913 telling its readership that a railway police chief far way in Shanghai was about to take a vacation, and that he enjoyed sports? Here's the story, "Inspector W. Quincey of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway, after having completed three years' service had been granted two months' leave of absence which he intended to spend in Hankow visiting his two sons, ... He is the goal-keeper for the Railway Football Club and though over sixty years of age he is still hale and hearty, and rides a bicycle, besides taking long walks into the country."

[1] Samuel Clifton, an officer of the 67th Regiment (or a major in the 89th Regiment[a]), came to Hong Kong in 1846, where he met Elizabeth Quin[b], a woman he would quickly married. He left the army and found himself a post in HKPF as a clerk. He was listed as a deputy police inspector in 1850. Six years on as police chief of the Shanghai International Settlement, Clifton was indicted for fraud and extortion in 1860. He was acquitted due to lack of evidence and remained in Shanghai after his involuntary resignation from SMPF.

Chao Ping-chun. Credit: kknews.cc.
[2] Chao Ping-chun became ROC's Premier in August 1912. He resigned in July the following year after having been purportedly implicated in the Shanghai assassination of KMT founding president, Sun Chiao-jen (Song Jiaoren) 宋教仁.
[3] Two common mistakes were found in all the Chinese sources on the internet I have reviewed when making reference to Quincey in relation to his PPD involvement. First: Quincey is mistaken as a Cantonese naturalized as a British subject; secondly, Quincey's Chinese name is mistaken as 王昆士, as this is really the Chinese phonetic translation of “Wong Quincey”. His Chinese name was Wang Chin-nien, and I have as yet the fortune of deciphering it in Chinese.
[4] Tsao Kai-cheong

ca.1917 photo of Tuan Chi-kwei, ROC's Minister of War. Credit: kknews.cc.
[5] Tuan Chi-kwei, having bribed two Imperial Commissioners while being commissioner of North TCPD, found his ways to the position of Viceroy of Heilungchang (Heilongjiang) 黑龍江巡撫. The scandal was later exposed and he was deposed on September 26, 1907. At the dawn of Republic China, he attached himself first to Yuan Shih-kai and following the latter's death, to another Beiyang warlord Tuan Chi-jui {Duan Qirui} 段祺瑞. Tuan Chi-kwei was elevated to the position of ROC's Minister of War when his mentor, the other Tuan, assumed the Republic's premiership in 1917.

Hsisan C. Liu. Credit: Who's Who in China, 1925.
[6] Hsisan C. Liu 劉錫三, a.k.a. Liu Chin 劉晉, joined the First Chinese Regiment (The Wei-hai-way Regiment) 華勇營 as a cadet and interpreter not long after he graduated from the the Imperial Chinese Railway College (commonly known as the Shanhaikwan Railway College) 山海關北洋鐵路官學堂 , which was the predecessor of the Southwest Jiaotong University 西南交通大學, in 1900. It was in the Chinese Regiment that the Shanghai-born Liu became acquainted with Quincey's son, Charles, who had been living in Shanghai. Both of them served as interpreters but Charles held the rank of military sergeant. Liu got out in 1902 when the British Colonial Office, the new command of the Regiment, ordered it to be downsized. His last rank was military sergeant, and as in the case of Charles, Liu was awarded the China Medal 1900. He next joined Yuan's Paoting Military Academy 北洋行營將弁學堂 as a drill instructor. Quincey, probably at the introduction and recommendation of his son, Charles, took him from the military school and placed him as his deputy. Liu later rejoined the New Army and was given the rank of a major. In 1907, he was made an aide-de-camp to Yang Shih-hsiang {Yang Shixiang} 楊士驤, Viceroy of Chihli (vice Yuan Shih-kai). Liu left the army after Yang died in office in 1909 and became a railwayman, which was, as it turned out, his lifelong obsession, as an engineer and an administrator. Liu was based in Hankow where he took part in the railway projects there promoted by the Siems-Carey Railway and Canal Railway Co. In 1917, he was appointed the senior position of the secretary and engineer-in-charge of the Technical Department of the Szechuan-Hankow Railway 川漢鐵路. Quincey had two sons living also in Hankow since 1913 (or before that), both were engineers working for Hanyang Iron and Steel Works, which supplied rails to the Szechuan-Hankow Railway. Did Liu get the Quincey boys their jobs, or was it the other way around, or simply an co-incident? Your guess is as good as mine!
[7] Quincey was listed as Superintendent of the City Police in Shanghai in the 1904 issue of Who's Who, an Alphabetical List of Foreign Residents and Hong Employers in Shanghai, and Outports. This means I'll have to put on my researcher's cap and do more digging.
[8] The first railway police force, which was part of the government law enforcement system in China, appeared in 1888. Militiamen were hired by the government to guard the stations between Tongshan {Tangshan} 唐山 and Tientsin of the Jingfeng Railway (Peking-Fengtien (Shenyang) Railway)京奉鐵路. They were replaced by soldiers of regular army in 1900. The soldiers were further replaced by security guards and students of the nearby police academy in 1905. A railway police department, with three stations, was established in 1906. The department took its command from the Viceroy of Chihli, however all expenses were to be paid for by the railway authority.
[9] (British) Railway Officials of the Shanghai-Nanking Railway in the year 1908: J.D. Smart, Chairman, Board of Commissioners (Sub-manager, HSBC in Shanghai); Charles Edward Anton, Board of Commissioners (Director, Jardine, Matheson & Co. 1911-18); Arthur William Uglow Pope, General Manager (Railway engineer, previously Traffic Superintendent of the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway in India); Herbert Edgar Middleton, Chief Accountant (Accountant, Shanghai Municipal Council since 1907); Herbert Pinckney Winslow, Deputy Traffic Manager (Appointed manager, British Section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway in 1911; the Winslow Street 溫思勞街 in Hong Kong was named in his honor); Frank Ware Dees, Executive Engineer; Ivan Tuxford, Headquarters Assistant Engineer; William S. Andrews, Acting Chief Storekeeper; John George Barkley; A.C. Clear; Alfred Howe Collinson (civil engineer); Edwin James Dunstan (locomotive designer); W.J. Grey; F. Grove; M.R. Sinclair and; K.D. Tweedie.
[10]

1935 photo of Huang Jinrong wearing the Order of Brilliant Jade (3rd class) 三等釆玉勛章 awarded to him by Chiang Kai-shek {Jiang Jieshi} 蔣介石. Huang prided himself as Chiang's mentor. Credit: 華聲論壇.
[11] The arresting officer was the most notorious racketeer-policeman, Huang Jinrong 黃金榮, who joined the French Garde Municipale in 1892, rising to the most senior position in the force available to a Chinese, chief superintendent of the detective squad 華人探督察長, in 1919. Beknown all the while to the French police force, he had been a self-proclaimed member of the crime society of Green Gang 青幫. He went to the extent, later on, of asserting himself as a 21st degree "capo bastone" of the syndicate even though, some said, he'd never been initiated into the crime society. Regardless whether or not Huang was a pedigree gangster, he was the strongest and richest in Shanghai. How could he not be, he had under his command both wiseguys and lawmen (essentially, these were the same individuals - wiseguys with badges enforcing the law of the jungle). Shanghai crime boss Du Yuesheng 杜月笙 rose to power under Huang's wing. Du was, essentially, a protégé of Huang's wife, Lin Guisheng 林桂生, who was the most feared woman gangster of her time.
[a] Clifton probably came from another army unit since the 89th Foot had never served in China, and the 67th only came out to the Far East after 1858, and China in 1860.
[b] Elizabeth Quin was the daughter of James Quin, an ex-soldier who came to Hong Kong in 1845 and found employment with the government as second clerk in the magistrates' court. Elizabeth's brother, William Quin, was Captain Superintendent of HKPF from 1862 to 1867. He was succeeded by Walter Meredith Deane, the chief who helped make Quincey's career in HKPF.

A Full and Colorful Life


1920 photo of Quincey and Ku Hung-ming {Gu Hongming} 辜鴻銘. A Malaysian-Chinese, Ku was a reknowned scholar and an advocate of monarchy and Confucian values. He was a professor of English Literature at the Peking University at the time of this photo. Credit: National Galleries of Scotland.
William Quincey died on August 24, 1923, at the age of 76, less than a year after his retirement, at his resident at #103, Woosung Road 吳淞路 (W. Quincey remained as the listed resident in the July 1934 North China Desk Hong List), sentimentally named the "Gordon Cottage"[1]. He had spent his entire adult life being a policeman: 27 years in HKPF and 24 years in China - 12 years in central and northern China helping one government to another developing modern police forces, and the last 12 years with the Shanghai-Nanking Railway Police. Half a century of undivided devotion was no small testimony to his love for police work. His life had taken a very different path when he met Charles George Gordon. The charisma and the quintessential English character of the Great Soldier had made such an imprint inside Quincey that this son of Quinsan wanted nothing else other than being a Nigel. He had never had any identity crisis that I've come to notice, and he wasn't the kind to switch side as it suited him (except that he practiced polygamy – he had four co-wives - which is not the English thing). He was street smart and witty, and possessed a characteristic distinctly non-Chinese (of his time), romantic. The North-China Herald correspondent who wrote Quincey's obituary told us that he was one of the most romantic figures in China. His own demise might be the doing of devastations caused by the death of one of his wives a few months earlier than his own.

He was well-liked and had made a lot of friends in and outside China. A newsies' favorite subject, he was probably the policeman with the most media coverage in the Far East of his time; it began on August 21, 1880 when he was made inspector of HKPF and ended 43 years later on August 25, 1923, the day next following his death, always speaking favorably about him - no matter what. William W. Quincey lived a full and colorful life, from one of an orphan to prosperity with outstanding descendants.

[1] Quincey was previously listed as owner of a house located at #102 Bubbling Well Road 靜安寺路 (present day Nanjing west Road 南京西路) in 1899. His close neighbors had included the most prominent Western residents in Shanghai: Brodie Augustus Clarke (merchant; Major Commandant, Shanghai Volunteer Corps, vice G.J. Morrison), Duncan McNeill (Crown Advocate, British Supreme Court for China and Corea), Gabriel James Morrison (civil engineer; Major Commandant, SVC), Louis Rocher (Commissioner, Shanghai Maritime Customs), and John Herrick McMichael (Director, Cathay Trust Ltd. and later the inaugural president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai). The property was bought in 1900 by one Thomas Lacey Bickerton who built and operated a sixty room hotel on the site, which he named Bickerton Hotel.

Chronology of the Quincey Family
(Note: This is more detailed than what would usually be included in a family chronology as I have also added events showing significant personal achievements, and sometime failures, of members of the family. Additionally, selected world and regional events are inserted to the table as reference)
[I am still working on this. It probably will take another week or so to finish.(10/27/2022)]


YearEvent
ca.1848 or 1851Quincey was born in Quinsan
1850Taipin Rebellion began
ca.1862 - ca.1864Quincey was found and taken in by Charles Gordon
1864Taipin Rebellion ended
Quincey was taken to England by Charles Gordon
1869Quincey was baptised in Malta
1870Quincey joined the Hong Kong Police Force, either as a sergeant or was later promoted to the position of sergeant
ca.1872Quincey married Catherine Tan in Hong Kong (TBC)
1873Thomas William Quincey, Quincey's first child, was born in Hong Kong
1876Margaret Wong Quincey, Quincey's first daughter, was born in Hong Kong (TBC)
1880Quincey was promoted to the position of police inspector
1880 -1887Quincey became the first Chinese policeman in HKPF to carry a firearm on a regular basis
1881Mary Agnes Wong-Quincey, Quincey third child, was born in Hong Kong
1882Peter Quincey Wong, Quincey's fourth child, was born in Hong Kong
1883Quincey became a naturalized British subject (within the limite of Hong Kong)
1884Quincey was further promoted to be detective-inspector
1885Quincey assumed the Masonry position of steward with the Eothen Mark Lodge of Hong Kong as welll as the United Service Lodge of East China
1887Quincey was charged with manslaughter for having shot and killed a bystander while firing at an escaping thief. The charge was afterward dropped
John Wong-Quincey, Quincey's fifth child, was born in Hong Kong
1889Quincey assumed the Masonry position of junior deacon with the St. John's Lodge of South China
1892Quincey assumed the Masonry position of junior deacon with the Ararat Lodge of Royal Ark Marines, Eat China; and master overseers with the Inited Mark Lodge, East China
1893Lewis Patrick (better known as Patrick) Wong-Quincey, Quincey's sixth child, was born in Shanghai (TBC)
1894Plague pandemic in Hong Kong
Quincey was the first perosn in Hong Kong to warn the government of an imminent plague infestation, at a meeting with the Sanitary Board. He was later deputized, along with 12 others, by the police chief as a sanitray officier. Thieir duties were to spot infected perosons and removed them to quarantine facilities
Thomas, who had been with the Hong Kong Civil Service for several years, was appointed second Chinese Clerk and Interpreter in the Registrar General's Office
ca.1894Thomas married Zeng Suxia, Mary, in Hong Kong
1895Quincey was awarded the Hong Kong Plague Medal for his plague fighting works
Wang Guoxiu, Thomas's first child, a daughter, was born in Hong Kong
ca.1896 (TBC)Margaret married George Ingram (TBC)
1897Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
Quincey was dismissed from the HKPF on bribery charges
Thomas was dismissed from the Registrar's Office on bribery charges
1898Quincey was invited to Shanghai to form a police force for the Taotai (mayor) known as the Taotai Police
1899The Boxer Rebellion began
1901The Boxer Rebellion ended
Charles, who served in the First Chinese Regiment (a British Army Regiment formed in British Weihaiwei) as sergeant interpreter, was awarded the Chinese Medal 1900 with clasp "Relief of Pekin" for fighting against Qing China duing the Boxer Rebellion
1902Quincey was invited to go to Paoting to establish a modern police force, and months later from there onto Tientsin to form the Tientsin City Police in which he was given the position of superintendent. Before the years ened, he was seconded to Jinan to establish the Jinan Central Police Department
ca.1902Peter was appointed Medical Officer in the Sanitary Department of Jinan
1903Peter, while atttending the Hong Kong College of Medecine for Chinese, was appointed by the Government Bacteriologist as an laboratory assistant
Mary married Lawrence Bernard Boyack in Teintsin
Gordon K.C. Wang, Thomas' second child, was born in Peking
1904Christopher Quincey Wong, Peter's first child, was born in Tientsin (TBC). He died in Tientsin, probably infant death
1906Thomas was the sub-manager of Taching Government Bank (Chinese Central Bank) in Hankow; two years later he was promoted to be the branch manager
Cecilia Boyack, Mary's first child, was born in Hankow
ca.1906Phyllis Quincey Wong, later Sister Mary Terresita, Peter's second child, was born in Hong Kong
1908Quincey was removed from the mainstream Chinese ploice hierarchy and was appointed superintdnent of the Jinan Settlement Police
Martin Paul Quincey Wong, Peter's third child, was born in Taiwan
1909Florence Agnes Boyack, Mary's second child, was born in Hankow
1910Quincey returned to Shanghai and became the superintendent of the Shanghai Nanking Railway Police
Thomas was the branch manager of the Taching Government Bank in Szechuen
John went to England to attend the University of London
Peter became the resident surgeon of the Public Chinese Hospital, a.k.a. Shanghai Hospital, in Shanghai
1911Wuchang Uprising, Provisional Military Government of the the Republic of China established
John became the editor/co-editor of two magazines published in London, viz. The East and the West; The Chinese Review
Peter was appointed a deputy of the Chinese delegation at the International Plague Conference held in Mukden
ca.1911John became the first Chinese member of the British Institute of Journalists
1912ROC established
The Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor was endorsed by Empress Dowager Longyu, without the knowledge of Emperor Puyi
Agnes Boyack, Mary's third child, was born in Hankow
ca.1912John was appointed a member of the Chinese Finance Commission for Europe
1913Thomas was the manager of the Singapore branch of the Bank of Communications
John received an AB degree from the University of London, but only returned to China in the year next following
Patrick worked for the Hanyang Iron Works as a secretary
Chalres worked for the Hanyang Iron Works as the chief electrician
ca.1913 (TBC)Peter worked for the County Hospital in Daye, a county 85 km south east of Hanyang (TBC)
1914World War One began
John was hired by the Tsing Hua College in Peking as an English teacher and head of the Western Lanauage Department
1915Thomas Bernard Boyack, Mary's fourth child, was born in Hankow
1916John was appointed Dean of Studies of Tsing Hua
1918World War One ended
ca.1918 (TBC)James Boyack, Mary's fifth child, was born in Hankow
1919Paris Peace Conference
1920Patrick married Anna Magdalene Anderson in Shanghai. Anna died in 1936 in Shanghai. Patrick later married Irene Pearl
ca.1920John married Sze Vong-tsu
1921Thomas was the branch manager of the Bank of Canton in Shanghai
John was appointed president of the Tsing Hua College; he held the post until April 1922
John published his first book, titled Educational Guide to the United States: for Use of Chinese and other Oriental Students
Leonora (Nora) Patricia Quincey, Patrick' first child, was born in Shanghai
ca.1921 (TBC)Dorothy Boyack, Mary's sixth child, was born in Hankow. She was the wife of Howard Banter. She died in San Jose, CA
1922Vera Wong-Quincey, John's first child, was born in Peking
William Gordon Quincey, Patrick' second child, was born in Shanghai
1923Quincey died in Shnaghai
1924Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City
ca.1924Vivien Wong-Quincey, John's second child was born in Peking
1926John was appointed professor of the Department of Western Literature of the newly established Tsing Hua University; and he was later elected dean of the department
1927John attended the Yale University to read screenwriting; in the same year, he wrote his first play: Coup d’etat in Peking
1928Terrence Hugh Quincey, Patrick' third children, was born in Shanghai. Terrence married Shella Wood Thomas. They had a son, Brett, and two grandsons, James and Christopher
1929Plague pandemic in Hong Kong was over; although only 44 cases were reported in 1945, the plague kept coming back near each year until 1929
1931Gordon K.C. Wang, Thomas' son, received a master degree in political science from the Columbia University
ca.1932 (TBC)Agnes Boyack, daughter of Mary, married Frank Richard Bell
1933Lawrence Berand Boyack, Mary's husband, was honored with an OBE
ca.1933 (TBC)Shelia Jean Bell, first daughter of Agnes Boyack and granddaughter of Mary was born
1935Thomas was the manager of the Singapore branch of Bank of China
Lawrence Berand Boyack, Mary's husband, was awarded a British Empire Medal
Gordan K.C. Wang, son of Thomas, married Huang Xiatong, Grace, in Shanghai
Phyllis Quincey Wong, later Sister Mary Terresita, Peter's daugther, died in Monrovia, CA.
ca.1935 (TBC)Elizabeth (Dinny) Bell, second daughter of Agnes Boyack and granddaughter of Mary was born
ca.1936Wang Shifang, first son of Gordan K.C. Wang and grandson of Thomas, was born in Shanghai
1937Marco Polo Bridge incident, Japan's invasion of China began
Peking fell to Japanese attack, and came under Japanese occupation.
Shanghai fell to Japanese attack, and came under Japanese occupation; the International Settlement became an island
Wang Pinghua, second son of Gordan K.C. Wang and grandson of Thomas, was born in Shanghai
ca.1937John moved to Teintsin with his family and took refuge in the British Settlement there (TBC)
John moved again this time to Shanghai where he was offered a tenure at the St. John's University as a professor in the English Department (TBC)
Martin Paul, Peter's son, married Helene Catherine Leong
1938Cyril Quincey Wong, first son of Martin Paul and grandson of Peter, was born in Hong Kong. He died in Westchester, NY.
ca.1940Vera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, went to the United States to attend the Morningside College, Sioux City, IA
1941Japanese navy air service bombed Pearl Harbor; the Pacific War began
Japanese troops entered and occupied the International Settlement in Shanghai
Hong Kong fell to Japanes attack, and came under Japanese occupation
Thomas Bernard Boyack, Mary's fourth child, died in Kuala Lumpur
1942Martin Wilton Wong Quincey, second son of Martin Paul and grandson of Peter, was born in Hong Kong. He died in San Francisco, CA.
1943Internment in Shanghai (1943 -1945)
Chapei Camp: Mary's daughters, Cecilia Lucy Boyack and Agnes Marjorie Boyack and her husband Francis Richard Bell, daughters Sheila Jean and Elizabeth A. (Dinny)
Pootung Camp: Patrick's son William Gordon
Yangchow C Camp: Patrick, his wife Pearl Irene, daughter Leonora and son Terrence Hugh
Leonora Patricia Quincey, Patrick' daughter, married Robert George John Bulldeath while being interned.
1944Vera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, received a BA degree from the Morningside College; after having been awarded Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women, she enrolled inthe University of Michigan Medical School
1945Japan surrendered; the Pacific War ended
Chinese Civil War began
James Boyack, Mary's fifth child, died in Japan
1947John was appointed dean of the English Department of the St. John's University, Shanghai
1948John returned to Hong Kong with Vong-tsu
Peter died in Hong Kong
Vera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, received a MD degree from the University of Michigan; after undertaking an internship at the Harper Hospital in Detroit, she returned to the University Hospital of U-M for her pediatrics residency
1949Chinese Civil War ended; PRC established
Thomas died in Shanghai
John (and Vong-tsu) went to the United States after becoming a Fullbright Travel Grantee, and having been invited by the University of Michigan to conduct research work in Chinese literature and culture
1950Gordon K.C. Wang, Thomas' son, was appointed Chair of the Economics Department of the Catholic University of Peking; he later held the same position in the Tsing Hua University
1950sVera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, married Liu Vi-cheng in Ann Arbor; Liu later became a professor of Aerospace Engineering Department in the University of Michigan
Vivien Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, married Lu Cho-ju, Daniel, a Yale professor (TBC) specialized in nuclear physics. They have two children
1951Vivien Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, received a Master of Art degree from the University of Michigan
1952John was appointed a visiting professor of English at the Spelman College, Atlanta, GA
Michael John Carroll (adopted name), son of Terrence Hugh Quincey and grandson of Patrick was born in Christchurch, NZ. Michael is married to Diane
1953Gordon K.C. Wang, Thomas' son, was a founder and the inaugural dean of the English Language Deaprtment of the University of the International Business and Economics in Beijing
ca.1958 (TBC)Shelia Jean Bell, daughter of Agnes Boyack and granddaughter of Mary married (first name unk.) Cuffman
1959Vera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, was appointed an assistant professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases of U-M Medical School; she was pormoted to be associate professor in 1965
ca.1960 (TBC)Frank Cuffman, son of Shelia Jean Bell, grandson of Agnes Boyack and great-grandson of Mary, was born
1966Martin Paul Quincey Wong, Peter's son, was made Knight Commander of the Order of St. Sylvester; an honor bestowed upon him by the Catholic Pope
1968John died in Ann Arbor, MI
Florence Agnes Boyack, Mary's second child, died in Zurich
1972Vivien Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, became a Lector in the Deaprtment of East Asian Languages and Literatures in the Yale University
1976Julie Carroll, daughter of Michael Carroll and granddaughter of Terrence Hugh Quincey and great-granddaughter of Patrick was born in NZ.
1978Damon Carroll, son of Michael Carroll and grandson of Terrence Hugh Quincey and great-grandson of Lewis was born in NZ
1981Gordon K.C. Wang, Thomas' son, died in Beijing
1982Vivien Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, published her first of many Chinese language textbooks, titled Spoken Standard Chinese, Student Workbook, Yale University Press
1983Vivien Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, received an Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching by a Lector from the Yale University
1984Patrick died in San Francisco, CA.
1986Vera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, received the Kaiser Permanente Awards for Excellence in Teaching (Clinic)
1987Vera Wong-Quincey, John's daughter, retired from the University of Michigan; she was conferred the title Associate Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases
Wang Pinghua, son of Gordon K.C. Wang and grandson of Thomas, was appointed Associate Professor and Dean of Studies of the College of Food Produce Engineering Department, China Agricultural University in Beijing
1990Terrence Hugh Quincey, Patrick' son, died in Auckland, NZ
1991Cecilia Boyack, Mary's first child, died in San Jose, CA
Wang Pinghua, son of Gordon K.C. Wang and grandson of Thomas, received the Best Teacher in Beijing Award
1993Martin Paul Quincey Wong, Peter's son, died in San Francisco, CA
1995Wang Pinghua, son of Gordon K.C. Wang and grandson of Thomas, was appointed Professor of the College of Food Produce, the China Agricultural University in Beijing; a position he held until his retirement in 1997
2005Leonora Patricia Quincey died in Oklahoma City, OK
2010William Gordon Quincey, Patrick' son, died in England. He had no children




Genealogical Table of Descendants of William W. Quincey

According to the writer of the blog "Jesus is the Way", Bob Selheimer, who identifies himself as Quincey's great-grandson, Quincey had 4 wives who raised 6 sons and five daughters. The obituary of Quincey in the North-China Herald of August 25, 1923 confirmed that he was known to produce a rather large number of offspring, viz. 6 sons and 4 daughters. The following table is my attemp to map out four generations of Quincey's descendants.

1. William W. Quincey 王經年 (b.1848 or 1851, Quinsan, Jiangsu – d.8/24/1923, Shanghai); m.1. Catherine Tan (b.1853 - d.5/n.d./1923, Shanghai)(TBC); m.2, 3, 4 )Quincey was alleged to have three co-wives)
11. Thomas William Quincey 王文光 (b.1873, Hong Kong – d.7/2/1949, Shanghai); m. Zeng Suxia, Mary 曾素霞 (b.1877, Canton – d.1931, Shanghai)
111. Wang Guoxiu 王國秀
112. Gordon K.C. Wang 王國楨 (b.1903 – d.11/5/1981, Beijing; m.(1935) Huang Xiatong, Grace 黄小同 (b.12/27/1913, Shanghai – d.8/29/1996, Beijing)
1121. Wang Shifang 王實方
1122. Wang Pinghua 王平華 (b.7/8/1937, Shanghai)
12. Margaret Wong-Quincey (b.1876, Hong Kong)(TBC); m. George Ingram
13. Mary Agnes Wong-Quincey (b.1881, Hong Kong - d.12/30/1951, Hong Kong); m.(4/27/1903, Tientsin) Lawrence Bernard Boyack (b.1877, Sunderland, England - d.n.d., Sunderland)
131. Cecilia Lucy Boyack (b.7/29/1906, Shanghai – d.5/8/1991, San Jose, CA.)
132. Florence Agnes Boyack (b.1909, Hankow – d.1988, Zurich); m1. Walter T. (or H.) C. Nyi (b.1910, Shanghai - d.n.d., Manila, The Philippines); m2 M. Haefeli
133. Agnes Marjorie Boyack (b.1912, Hankow – d.1983, San Jose, CA.); m. Frank Richard Bell (b.1913)
1331. Shelia Jean Bell (b.1936 - d.1996, Monterey, CA); m. Cuffman
13311. Frank Cuffman
1332. Elizabeth A. (Dinny) Bell (b.1938, Shanghai)
134. Thomas Bernard Boyack (b.1915, Hankow - d.12/22/1941, Port Swettenham, Malaya)
135. James Alexander Boyack (b.1918, Hankow - d.1946, Durham, England)
136. Dorothy Boyack- (b.n.d., Hankow – d.n.d., San Jose, CA.); m. Howard W. Banter
14. Peter Quincey Wong 王文昭 (b.1882, Hong Kong - d.1948, Hong Kong); m. Rose Yeung or Young
141. Christopher Quincey Wong (b.n.d. - d.n.d., Tientsin)
142. Phyllis Quincey Wong, later Sister Mary Terresita (b.1/3/1907, Hong Kong - d.2/13/1935, Monrovia, CA.)
143. Martin Paul Quincey Wong 王崑士 (b.10/30/1908, Taiwan (TBC) - d.8/10/1993, San Francisco, CA); m. Helene Catherine Leong (b.1914, Macau, - d.n.d., San Francisco, CA)
1431. Cyril Quincey Wong (b.1938, Hong Kong - d.n.d. Westchester, NY)
1432. Martin Wilton Wong Quincey (b.1942, Hong Kong - d.n.d., San Francisco, CA)
15. John Wong-Quincey 王文顯 (b.6/25/1887, Hong Kong - d.3/n.d./1968, Ann Arbor, MI); m. Sze Vong-tsu 史鳳珠 (b.n.d., Kunshan - d.n.d.)
151. Vera Wong-Quincey 王碧仙 later 王希琰 (b.ca.1922, Peking); m. Liu Vi-cheng 劉維政
152. Vivien Wong-Quincey 王碧雲 later 王晞雲 (b.n.d., Peking); m. Daniel Lu Cho-ju 陸卓如
1521. child 1 (name unk.)
1522. child 2 (name unk.)
16. Lewis Patrick Wong-Quincey (b. 1893 (TBC), Hong Kong - d. 2/n.d./1984, San Francisco, CA); m1 (4/7/1920, Shanghai). Anna Magdalene Anderson (b.1901- d.1933, Shanghai); m2 Irene Pearl
161. Leonora (Nora) Patricia Quincey (b.4/29/1921, Shanghai - d.12/26/2005, Oklahoma City, OK); m (9/1/1943, Shanghai) Robert George John Bulldeath (b.6/21/1915, Shanghai (TBC) – d.1/29/1998, Oklahoma City, OK); no issue
162. William Gordon Quincey (b.12/16/1922, Shanghai - d.7/n.d./2010, England); no issue
163. Terrence Hugh Quincey (b.5/29/1928, Shanghai - d.4/4/1990, Auckland, NZ); unmarried partner, Shella Wood Thomas (b.1928); m. (first name unk.) Gwendoline (TBC)
1631. Brett Quincey
16311. James Quincey
16312. Christopher Quincey
1632. Michael John Carroll (b.1952, Christchurch, NZ); m. Diane; [from Thomas, adopted by the Carroll family]
16321. Julie Carroll (b.1976)
16322. Damon Carroll (b.1978)
17. Charles Quincey 王文宙 (b.n.d. - d.1950s, Macau)
171. daughter (name unk.)(b.n.d., Shanghai)
172. Joseph Wong (b.n.d., Shanghai)
1721. John Wong Sai Yee (b.n.d., Shanghai)
17211. Denny Wong Wang Chau (b.1973, Hong Kong)
18. Jane Wong-Quincey (TBC)
19. Madeline Wong-Quincey (TBC)
20. Louis Wong-Quincey (TBC)


The Quincey Puzzles. Here are the Quinceys I have not been able to fit in the table.
  • A Mrs. P. Quincey existed in Hong Kong in 1904. Was she Peter's wife?
  • A Philip Quincey Wong (b. November 28, 1927 - d. January 5, 2010, San Francisco) is said to have been born in a Hong Kong family. His year of birth places him in the rank of Quincey's grandchildren.
  • A Miss. P.M. Quincey was listed working for the Henningsen Products Co. 海寧洋行 in Shanghai in 1930 and 1934. She could not have been Phyllis, Peter's daughter, as she became a nun in 1930.
  • A Mr. J.C. Quincey was listed working for Edward Evans & Sons, Ltd. 英商伊文思圖書有限公司 in Shanghai in 1930. He would fit into the Quincey grandchildren slot.
  • A Mr. R. Quincey shared the same address as Peter and his family in Shanghai, #19, Nanzing Road 南潯路, in 1930. Who was he?
  • Mr. Bob Selheimer identifies himself as a great-grandson of Quincey, of which branch is presently unknown.
  • Mr. Eddie Wang identifies himself as a great-grandson of Thomas William Quincey. Whether he is the son of Wang Shifang or Wang Pinghua is presently unknown.



PART II. JOHN WONG-QUINCEY

John Wong-Quincey (Wang Wenxian) 王文顯, the fifth son of William W. Quincey - inspector third class of HKPF, was born in Hong Kong on June 25, 1887. Beyond his father's wildest dream, John would, before he turned 40, become the founding dean of the Department of Western Literature 西洋文學系 at the Tsinghua University 清華大學. More significantly, he would be remembered as one of the greatest, and the most inspiring, dramatists in modern China, and the one and only to write stage plays in the English language.

Frits Holm (1911) by American photographer Sherril Schell. Credit: photoseed.
My first impression of John came from an account given by Danish explorer, Frits Wilhelm Holm 何樂模, who was traveling in China in 1907 (in command of the Holm-Nestorian Expedition to Sian-fu 西安府, 1907-8) and met John while making a brief stop at Teh-chow {Dezhou} 德州 in Shantung. John lived, then, in Tientsin and was in The-chow while en route to Tsinanfu to see his father before moving on to Shanghai. He heard of Holm's presence and introduced himself to the Dane. The two managed to spend a few hours together before Holm rushed off to his next destination. Holm was quite impressed with the 20 years old and gave these descriptions of John, "He was quite a handsome young Chinese, who spoke excellent English and who was open to enter into animated discussions on all subjects that ever came within the scope of human effort. He was evidently subconsciously anti-foreign, in spite of the fact that he, as he intimated, was a great friend of Diana [I wish someone can tell me what this means...], and foreign guns, and other alien paraphernalia." Despite the absence of an encounter in person, Holm said he knew William Quincey's name well and had learned about his interesting career. This is a further proof of Quincey's popularity as a personality in Hong Kong as well as the treaty ports and extraterritoriality in China.

From Undergraduate to Professorship, a Giant Leap


John Wong-Quincey, London University, 1910. Credit: 威海市檔案局 (Weihai Municipal Archive Bureau).
There was nothing written that I can find about John during his childhood in Hong Kong and as a teenager in Shanghai, where his father was given a commission to head the Taotai's police force in 1898, and, after which, Paoting and Tientsin. A couple of the Chinese sources I've consulted mentioned that John had entered the Peiyang (Beiyang) University 北洋大學堂 in Tientsin but (probably) did not complete his study there. He probably moved to Tsinanfu to be with his father in 1908 and there he landed on a job as a teacher in the provincial college. [cit] At age 23 (the year was 1910) he entered the University College, London University to read English literature and philosophy. In 1913 he received his Bachelor of Arts degree (Second-Class Honors) from UL. In college years, John was known to be good at playing tennis, football and cricket, as well as being a crack shot and an excellent horseman. According to Eddie Wang, John's education at UL was paid for by his eldest brother, Thomas William Quincey {Wang Wenguang} 王文光. During his sojourn in the City, through connection and in circumstance unknown to me, he was arranged to serve as a special diplomatic mission for the newly established ROC, which some Chinese sources referred to as the 中國駐歐洲財政委員, literally translated as the Chinese Finance Committee for Europe [I'll need more time to clarify exactly in which commission was John appointed, and hopefully why – actually, I have a hunch about the "Why": he was appointed because he happened to be in London and he was available...][1]. As part of this diplomatic mission, John founded and edited two magazines that were published in London (naturally in the English language), viz. The East and the West[2], and The Chinese Review[3] 中國評論. John was the first Chinese to be elected to full membership of the British Institute of Journalists. One of the readers has provided me John's address in London: #33 Highbury Park.

[1] Here's my theory how John, a 25-ish student, got to represent ROC in Europe however minute that role might be. As in the case of the rest of the Wong-Quincey family, John was very religious, and while living in Shanghai he befriended Henry Theodore Hodgkin[a], a widely respected Quaker missionary who was in Shanghai between 1905 and 1909. I believe the two remained in contact, more particularly when John moved to London in 1910 to attend the London University. When Hodgkin was invited to speak at the Ninth Conference of the World's Student Christian Federation held in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1911, he invited John to be his accompanied speaker. Their address took place on April 27, 1911 at Moussalla, Stamboul.

C.T. Wang. Credit: LSA College of Literature Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan.
While attending the five days conference that began on April 24, 1911, John found his way to get acquainted with the only other Chinese speaker, Chengting Thomas Wang {Wang Zhengting} 王正廷 (b.1882-d.1961), who had recently received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Yale University as well as being admitted to the Phi Beta Kappa[b]. Wang was the first son of Anglican Church pastor Wang Jitang 王際唐, a.k.a. Wang Youguang 王有光, of Ningpo {Ningbo} 寧波, who, according to family legend, was tapped for promotion and would have been ordained as China's first Anglican bishop, had not for his untimely death in 1909. Wang, better known as C.T. Wang in later years, returned to China at the close of this conference and there he became a key player in the republic revolution. Following the fall of Wuchang 武昌 to the mutinied New Army on October 10, 1911, Wang and his comrades assisted in the formation of a provisional revolution government in which the revolutionists installed Li Yuanhong 黎元洪, the commander of the Qing army's Wuchang garrison, as Provisional Military Governor 中華民國軍政府鄂軍都督. Wang sat in Li's cabinet holding the foreign affairs portfolio. In December the same year, he became a senator of the provisional government. Following the establishment of ROC in 1912, Wang was appointed Undersecretary for Commerce[c] and I theorize that it was at this time that he needed someone he could trust to handle certain commercial and financial affairs of ROC in Europe, but he neither had the resource nor the time to send someone from China. John Wong-Quincey was there and could be put to work instantly.
[2] Another source gives a different name to this magazine: The East in the West, and it had nothing to do with diplomatic mission. It was published in London by the Chinese Students' Christian Union in [of] Great Britain and Ireland, beginning 1911. John was listed as its editor from July 1911 to July 1912.
[3] The Chinese Review began publishing monthly from May 20, 1914. Chen Chin-tao {Chen Jintao} 陳錦濤[d], Counsellor of ROC's embassy in Great Britain, along with John were the editors. Excerpts of some of John's essays in The Chinese Review were cited in August 8, 1914 edition of the Hawera & Normanby Star [New Zealand, 1880-1924], the full text of which can be found in Appendix VI. I found it quite lengthy but a very good read.

ca.1936 photograph of C.T. Wang. Credit: Filipinas Heritage Library.
[c] C.T. Wang continued to play many different roles in the new republic. He was one of the three ROC delegates [or rather delegates of the united front of the Peking and Canton Governments] to attend the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, chiefly to negotiate the return of the sovereignty of the German concession in Shandong to China. [The others were Lou Tseng-Tsiang 陸徵祥 and Wellington Koo 顧維鈞.] The mission failed when the Japanese won the rights to all German possessions in the Pacific north of the equator. As a result, Wang and his colleagues refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles, and China was removed from being a signatory to the treaty. Between 1924 and 1931, he had served twice as foreign minister and once as finance minister, and in several occasions, acting premier. He faded out of the political arena after having served as ROC Ambassador to the United States between 1936 and 1938. Wang was the Chairman of the Committee of the Far Eastern Olympics Meet in Shanghai (1914), President of the Chinese Red Cross Society, and the General Secretary of Chinese YMCA. Wang came to Hong Kong when KMT fled to Taiwan in 1949 and took on several advisory roles in the private sector. He died in Hong Kong on May 21, 1961. Another person of eminence with the Chinese Red Cross who came to Hong Kong about the same time as Wang was its Vice President and Wang's confidant, Du Yuesheng 杜月笙, who when not attending to philanthropic affairs, was a full time gang boss, the most notorious in Shanghai. Du died in Hong Kong in 1951.

Chen Chin-tao, the young scholar. Credit: Library of Congress, the United States.
[d] Chen chin-tao, a native of Nanhai County, Kwangtung 廣東省南海縣, received his secondary education in Hong Kong at Queen's College. He went to the United States for advanced studies in 1901 and received a Master of Science degree from the Columbia University in 1902 and a Ph.D. degree from Yale University in 1906. He held key positions in the Imperial Chinese government including inspector of the government bank. He was appointed Minister of Finance under the ROC Provisional Government. He became ROC's Financial Commissioner to Europe 財政部駐外(歐)財政員 in 1913. He served as Minister of Finance and concurrently Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Tsing Hua College

"Very American. Easy going. Drove a new Ford[1] and wrote English plays in the Shavian mode in his spare time... Very proud of his characterization and utterly indifferent to any consequences of publication.", was the description of John given by Ivor Armstrong Richards, visiting professor at Tsing Hua (1929-30). The americanized demeanor must be a newly acquired property since John had never set foot on American soil until 1920.

"In fact we rather like him because he could silence the American members at the faculty meeting by the mere tone of his voice.", said a Chinese colleague, Lin Yutang 林語堂, Nobel Prize nominee in Literature (1940, 1950), who taught English at Tsing Hua between 1916 and 1919. Lin was a graduate of St. John's University in Shanghai whereat John would became a professor in English during the war years.


Western studies teachers, Hsing Hua College 1916. John was in the second row, second from right. Sitting in the center was Y.T. Tsur, president of the college. Credit: Patriots or Traitors: A History of American Educated Chinese Students.
John returned to China in 1914 and in the year next following, he landed a job at the new Tsing Hua College 清華學校[2] in Peking as an English teacher as well as the head of the Western Language Department. He was appointed Dean of Studies on April 26, 1916, vice Y.T. Tsur, a.k.a. Chou I-ch'un, {Zhou Yichun} 周詒春, who had been holding the dual-offices of President and the Dean of Studies of Tsing Hua. John remain in that position for the next four years. In 1920, John went to the United States for the first time motherhenning Tsing Hua graduates of that year to colleges and universities where they would spend the next few years studying. He kept notes of what he learned while there and upon his return to Peking, he wrote his first book, which wasn't a literature work, but a guidebook. The book, titled Educational Guide to the United States: for Use of Chinese and other Oriental Students 留美指南, was also his first published book (Commercial Press, Shanghai, 1921); he was 34. [The book was written in the English language; so that I don't have to repeat this again, John only wrote in English.]


John Wong-Quincey letter of December 10, 1918. Unfortunately this is a file copy and as such it wasn't signed. Credit: University of Chicago Library.
In September 1925, the Tsing Hua College added a University section. In the year next following, a Department of Western Literature 西洋文學系 (renamed Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures 外國語文學系 in 1928) was established with John appointed its professor. On April 29 the same year John was elected its inaugural dean. As a 39 years old and a holder of a undergraduate degree, he made himself proud. He made his father proud.

Some of the resources I've consulted have named John one of the five mentors in the graduate school at Tsing Hua 清華學校研究院. The graduate school in matter was established in 1925 and it had a single academic focus: Chinese studies; in fact it was often referred to as the Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Learning 清華國學研究院. There were four mentors in the graduate school, namely Liang Chi-chao 梁啟超, Wang Guowei 王國維, Chen Yinke 陳寅恪, and Zhao Yuanren 趙元任. John, being a Shakespearean academic, was never a part of the graduate school during its relatively short existence of merely four years.


John posted in this 1918 photo in his Scoutmaster uniform. Credit: An Commemoration of Tsing Hua, 20th Anniversary.
John was active in organizing varies extra curricular activities for Tsing Hua students. He helped found Scout troops at Tsing Hua not long after he entered the school in 1915. He was listed as the School Scoutmaster in 1918, a position he probably held in some other years. John was also an avid sportsman. He was a member of the Tsing Hua badminton team established in 1930. The team consisted of Ma Yuehan, John 馬約翰, Shi Jiayang 施嘉煬, Chen Zong 陳總, Jiang Yanfu 蔣延黻, Li Xianwen 李先聞, and Zhu Xianwen 朱先聞.

John sat on the Board of Managers of the Shantung Christian University 山東基督教共和大學 (later Cheeloo University 齊魯大學) in 1925. He was appointed visiting lecturer of the faculty of English Literature at the Peking University in 1929 and 1930, due to shortage of teaching personnel there.

[1] Sze Vong-tsu, John's wife who didn't drive, was said to have employed a non-Chinese chauffeur.
[2] The Tsing Hua School 清華學校, known as the Tsing Hua College 清華學堂 before 1912, was the brainchild of Qing Minister to the United States, Liang Cheng 梁誠 (1903-1907), who styled himself as Sir Chentung Liang Cheng[a], and Edmund Janes James 詹姆士, the president of the University of Illinois (1904-1920). The history of Tsing Hua University is extremely well known that I need not go over this here.



The Hsing Hua families: John, C.L. Lo {Luo Jialun} 羅家倫 (the first president of Hsing Hua Univesirty), daughter of the Richards [as identified by the original caption; I have, however, found no records that shows the Richards had a daughter], Ivor Armstrong Richards, Dorothy Eleanor Pilley (Richards' wife), Zhang Weizhen 張維楨 (Lo's wife), and Sze Vong-tsu (John's wife). Credit: China-Pub.com.
[3] Other professors of the Foreign Language Department during the prewar period: Wu Mi 吳宓 (b.1894-d.1978), Tsing Hua School, 1916 [University of Virginia, 1918; B.A. 1920, M.A. 1921, Harvard University]; Anna Matilda Bille 畢蓮; Arthur Lewis Pollard-Urguhart 吳可讀 (b.1894-d.1940) [Christ Church College, University of Oxford, 1911-1914]; Robert Winter 温德 (b.1887-d.1987); Robert D. Jameson 翟孟生; Ivor Armstrong Richards 瑞恰德; Wu Dayuan 吳達元 (b.1905-d.), Tsing Hua School, 1926-1931; Yang Yezhi 楊業治; Chen Quan 陳銓; Zhao Zhaoxiong 趙詔熊; and Chan Dingmin 陳定民.






Yu Zhenyong. Credit: China Agricultural University. Qian Chongshu. Credit: 海寧檔案史志. Chen Yinge. Credit: 拙風文化網. Zhu Binyuan. Credit: Who's Who in China, 1925. Lu Maode. Credit: Jinan Culture and History.





Zheng Zhifan. Credit: 吳江社科. Zhu Junyi. Credit: 民國名人圖鑑. Ma Yuehan. Credit: the blog of caihongnj. Ye Qisun. Credit: 新華網. Yu Rixuan. Credit: Fudan University.

[4] Founding Deans of Departments, College Department of the Tsing Hua School 清華學校大學部, elected at the third meeting of the professors of the College held on April 29, 1926: Agronomy* 農業系 – Yu Zhenyong 虞振鏞. Biology - Qian Chongshu 錢崇樹. Chemistry – Yang Guangbi 楊光弼. Chinese Language and Literature – Wu Zai 吳在. Civil Engineering – Zhou Yongde 周永德. East Asian Languages* 東方語言學系 – Chen Yinge 陳寅格. Economics – Zhu Binyuan 朱彬元. History – Lu Maode 陸懋德. Mathematics – Zheng Zhifan 鄭之蕃. Music – vacant. Pedagogical Psychology – Zhu Junyi 朱君毅. Philosophy – vacant. Physical and Military Education* 體育軍事學 – Ma Yuehan 馬約翰. Physics – Ye Qisun 葉企孫. Political Science – Yu Rixuan 余日宣. Sociology – Chen Da 陳達. Western Literature – John Wong-Quincey 王文顯. [* name needs further verification]
[a] In 1897, while serving in London as secretary to the Special Chinese Embassy to Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, Liang Cheng was made an Honorary Knight Commander of Michael and George. At that time, he placed his romanized "courtesy name", Chentung 震東, before his family name to more readily conform to British custom. Laing was disposted as Qing minister to Germany in January 1912 following the establishment of ROC. He came to Hong Kong and stayed here until he died in 1917.

Yale

Yale Daily News #180 May 25, 1927
Drama School to Produce Play by Chinese Student "Peking Politic," a Modern Play Depicting Political Strife in China, to Appear at University Theater May 31. As the final production of the season the Drama Department of the School of Fine Arts will present Peking Politics, a three-act play by J. Wong Quincey of Peking, China, it was announced to-day by Professor George Pierce Baker, chairman of the Department. The performance will be given at the University Theater on May 31. "Peking Politics," Professor Baker said, "is an unusual example in the development of the drama at Yale, in that it is perhaps the first serious attempt by a Chinese to represent China to America through the medium of the stage. The play will attempt to present a vivid drama of the manners and customs of the Chinese people which may do much to overcome misconceptions formed in the minds of the Western people by the sensational and not altogether fair writings of foreigners. "The play is distinctly modern: the opening action takes place in 1915. Much of the unrest and political strife which tended to disrupt parts of China will be depicted in a stirring revelation of a political machine hard at work in an endeavor to permanently abolish the Republican form of government. The scenes are laid in Peking, one of the oldest and yet most modern cities in the world, the seat of the present Chinese government and an ideal background for this attempt at modern Chinese drama."

Germany

John went to Berlin for advanced studies either before or after he attended Yale. I was unable to find any further information about his German sojourn so far. [John had a MJI degree, which, if I am not mistaken, stands for Magister Juris Internationalis, a law degree obtainable from a university in Germany. (11/17/2017)]

The War Years


The campus of the National Changsha Provisional University. This particular building was located in Jiucaiyuan 韭菜園 and was previously the Hunam Bible Institute, which was established by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in 1917.
A battle fought at Warping Fortress 宛平城 outside Peking on July 7, 1937, later known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, brought the ambiguous state of ROC and Japan being sometime belligerents to an end. What followed was an all-out-war, one that would presently threaten the survival of the Tsing Hua University in Peking. Fortunately, the university was not unprepared. An evacuation plan that had been drawn up back in 1935 (and which had been partially implemented) to move the university to Changsha in Hunan 湖南省長沙市 were now put in full throttle. The fact that buildings at the provisional campus in Changsha were only half finished did nothing to reduce the frenzied transfer as great numbers of books and equipment were packed by day and put on southbound trains by night. Students and faculty traveled in small groups on different pretext to keep the transfer a low key exercise. Meanwhile, also evacuating from the epicenter of the war zone were students and faculty of the Peking University and Nankai University (of Tientsin) 南開大學. The ROC Department of Education decided the three self exiled universities should work together and on August 28 instructed their respective presidents to form a preparatory committee for the establishment of a provisional combined university to be known as the National Changsha Provisional University 國立長沙臨時大學. By mid October, no less than 1,600 students and faculty of the three universities (out of which, 631 students and 73 members of the faculty were from Tsing Hua) had arrived in Changsha and began to settle in. The National Changsha Provisional University officially opened on October 25 and teaching began on November 1, 1937[1].


Japanese army officers posted in front of the John Hay Memorial Library which was to converted into a hospital. Credit: 觀察者.

The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Gymnasium became a kitchen. Credit: 觀察者.
Not everybody in the Tsing Hua faculty went to Changsha. There were more than ten professors, who for one reason or another, stayed behind in Peking. From the Department of Foreign Language were John, Arthur Lewis Pollard-Urguhart, Robert Winter and Qian Daosun 錢稻蓀 (the only professor teaching the Japanese language); from the Department of Philosophy, Deng Yizhi 鄧以蟄; from the Department of Chemistry, Zhang Zigao 張子高 (Dean) and Peter P.T. Sah {Sa Bentie} 薩本鐵; from the Department of Psychology, Zang Yuquan 臧玉淦; from the Department of Chinese Language & Literature, Yu Pingbo 俞平伯, Liu Wendian 劉文典 and Liu Mingyue 劉明越. These scholars were dubbed "Professors Remained in Peking" 留平教授 and each received a monthly allowance of 50 Chinese dollars (equivalent to about US$14.5 at 1939 exchange rate) from the ROC Department of Education; the payment of allowance stopped after July 1938. The professors proclaimed themselves the protectors of Tsing Hua but there weren't much they could do except to confront the reality of war, from the prospective of the losing side. On July 28, 1937, the ROC garrison force abandoned Peking and regrouped at Paoting; Peking fell. Looting rampage by Japanese troops at Tsing Hua went from isolated incidents in the beginning of the Japanese occupation soon to escalate to a wholesale scale and there was nothing the scholars and university staff could do except protests. Mutaguchi Renya 牟田口 廉也, a major in command of the Japanese 1st Infantry Regiment (the unit responsible for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident) ordered the commandeering on October 13 a large part of the Tsing Hua campus to be turned into barracks and in the following month a whole lot more areas were taken to house an army hospital, stables for horses and combat canines, and military brothels. Sensing all was lost, Pollard-Urguhart, Winter, Zhang Zigao and Liu Wendian left Peking for Kunming where they resumed teaching at the National Southwestern Associated University. John (and family) went to Tientsin some time before 1939 where he was said to live as a refugee. Massive numbers of Chinese refugees were allowed into the British Concession in Tientsin but were not permitted (by the Japanese) to leave. Were John and his family among the Chinese refugees, or were they in fact British citizens who had fled Peking and temporarily took refuge in Tientsin? I do not have the answer at this point of time. An event that strikes me as interesting is that John had chosen this time to publish his new book, Chinese Hunter, in which he wrote about his more than 20 years experience in big game hunting. The manuscripts were typed by John himself and when finished was carried by one Sidney Cooper, a new acquaintance of John's, to Europe. The books was published by John Day Company of New York in 1939 and was printed in London. I found these few lines in John's introduction in the book which described his state of affairs.

This book has been written under difficulties. In the course of its preparation my family and I have been driven from pillar to post as refugees from the war. We have lost almost everything except memories of the happy past and hopes for a happier future. The writing of this volume has been undertaken as a deliberate counter-attraction to the distraction of war... Part of the manuscript was written in a bathroom with pile of suitcases serving as a table.

My question remains, what kept John from joining his colleagues in Kunming?

John before leaving Peking had arranged to have a number of his books kept at the Zhengjue Temple 正覺寺 (more common known as the Lama Temple 喇嘛廟) inside the Old Summer Palace 圓明園, which had been used as living quarters to house certain Tsing Hua staff. In 1939, John had asked a friend of his, Tao Zuchun 陶祖椿, to retrieve the books and donated all of them to the Yenching University 燕京大學. Tao was John's badminton buddy; he played for the Peking YMCA (Chinese) Team. Tao's son, Tao Zongzhen 陶宗震, was a famous architect and urban planner involved in the schematics of the Tiananmen Square. I have no idea why John gave away his own collection of books, did he think the Japanese would won and became China's new ruler. I cannot fathom another reason for his untimely donation.


1930s photo of the entrance of the St. John's University. Credit: Divinity Library, Yale University.
After Tientsin, John moved to Shanghai and landed in a job at the St. John's University 聖約翰大學 as a professor in the Department of English. St. John's was the only Protestant college to function wholly in enemy-controlled territory during the Second Sino-Japanese War. There were mixed report of John's conditions in Shanghai, naturally, the reports may reflect different times of his sojourn in the French Concession dubbed the "isolated island" and later when the whole of Shanghai came under Japanese occupation. Some students of St. John's had said that he was almost always seen, if not in class, carrying his golf set, probably either going to or had just finished a game of golf. Others, such as Li Jianwu 李健吾, John's student and later teaching assistant in Tsing Hua, said that he lived in poverty. To help ease John's financial strain, Li had taken liberty, and on gratis, of translating Peking Politics, John's three-act play written in 1927, into Chinese under the title of 夢裡京華 {Meng Li Jing Hua} and had it published, with John as the beneficiary of the royalties for the book and the subsequent stage performances. The play was premiered during the Chinese New Year in 1942 at the Lafayette Theater 辣裴劇場 on Rue Lafayette 辣斐德路 (present day Xingzhong Road 興中路) in the French Concession and was preformed by Mei Yi Drama Club {Meiyi Jushe} 美藝劇社.

John's family was with him in Shanghai in the war years except his first daughter, Vera, who went to the United States in the 1940s before Shanghai was completely occupied by the Japanese. Vivien, his second daughter, attended St. John's and after receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1945, went also to the United States for postgraduate studies. John continued to teach at St. John's after the war and in 1947 he was appointed Dean of the English Department.

From Shakespearean to Confucianism: Life in the USA


1956 photo of John Wong-Quincey. Credit: The Denisonian (Granville, OH), April 20, 1956.
John returned to Hong Kong, his place of birth, in around 1948 with his wife, Vong-tsu, to be with his brother Thomas, who by then worked as a bank executive, probably with the Bank of China. In 1949, John became a Fulbright Travel Grantee and went with his wife to the United States. He also received sponsorship from a U.S. State Department grant. He accepted the appointment extended by the University of Michigan ("U-M") to conduct research work in Chinese literature and culture. It is quite ironic that John should be given such an assignment since his forte and love of his life had always been in English literature and culture. This was the same university where his first daughter, Vera, had matriculated in 1944 and was awarded a MD degree in 1948. Clearly, Vera had something to do with John's appointment at U-M. [I for one don't believe in coincidence.]

John moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1952 to take up his appointment as a visiting professor of English at the Spelman College. It was there that he was first issued a United States Social Security Card (#259-52-3239). From 1956 John, under the auspicious of the Association of American Colleges, became an ambassador to promote interest in Asian culture, a position that took him to different parts of the United States giving speeches at universities and colleges. John Wong Quincey died in Ann Arbor, home of U-M, in March 1968.

The Geneva NY Daily Times, October 23, 1957
Lecture-Concert Series: Chinese Scholar Speaks at College on Thursday
John Wong-Quincey, noted Chinese scholar sponsored by the Association of American Colleges to help encourage interest in Asian culture, will be guest speakers Thursday evening in a free program at the New Student Union in the Hobart College Campus.
The Talk, schedule to begin at 8:15p.m., is the second in a series of concerts and lectures for the current academic year presented by the Committee on the Calendar of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Mr. Wong-Quincey's subject will be "Confucianism and Christianity." In his address, he will try to explain some basic concepts which have helped, historically, to condition the Chinese mind...

"China As It Isn't"

I was looking to find [for the purpose of this story, rather than for intellectual betterment on my part] a compendious description of the thinking and philosophy behind John Wong-Quincey's literature creation, but came away with nothing worth citing for my purpose. That's until I found the contents of an interview given by John on September 22, 1928 in Peking. The interviewer was Harold John Temperley 田伯烈[1], who was Manchester Guardian's China correspondent. The interview was later carried in the November 13, 1928 issue of the Daily News, Perth, West Australia, with these headings “China as It Isn't, Imaginative Writers, Oriental to the Rescue”. The following is a recountal of John's own words.

In applying Western dramatic technique to the writing of plays dealing with Chinese life, I have set before myself a twofold aim. First, I desire, on a modest scale, to pave the way for the creation of a modern Chinese drama. Secondly, by writing in English, I wish to present to the West a real picture of the Chinese as they are, and not as they are supposed to be. I am not a propagandist; no true artist can be that. I believe that, like other peoples, the Chinese have vices as well as virtues; and the virtues predominate, otherwise the Chinese could not have survived as a nation. I am not afraid of advertising the weaknesses of the Chinese character or the abuses of Chinese life. What I desire is only to present a true picture of the Chinese with such slight modifications as will make them intelligible to Western audiences. I think that the battle for a fair representation of the Chinese will be long and arduous. Imaginative writers of fiction in the West have built up a picture of the Chinese that is either sensational, depraved and grotesque, or fantastically romantic and unreal. To correct this false and deep and deep-rooted impression will call for the labor of a genius. But someone must make a beginning, however small and weak. The Chinese drama is bound to change, but personally I would like to see the old-type drama remain untouched and unspoilt, and, side by side, to encourage the development of a new drama. The laws of evolution may well defy the hopes of man but, since change and modernization seem inevitable, I believe we should guide the translation into artistic channels rather than leave it to the tender mercies of the cinema, the vaudeville, and the cheap melodrama of the West.


Harold John Timperley
[1] Temperley's name, for whatever reason(s) [that doesn't interest me], is sometime spelled in a different way, i.e. Timperley. In contrary to what has been suggested by several Chinese sources - that Temperley and Timperley, who had the same forenames and middle names, were two different persons, I believe they are but the same. It is simply too much of a coincidence that both of them hailed from Burnberry, West Australia (b.1898); worked for the Reuters and the Manchester Guardian; had spent a long time in China (1921-1938, 1939-1946), and at one time consultant of the ROC government; and so on and so forth. The name Timperley is most likely the correct one, if one of them was a mistake. I came (more jump than came) to this conclusion because he has always been referred to by the Japanese as Timperley. The Japanese are excellent researchers and seldom make mistakes about peoples' names, most particularly because his name is on the hate lists of many right-wing nationalists, the ones who advocate the Nanking Massacre to be fake. Timperley published, in London in 1938, the book "What War Means: Japanese Terror in China", which he compiled and edited. The book had quoted from letters (more than 50) sent to the Japanese Consulate by the International Committee for the Nanking Safety Zone 南京安全區國際委員會, which reported incidents happened in Nanking from December 13, 1937 to February 9 1938. The book was highly valued as source material for use to verify the Nanking Massacre; its credibility, however, is somewhat dented since at the time when the book was published, Timperley was under the retainer of KMT's Central Information Department as an adviser (propagandist). According to the February 9, 1939 issue of the Border Watch (Mount Gambier, South Australia), the names of Timperley, and several British and American writers, were included in a death list circulated by Japanese terrorists. In the end, no known assassination attempt was ever made to Timperley; he went on to become a UN official after the Pacific War and died in bed in his Sussex residence in 1954.

Publications

YearTitlePublication Info (Remarks)
1914The Eclipse of Young ChinaLondon: The Chinese Review (essay)
1915The Great World War from the Chinese Standpointn.p. (book, 119 pages)
1917Modern Education in ChinaTsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, Vol. 2, Issue 7, May 1917, pp.155-71. (essay)
1920sYouth and the Ethical AppealTsing Hua Journal of Chinese Studies. (essay)
1921Educational Guide to the United States: for Use of Chinese and Other Oriental Students 留美指南Commercial Press, Limited (book, 634 pages)
1927Peking Politics(three-act play written while studying at Yale; premiere at University Theater of Yale on May 31, 1927)
1929She Stoops to CompromisePeking: Tsing Hua University Press (comedy in 3 acts)
1935Bandit Cut Bandit, scenario for a moving picture in nine scenes (a British economic mission to China captured by Chinese bandits: a kaleidoscope of Chinese militarist misrule, endangering British interests.)Peking, the Author
1939Chinese Hunter [Read]

John, the hunter, posted with his prey, a 42.5 inch big horn ram.
The John Day Compamy (book, 383 pages)
Love and MarriageTientsin Press (one-act play)
[NB. This list is not exhaustive.]

The Family

Sze Vong-tsu, Mrs. Wong-Quincey


Dora Maya Das and Sze Vong-tsu, 1922 Peking, at the World Christian Student Federation Conference hosted by Tsing Hua. Maya Das was a noted student movement activist in India, an educator, and the Associate National Secretary of YWCA in India. Credit: World Student Christian Federation Connection.

ca.1912-1920 photo of Sze Vong-tsu playing the piano[1]. Credit: By kind permission of Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Sze Vong-tsu {Shi Fengzhu} 史鳳珠 and John Wong-Quincey had a few things in common. She was born in Quinsan, the native county of John's father – the very place where he was "rescued" by Charles Gordon. She was very fond of English literature, studied abroad and later pursued education as her career for life. In addition, they were both Christian, and art passionate – drama for John and music for Vong-tsu. Vong-tsu admired her sister, Sze Vong-pau 史鳳寶[2], and followed her almost everywhere. It came as no surprise that she would become, first and foremost, an educator as in the case of Vong-pau. The sisters attended the McTyeire School in Shanghai[3] 上海中西女塾, whereat their father. Tsz Kyia Sze, a Methodist minister, was attached. Vong-tsu graduated in 1905 and stayed on as a music teacher until 1907, the year she left Shanghai for New York to study music (or piano pedagogy) at the Institute of Musical Art (became the Juilliard School of Music in 1926). She received the A.I.M.A. [I was unable to find the full form of that] qualification (or degree) in 1910 and returned to Shanghai.

Clearly, Vong-tsu had impressed the American public during her sojourn in the United States as a gifted pianist and a young woman of l'esprit occidental. I found a report published in the Ottawa Daily Republic about Vong-tsu's appearance in a New York concert, which if written today, may invite the feeling that there is a hint of racism. The brief report, however, was written in the turn of the twentieth century and about a person who came from a land where men wore queue and women had their feet bound, she was a novelty. The second news clipping came from the Kanas City Times, which gave a report on the farewell party given in honor of Vong-tsu. She was returning to Shanghai after completing her studies in New York.


The Ottawa Daily Republic (Kansas), February 26, 1909, p.6
Miss Vong Tsu Sze one of the few members of her race who has succeeded in mastering the piano. She appeared this week in a public concert in New York City, and has proven that her race can be musicians if they will. Her concert was one of the notable events of the city.
Kanas City Times, June 25, 1910, p.9
Graduating with high honors from the New York School of Music, over which Walter Damrosch presides. Miss Vong Tsu-Sze left New York the other night for San Francisco, from whence she will sail for her home in Shanghai, China. For many years prior to her arrival in New York Miss Sze was a close student of the piano, and now that the finishing touches have been put upon her musical education here she returns to her native land to devote her life to introducing the music of the Occident to the Orient. For the last four years Miss Sze has made her home at the Three Arts Club, West End Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street. At the reception given last night in her honor men and women of all professions attended. As her father, Tsz Kyia Sze, is a Methodist minister attached to the McTyler Mission School, Shanghai, many clergymen were among the guests. Miss Sze said; "I may take charge of a post graduate musical course in one of the mission schools, or else open a conservatory of music on my own account."

Several sources in China say she received a doctorate in music, but graduate studies was not available at the I.M.A. [Anyhow, I have written to the Juilliard School requesting clarifications, I hope to receive a reply before long. (6/4/2013)] She worked as an instructor in music at the Eliza Yates Memorial School for Girls 晏摩氏女中學校 in 1911 and went back to the McTyeire School in 1912 also to teach music. She became the head of the Music Department in February 1913. Vong-tsu later joined the Tsing Hua College 清華學校 (in or after 1916, since music was only introduced to the curriculum in 1916) as a piano teacher[4].

Vong-tsu sat on the Borad of Managers of Yenching University in 1931.


Vera Curtis. Credit: The New York Times, September 22, 1912.
[1] This photo of Vong-tsu is a part of the Vera Curtis Papers collection. Curtis, b.1879-d.1962, was acclaimed the first American opera singer lacking the European training to have been admitted to the famous Metropolitan Opera company of New York singing soprano roles in grand opera. As in the case of Vong-tsu, Curtis also went to the Institute of Musical Art (studied under George Henschel), and the two must have been close friends as it seems to me they were using each others' nicknames in the photo inscription. Vong-tsu's first daughter was called Vera, whether or not she named her daughter after Curtis is something I could only guess.
[2] Sze Vong-pau {Shi Fengbao} 史鳳寶 matriculated at the McTyeire School in Shanghai in 1891. She was one of the three graduates when the school held its first ever congregation in 1900. She stayed behind at McTyeire as a teacher after her graduation. She went to the Soochow Medical School 蘇州醫學院 to read medicine in 1902 but changed to another school after one year, the Laura Hay Good Memorial School 蘇州景海女墪. She became the assistant Principal of the Anti-Footbinding School, 天足女學 in Shanghai in 1904. Desiring further studies in education, she went to the United States in October 1905 where she enrolled in a private school in New York (most probably the St. Lawrence Academy) in 1906 to read Normal Training. She changed school yet again in 1908 to the Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies before returning to China in 1910. Back in Shanghai, she taught at the Susan B. Wilson School in Sungkiang 松江慕衛女墪. In 1912, she returned to her alma mater, McTyeire, as a teacher and became the assistant Principal of the Primary Department 上海中西女塾附設初等學堂副堂長 in 1914, and to be the principal the following year. She was also the editor of Happy Childhood 福幼報, a periodical created for children in the Chinese language. She went to school again in the United States in 1925, unfortunately, I don't have the details of that. That is also the last bit of her trail.

The youthful Soong sisters: Qingling, Ailing and Meiling, schoolmates of the Sze sisters: Vong-tsu and Vong-pau, ca.1920s.
[3] The McTyeire School was a girls' school established by Methodist missionaries, Young John Allen 林樂知 and Laura Haygood 海淑德, in 1892. It was regarded an upper-class school, where most of the students came from Shanghai's wealthy families. Among the young women who studied there were the three daughters of Charlie Soong {Song Jiashu} 宋嘉樹, born Han Jiaozhun 韓教準: Nancy Ai-ling {Ailing}, Rosamonde Chung-ling {Qingling} and May-ling {Meiling}, who would later became respectively Mrs. K'ung Hsiang-hsi, Mme. Sun Yat-sen and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek. Ailing was admitted to the school when she was only five years old.

Huang Zi
[4] One of Vong-tsu's first piano students at Tsing Hua was Huang Zi {Huang Tzu} 黃自, b.1904-d.1938, the leading (Western) classical music composer and scholar in prewar ROC, who studied music in Yale. Huang helped found the Shanghai National Academy of Music 國立音樂院 (later called the Shanghai Conservatory of Music 上海音樂學院) in 1927, and sat on the committee of the Shanghai Municipal Orchestra and Public Band 上海工部局樂隊 (now known as the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra 上海交響樂團) from 1931 until he died. In 1930, the SMO performed Huang's "In Memoriam" {Huaijiu} 懷舊 Concert Overture; it became known as the first performance of a Chinese symphonic work in the Far East. In Memoriam was Huang's graduation composition at Yale. On May 21, 1929, it was performed at Yale's Woodsey Hall by a combined orchestra of the New Haven Symphony and the Yale Symphony – the first symphonic work by a Chinese composer ever performed by an orchestra. Huang Zi's cousin, Huang Xiaotong, Grace 黄小同, married Gordon Kwok-ching Wang 王國楨, the son of John's big brother Thomas.

[Sel.bibliog. 王平華, 黃炎培先生的兒子們和主要親戚與清華 (Wang, Pinghua (son of Gordon Wong), The children and close relatives of Mr. Huang Yanpei and Qinghua (University))[on line]]



Vera (top row, first from right), known as Hsi Yen Wang, posted with other U-M Medical students who were members of Alpha Epsilon Iota, 1946 photo. AEI is a national society of medical women; the U-M chapter was founded on February 23, 1890. Credit: U-M.
Vera Wong-Quincey, Daughter

Vera Wong-Quincey {Wang Bixian} 王碧仙 (b.ca.1922, Peking- ) is the older of the two daughters of John and Vong-tsu. Vera attended the primary school affiliated to Tsing Hua University 清華大學附屬成志小學. And there, she befriended a small circle of schoolmates, one of them is the son of the head of the Mathematical Department in the university, who naturally was a colleague of her father; the boy's name was Franklin Chen-ning Yang {Yang Zhenning} 楊振寧. For reason unknown to me, Vera had her Chinese name changed from Bixian to Hsi-yen {Xiyan} 希琰, probably when she reached adulthood. She went to the United States for her college education and obtained an A.B. degree from the Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa in 1944. In that same year she was awarded the Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women (known today as the Rackham Barbour Scholarship for Asian Women) that enabled her to enroll in the University of Michigan Medical School. She received her MD degree in 1948. After undertaking an internship at the Harper Hospital in Detroit, she returned to the University Hospital of U-M for her pediatrics residency. Clearly it wasn't her design that the following three events should take place while she was at U-M, but I am quite sure she had no regrets that they happened. First, it was in the university that she met her love one and they got married and continued to study and work together under the same roof [may be not the same roof, but definitely the same Ann Arbor sky]. Secondly, she set out to be a clinician, but the educator's gene in her took over, and she would instead become far better known as a remarkable clinical teacher. Thirdly, she would be glued to the university from the day of her matriculation right up to her retirement 38 years later, and had never left in between. In 1959, Vera, better known in her married name, Liu Hsi-yen, was appointed Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases and was promoted to associate professor in 1965. Her devotion in teaching and the inspiring methodology she used earned her more than acclamation, Vera was the recipient of no less than five awards associated with education, including the prestigious Kaiser Permanente Awards for Excellence in Teaching (1986, clinic award). She co-authored a book, titled Food Allergy in 1980 and has contributed a large volume of articles to various general and specialty medical journals. Upon Vera's retirement in 1987, she was conferred by U-M the title of Associate Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases. Vera went to China and was engaged as a visiting professor at the Hunan Medical University 湖南醫科大學 in 2000.


Liu Vi-cheng. Credit: U-M.
Vera's husband is Liu Vi-cheng {Liu Weizheng} 劉維政, a.k.a. Cheng Liu, Vi-cheng C. Liu, and V.C. Liu (b. September 1, 1917 - d. October 20, 2010), is an acclaimed scientist in aerospace engineering. Liu, probably hailed from Shanghai, obtained his first academic degree, a B.S., from the Chiao-Tung University 上海交通大學 in that city in 1940. He went to U-M after the Pacific War to pursue graduate education and received his M.S. degree in 1947 and Ph.D. in 1951. A short while after completing his doctoral studies he joined the faculty of Aerospace Engineering Department of his alma mater in Ann Arbor, and was appointed professor in 1959. Upon his retirement on May 31, 1988 (a year later than his wife's), the university Regents named him Professor Emeritus of Aerospace Engineering. On August 22, 1957, both Vi-cheng and Vera were granted U.S. permanent residency. I have found records that show the last known residence of John and Vong-tsu (1960s) was at Ann Arbor, whether or not they lived in the same house with Vera and Vi-cheng is beyond my knowledge. The latter's last known address was at #2104 Vinewood Boulevard . Some of Vi-cheng's published papers include the followings: On the Motion of a Projectile in the Atmosphere, Project 2387, Department of the Army Project NO. 3-17-02-001, Meteorological Branch, Signal Corps Project NO. 1052A, June 15, 1956. Study of Air Drag at High Altitude, ORA Project 01,159, under contract with University of Utah, July 1964.

In July 1986, Vi-cheng and Vera, together with a famous rocket scientist, Cheng Sin-I 程心一, traveled to China. They were at Xian on July 5 and were received by the chairman of Shaanxi Province's PCC, Tan Weixu 談維煦, at a welcome dinner. Cheng Sin-I {Cheng Xinyi}(b.1921-d.2011) was an emeritus professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, who was known as a pioneer in rocketry and aerodynamics. It was interesting that both Vi-cheng and Cheng were allowed to visit China together. So, what happened in the international space program scene in 1986? In the U.S.: Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard on January 28, 1986. It took another six years for NASA to fly the next orbitor, Endeavour. In China: In March 1986, an ambitious plan, named Astronautics plan 863-2 was proposed. The program called for a crewed spacecraft (Project 863-204) which would ferry astronaut crews to a space station (Project 863-205). The plan never achieved its goal. Two years later on July 5, the The Ministry of Aerospace Industry was founded.


Vivien Wong-Quincey, Daughter

The Peking born Vivien Wong-Quincey {Wang Biyun} 王碧雲, is Vera's kid sister. As in the case of Vera, Vivien also had her Chinese name changed and became known as Hsi-yun [the Chinese characters probably are 晞雲]. She attended the St. John's University in Shanghai and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1945. At the end of the Pacific War, she matriculated at the Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated with a Certificate of Graduate Studies in English in 1948. She afterward attended the University of Michigan whereat she received a Master of Arts degree in 1951. She began teaching Chinese language at Yale University from 1972 as lector in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures and became senior lector in Chinese in 1977. In 1983 she was presented an Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching by a lector at Yale and on the first day of 1997 she attained emeritus status. Vivien was married to a Yale professor, a Chinese by the name of Lu, who died in ca.1993. From the 1980s she began writing books on language studies using the name of Vivien Wong Quincey Lu, and later Vivien Hsi-yun Lu [Quite a number of online bookstores have mistaken her to be two persons: Vivien Wong and Quincey Lu.] Her published works have included Spoken Standard Chinese, Student Workbook, Yale University Press, 1982; Written Standard Chinese; Student Workbook, Far Eastern Publications, Yale University Press, 1983; Pattern Sentences of Elementary Chinese, Yale University Press, 1994, etc.


1948 photograph of Prof. C.W. Lu (Vivien's father-in-law), the Rev. Noel B. Slater (Secretary, China Christian Universities Association) and Dwight W. Edwards (Secretary, YMCA, Peking) taken on the Yenching campus. Credit:Yenching News, November 1948.
I found no document that provides the full name of Vivien's husband so this is a high time for me to put on my guessing cap. If I am not mistaken he was the Peking born Daniel Lu Cho-ju {Lu Zhuoru} 陸卓如. Lu received a Bachelor of Science degree from the Yenching University in Peking in 1946 and went to the University of Michigan as an exchange fellow to read nuclear physics at the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies. While there he befriended Vera who was reading medicine. Their names appear together in a book written by Yang Jingyuan 楊靜遠, titled 寫給戀人 (1945-1948) (Letters to Loved One). Yang attended the Department of English Language and Literature, U-M from 1945 and received her Master of Arts degree in 1948. The book above mentioned contains letters she wrote to her fiance Yan Guozhu 嚴國柱. Unfortunately I cannot access this book to find out what was written about Vera and her future brother-in-law. Lu was appointed a research assistant in the Engineering Research Institute, U-M on October 1, 1952; he resigned on January 31, 1953. His doctoral thesis, titled The Studying of Nuclear Decay Schemes with a Gamma-Summing Scintillation Spectrometer, was published by U-M in 1955. His mentor was Professor Marcellus Lee Wiedenbeck, professor of physics. He landed in a job, after receing his Ph.D. Degree from U-M, of research associate at the Ames Institute for Atomic Research, Iowa State College to research on cyclotron. Vivien and Lu were married while he was studying for his doctorate; by 1956 they already had two children. Lu went to Yale University no later than 1972 since this was the year when Vivien began teaching there. I know for sure he was a professor at Yale in 1979. Professor Wang Xun 王迅 who visited with him on February 18, 1979 had written down information of their meeting. Wang is presently professor of Physics at Fudan University 復旦大學. Lu was the son of C.W. Luh {Lu Zhiwei} 陸志韋 and Liu Wenrui 劉文瑞[1]. Luh studied psychology at the University of Chicago and received a doctorate degree in 1920. He was professor of psychology at Southeast University in Nanking. He went to Peking in 1927 to take up professorship at the Yenching University in psychology, and was appoint Chancellor in 1934.

[1] I found an intriguing open letter published in the February 23, 1956 edition of the People's Daily 人民日報 sent [allegedly] by Lu's parents in which they demanded the United States Government to refrain from detaining their son and allow him to return to China. Here goes the letter and my rough translation. Two days after I've finished the translation, I found a response from Lu, equally intriguing if not more, published in a United States newspaper (see following box).

陸卓如的父母陸志韋和劉文端來信
我們的兒子陸卓如,1946年底去美國,在密執安大學學核子物理學。解放前后都經常有信來,可是到了1952年四、五月,忽然音訊斷絕了。我們在北京的兒 女給他去過20多封信,都沒有回信。去年春天,全家又寫了一封長信,寄密執安大學校友課轉交。但信給退回來了,上批“無人招領”。去年夏天,我們知道杜連 耀先生快回國了,托他跟卓如聯系。杜連耀先生帶回來卓如的地址,明明是在密執安大學。此后我們又一連去了三封信,告訴他中美大使級會談關於雙方平民回國問 題已經達成協議,但至今仍然信息杳然。
從1950年至1952年,卓如來信時常提到要回國。1952年4月他最后的一封信說:“……其中最令人生氣的是回國計划全不能行。我本預備去年9月作完 試驗,年底回家過年,不料8月間美國政府突然改變計划,以前是一直盡可能迫令中國人回國,后來看見新中國政府歡迎留學生回國參加建設,就突然下令禁止理工 科學生回國。8月間有一批回國學生已經得到出境許可,到了夏威夷又被押解回美。目前一切學理工的(核子物理更不必說了),如果私自離美被發現后,要坐牢二 年,罰款5,000美元。一切比較活動的中國留學生都要被移民局槃問……”。在此以前,卓如本人就受過美國移民局的迫害,只因為他是美國中西部中國留學生 科學工作者協會的一個負責人。
美帝國主義者對中國留學生的迫害是毫無情理可言的。我年已65歲,在科學院工作,我們思念卓如回國心切。為此,我們要向美國政府提出嚴重抗議,并請求政府幫助卓如早日擺脫美國政府的留難,回國參加建設。
北京 陸志韋 劉文端

A letter from Lu Zhiwei and Liu Wenrui, the parents of Lu Zhuoru.
Our son Lu Zhuoru went to the United States at the end of 1946 to read nuclear physics at the University of Michigan. He regularly wrote home whether before or after the liberation [the establishment of PRC]. All communication from him stopped in around April, May 1952. Our children in Beijing wrote him more than 20 letters, there were no answers. In spring last year, a long letter was composed by the whole family and sent in care of the alumni office of the University of Michigan. The letter was returned marked "unclaimed". In summer last year, we became aware that Mr. Du Lianyao would soon return to China and asked of him to make contact with Zhuoru. Mr. Du returned with Zhuoru's address, which clearly stated the address of the University of Michigan. We then sent him three letters telling him the matter regarding civilian repatriation between China and the United States has been resolved at Ambassadorial-level meetings between the two countries, but we still haven't heard from him.
Zhuoru, in his letters between 1950 and 1952, often mentioned his wish to return to China. In his last letter dated April 1952, he said, "... one of the most annoying matters was that the plan to return to China cannot be realized. My plan was to complete the test [nature unknown] in September last year and then come home towards the end of the year. Unexpectedly, the United States Government reversed its policy in August, instead of sending as many Chinese back to China as possibly which has been in practice in the past, it now prohibits science and technology students from going back to China, when it became aware that the Chinese Government welcomes the return of Chinese students studied abroad so they may serve in the betterment of the country. In August, a group of students, who had received permission to leave the United States, were stopped upon arriving in Hawaii and sent back, under escort, to the continental U.S. At present, any technology student (not to mention nuclear physics) caught sneaking out of the U.S. will face two years imprisonment and a US$5,000 fine. More active students become, without fail, targets of interrogations by Immigration." Previously, Zhuoru himself was persecuted by the United States Immigration for the mere reason that he was an officer of a society of Chinese scientific workers in Midwestern Unites States.
Persecution against Chinese students in the Unites States by American imperialists is totally unreasonable. I am 65 years old and engaged in the Chinese Academy of Science. We craved for the return of Zhuoru. We therefore protest seriously against the United States Government, and appeal to our own to assist Zhuoru so he could return expediently and serve in the betterment of our country.

Toledo Blade (Toledo, Ohio), February 23, 1956
A-Scientist Is Silent on Red's Charge
Young Chinese Cites 'Personal Reasons' in 'Detention Dispute'
AMES, Ia., Feb. 23 (AP)
A young Chinese nuclear physicist said today there were "personal reasons" why he did not want to comment on a charge by Red China that he was being detained and "persecuted" in the United States.
Daniel Cho Ju Lu, a research associate at the Iowa State College cyclotron, said that it "might only make matters worse on both sides" if he discussed the report.
The complaint, broadcast by Peiping radio, quoted the Peiping Peoples Daily as saying Mr. Lu's father, Lu Chih Wi, had charged the U.S. Immigration Service has harassed his son "simply because he was a leading member of a Chinese scientific workers association in America."
Reached at Institute
The father was identified in the broadcast as the former president of Red China's Yenching University, who now is working in the Chinese Academy of Science.
Mr. Lu was reached at the Ames Institute for Atomic Research, where he has been employed since receiving his Ph.D. Degree from the University of Michigan last February.
The young father of two American-born children agreed "in principle" that the U.S. Immigration Service regulations now permit Chinese students to leave the United States if they wish.
'Personal Reason'
He said arrangements for entering Red China can be made though the Indian Government, but added "there are personal reasons why I do not take advantage of the offer."
Concerning the Peiping radio's charge that "more than 20" of the father's letters to his son had gone unanswered since 1952, Mr. Lu said that in time he actually had received only "about two" letters from his father. He added that he had answered these letters but did not write to his father directly.


PART III. THE OTHER QUINCEY BOYS, AND GIRL

Thomas Quincey


Undated photo of Thomas Quincey. Credit: Leaders of Commerce Industry and Thought in China (1924).
Thomas William Quincey {Wang Wenguang} 王文光, a.k.a. Thomas Wong-Quincey, Won Wen Kuang, and Wang Yunqu 王雲衢 (literary name)(b.1873, Hong Kong - d. July 2, 1949, Shanghai), was Quincey's first born. After having graduated from the Diocesan Home and Orphanage (present day Diocesan Boys' School) in 1890, Thomas began his career working for the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, Hong Kong as a clerk. He afterward joined the Hong Kong Civil Service on October 3, 1894 and was appointed the second Chinese Clerk and Interpreter in the Registrar General's Office. He was sent to Peking in 1897 for one year to undertake intensive studies of the Mandarin Chinese language. Quite interestingly, the order to send him to Peking came directly from William Robinson, the colonial governor. It was reported in the China Mail that, “Thomas sailed for Shanghai by RMS Empress of Japan on March 17, 1897, and thence by train to Peking. While in Peking he was to be attached to the British Legation. At the end of the year-long studies, he was to sit for examination conducted by the Legation office.” For unknown reasons, he did not complete his language learning program and went back to Hong Kong.

The Wa Lane Scandal that deposed Quincey wasn’t an exclusive HKPF happening. Several clerical staff in the Registrar General's Office were found connected with the scandal and were sacked[1], among them one Thomas Wong-Quincey. I am under the impression that the Quinceys (father and son) were not the liaison of a conspiracy involving the HKPF and the Registrar General's Office; they were just taking bribes from where they sat. Unlike his father, Thomas received no pension from the Hong Kong Government. He probably left for Shanghai in 1898 together with his father and, incredibly, within a few years emerged in Qing China as a prominent banker. He was listed as the sub-manager of the Taching Government Bank, Hankow 大淸銀行漢口分行 in 1906 and as the branch manager of the same bank two years later. In 1910 he became the branch manager of the Chungking, Szechuen branch of the same bank 大淸銀行四川重慶分行. He went to the Straits Settlements in 1913 to took up the position of manager of the Singapore branch of the Bank of Communications 交通銀行星加坡分行. In 1914, he was appointed a director of the newly established Heung On Insurance Co., Ltd. in Hong Kong, it is unclear though if he was physically stationed in Hong Kong at that time. He was listed in 1921 as the Shanghai branch manager of the Bank of Canton 廣東銀行上海分行. He went to Singapore again in the 1930s and headed the Bank of China there until 1936. Thomas moved back to Hong Kong in 1937 and became the Secretary of the National & Commercial & Savings Bank 香港國民商業儲蓄銀行, a position he held until after the Pacific War (the bank's operation was suspended between December 1941 and September 1945). He was here in 1948 when he took in his 5th brother John and his wife Vong-tsu, who left Shanghai; Thomas' last known address in Hong Kong was at #2 Brezzy Terrace. A year later, Thomas died in Shanghai. It is unknown whether he was visiting the city or was again making Shanghai his home base. Thomas' last known address in Shanghai was #22, Edinburgh Road 憶定盤路 (present day Jiangsu Road 江蘇路). Apparently, he had been keeping a residence in this address since 1934.

Thomas married Zeng Suxia, Mary 曾素霞 (Chinese characters TBC)(b.1877, Canton - d.1931, Shanghai), who bore him two children, Wang Guoxiu 王國秀 and her kid brother, Gordon K.C. Wang 王國楨.


Undated photo of Gordon K.C. Wang. Credit: 黃炎培先生的兒子們和主要親戚與清華.
Gordon K.C. Wang 王國楨, a.k.a. Wong Kuo Ching {Wang Guozhen}(b.1903 - d.November 5, 1981, Beijing), was the second son of Thomas and Mary. Gordon entered the Tsing Hua College as an Overseas Chinese student in 1919. He did so by taking, and passing, an examination held at the Chinese Consulate in Singapore while he was there living with his parents. This was during the time when his uncle John was holding the office of the Dean of Studies at the college. Gordon went to the United States in 1926 as a Tsing Hua scholar and entered the Columbia University where in 1931 he received a master degree in political science. His addresse was listed as #1110 Amsterdam Ave., New York, which is right across the street from the university. He afterward returned to China and lived with his parents in Shanghai. In 1935, he married a school teach, Huang Xiaotong, Grace 黄小同. He moved his family (it was referred to as a family of seven, it is uncleared if it meant he and Grace had five children) to Beijing in July 1950 to take up the position of department chair of economics in the Catholic University of Peking 北京輔仁大學, and some time later the same position in Tsing Hua University. In 1953, he helped found the University of International Business and Economics 北京對外貿易學院 whereat he was appointed professor of the English Language Department. He began composing textbooks for foreign trade in the English language in 1978 but never finished them. He died of cerebral thrombosis on November 5, 1981. He was 78. He moved several times in Beijing and here are some of the known addresses: #24, Shijia Hutong 史家衚衕, #27 Fangjia Hutong 方家衚衕 and #16 Hepingli, mansion #54 和平里.


Undated photo of Grace Huang's family. Grace was seated (first left with unidentified toddler sitting on her lap) while Gordon stood (second from right). Seated in the middle were Grace's parents, Wang Jiusi 王纠思 and Huang Yanpei 黄炎培. Credit: 清華校友文稿资料选编 A Collection of Selected Tsing Hua Alumni Manuscript Materials, 21st edition..
Huang Xiaotong, Grace 黄小同 (b. December 27, 1913, Shanghai – d. August 29, 1996, Beijing), Gordon's wife, was a school teacher. She graduated from the Yenching University 燕京大學, had worked in the Capital Library 首都圖書館 and later taught at the Beijing No.80 High School 北京市第八十中學. Grace was a devout Christian and a member of the The Christian Tabernacle 基督徒會堂, for that she was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Eight members of Grace's family including her siblings, some of their spouses and cousins, and her first born son were also persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Out of the nine, two had committed suicide and at least two other went missing.

Gordon and Grace had two sons, Wang Shifang 王實方 and Wang Pinghua 王平華. No information about Wang Shifang came to the surface except that he was declared a rightist and was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

Wang Pinghua 王平華 (b. July 8, 1937, Shanghai – present) completed secondary school in July 1956 and afterward entered the Beijing Normal University 北京師範大學 to read chemistry. He graduated in August 1960 and was given a teaching and research position in the Beijing Agricultural Mechanization College 北京農業機械化學院 (present day China Agricultural University 中國農業大學) on the subject of agricultural technology. In August 1987, he was appointed associate professor and assistant dean of studies of the Food Produce Engineering Department in the Beijing Agricultural Engineering University 北京農業工程大學. From January 1995 until he retired in July 1997, Wang was the professor of the College of Food Produce of the China Agricultural University. Wang received the Best Teacher in Beijing Award in September 1991. He is a member of the CCP.


[1] Those who were dismissed: Charles Osmund 柯士文, First Clerk; Thomas W. Quincey, Interpreter; Ip Pak-shau, Writer. Those who were asked to resign: Lo Man-kam[a], Registration Clerk; Yung Kan, Writer; Li Long-po, Writer; Kwong Chi, Writer; Kwong Hop, Messenger and; Yung Leung, Messenger.
[a] Not to be mistaken with Lo Man-kam 羅文錦 (b.1893-d.1959), solicitor, member of the Legislative and Executive Councils, and son-in-law of Robert Hotung, etc.

[Sel.bibliog. 王平華, 黃炎培先生的兒子們和主要親戚與清華 (Wang, Pinghua (son of Gordon Wong), The children and close relatives of Mr. Huang Yanpei and Qinghua (University))[on line]. Wilson S. Wei, Tonyim Lee, G. C. Huang, ed., The Handbook of Chinese Student in USA 1931, chinese Students Handbook, New York. 中華職業教育社社訊 China Vocational Education Association News, March 20, 2017, 411/24 edition.]

Mary Agnes Wong-Quincey


Undated photo of the Boyack Piano Company, taken from inside the shop. The sign reads, "L.B. Boyack, Piano, Organ and Musical Instrument Dealer, Tuners and Repairer". Credit: Maggie Liu, Bo Yiye: The "Chronicle" of Three Generations of Inheritance.
Mary Agnes Wong-Quincey (b. 1881, Hong Kong - d. December 30, 1951, Hong Kong) followed her father to cities in China where he was commissioned to establish and run modern police force for Imperial China; first to Shanghai and from there to Paoting and then Tientsin. It was in her second year living in Tientsin that she married an English piano tuner, Lawrence Bernard Boyack (b.1877, Sunderland, Durham, England – d.n.d., Sunderland). The wedding took place on April 27, 1903 at the Church of the Jesuits. Lawrence was the fifth son of Thomas Patton Boyack, whose father was a river pilot on the River Tay and originally came from Dundee, Scotland. Lawrence came to Hong Kong shortly before the turn of the Twentieth Century and worked for a piano maker, Robinson & Co.; his name was listed in the Hong Kong Jurors List in 1900. In the same year, Lawrence left for Shanghai where he enlisted as a private of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (B Company) and took part in active military actions between June 10 and August 18 during the Boxer Rebellion. He was a recipient of the China Medal awarded by the British War Office on January 8, 1903. [cit] Sometime in or before 1902, he moved to Tientsin and began working for an English piano company, S. Moutrie & Co.; [The last record of Lawrence being under the employment of Moutrie I can find was dated in 1904.] Lawrence probably was hired to tune the piano at the Quincey residence and there he and Mary met and the courtship soon followed.

Sometime before 1908, Lawrence and Mary moved to Hankow and opened a piano tuning and repair business at #9 Peking Road, under the name of Boyack Piano Co. 波衣也琴行[1]. Mary worked in the shop as a bookkeeper. In 1908, while still running the piano company, Lawrence landed himself in a job working for the British Consulate-General in Hankow as a constable and a shipping clerk. In 1922, his consulate post was reassigned to Shanghai, a promotion to the position of Head Shipping Clerk, Shipping Office[2]. So He and Mary moved to Shanghai, leaving the running of the piano shop to a trusted employee Lin Zhengwen 林正文. Four years later he sold the business to Lin, who carried on the business under the same name. [cit] In 1933, Lawrence was honored with an OBE, and being the only awardee from Shanghai in the year's New Year Honor[3]. According to the January 22, 1933 issue of the Hong Kong Telegraph, Lawrence's health necessitated him taking 12 months home leave for medical treatment and that it was probable that he would not be permitted to return to China. [cit] Lawrence did not take the sick leave back to England as the news journalist had supposed; his name remained in the North China Hong List (1934) as British Consulate's Head Shipping Clerk. Furthermore, Lawrence hit the New Year Honor List the second time in 1935; this time he was awared the British Empire Medal (Civil Division, for Meritorious Service), also in his capacity as the Head Shipping Clerk. [cit] I chanced upon a document title that reads, “Boyack, L B: reckoning of service in China as unhealthy, for pension purposes “, dated 1936, held by The National Archives, Kew, and suspect he had returned to England sometime in 1936 and that he had already retired from government service. He died during the war. Mary, however, might have stayed in Shanghai until after the Pacific War. She was listed under the address at #91 Rte Remi, Apt 9 in 1941. Mary later moved to Hong Kong and died at the St. Paul's Hospital on December 30, 1951. [cit]


Mary and Lawrence had six children; all born in Hankow except their first daughter:

Cecilia Lucy Boyack (b. July 29, 1906, Shanghai – d. May 8, 1991, San Jose, CA) was listed as an employee of Eastman Kodak Co. in Shanghai in 1941; she was a sales clerk. [cit] During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, she was interned in the Chapei Camp from March 1943 until August 1945. She was listed as a British national. Cecilia went to the United States to be with her sister Agnes and her husband Francis Bell, arriving at San Francisco on March 11, 1949. After her application for US residency on July 1951 was denied, she appealed to Congressman John Zuinglius (TBC) Anderson and subsequently to Congressman Charles Gubser. Her residency application was granted on August 21, 1954. She was listed in the appeal documents as a Chinese national with British parents. Cecilia never married. [cit]

Florence Agnes Boyack (b.1909, Hankow – d. 1988, Zurich) began working for China Electric Company as a stenographer in 1931; [cit] the same position her sister Agnes would take up from 1934. She moved to Eastman Kodak Co. in Shanghai no later than 1934 and kept her job there until 1941. [cit] Sometime between 1934 and 1941, she married Walter T. (or H.) C. Nyi 倪 (b.1910, Shanghai – d.n.d., Manila, Philippines), a Chinese national, who worked for the investment bankers, Baeten & Co. 協盛洋行 in Shanghai; he was previously with the Finance Banking Corporation, Ltd. 達商銀行, in the same city. [cit] Florence's listed address in 1934 was #194A, North Szechuen Road; she was not living with her parents then. Florence later (no earlier than 1941) remarried a man named Hefilley[4]; they resided in Switzerland. [cit] Frank Cuffman mentioned that Florence was not interned in Shanghai during the Japanese occupatiom as she was then employed by the Swiss Consulate. I found no record of her under the Swiss Consulate listing; she probably was by 1943 already married to Hefilley, very likely a Swiss national.


ca.1940 photo of Sheila Jean Bell. Photo courtesy: Frank Cuffman.
Agnes Marjorie Boyack (b. 1912, Hankow – d. 1983, San Jose) was listed in 1934 working for the China Electric Co., Ltd. in the Stenographic Department. [cit] She married an American national, Francis Richard Bell, (b.1913) sometime between 1934 and 1941. Francis was listed as an employee of the stock brokerage firm, K.M. Cumming & Co. 開明洋行. He was the son of Joseph G. Bell who owned and operated a real estate and stock brokerage film in Shanghai during this period, under the name of J.G. Bell & Co. [cit] Agnes bore Francis two daughters, Sheila Jean Bell (b.1936, Taiwan (TBC) - d. 1996, Monterey, CA) and Elizabeth A. (Dinny) Bell (b.1938, Shanghai). Sheila is the mother of Frank Cuffman. [cit] The Bells were interned in the Chapei Camp in Shanghai between March 1943 and August 1945; so were Francis' parents and siblings, some of them (Marie T. and Mark A. are the names I can find so far) had the good fortune of being released from the camp and repatriated back to the United States as early as in September 1943. [cit]

Thomas Bernard Boyack (b. 1915, Hankow – d. December 22, 1941) was a marine engineer and served on the oil tanker, MV Harpa, which was in service with the British Merchant Navy during WWII; he was the 5th Engineer Officer. Harpa was bombed on December 22, 1941 at the beginning of the Malayan Campaign at Port Swettenham; Thomas was one of the four engineering officers killed on that day. [cit] He was buried in the Kuala Lumpur Civil Cemetery. [cit]

James Alexander Boyack (b.1918, Hankow – d. January 29, 1946, Durham), was a lance-corporal of the Royal Engineers when he was engaged in the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941. Following the fall of Hong Kong, James became a prisoner of war and was shipped out to Japan in September the following year along with more than 1,800 British and Commonwealth military personnel on board the Japanese cargo liner, SS Lisbon Maru. [cit] On October 1, the ship was torpedoed by the submarine USS Grouper and began to sink on the following day. Some PoWs were unable to escape as the deck hatches were battened down above them; those who did manage to get to the water surface were fired at by nearby Japanese vessels. As a result, more than 800 PoWs died [cit]; James survived and ended up in a PoW camp in Osaka. [Most of the Lisbon Maru survivors were sent to these three camps, namely, Kobe House, Chikko and Amagasaki. Unfortunately, I am unable to locate James's name from available camp rosters. [cit]] He was repatriated to Scotland after the war, but died months later at the Cherry Knowle Emergency Hospital in Durham. Aplastic Anaemia was written on his death certificate as the COD. [cit]


Dorothy Boyack (b.n.d., Hankow – d.n.d., San Jose) was married to an American national, Howard W. Banter. They left Shanghai for the United States way before the onset of the Pacific War.

[I was uncertain if Mary Agnes was indeed the daughter of Quincey until her great grandson (grandson of Agnes Boyack-Bell) contacted me on July 22, 2015 and was so kind to confirm the family link.]

[1] The piano company established by Lawrence continues to exist today, under a different ownership and management of course. The store is located at #885 Zhongshan Ave., Jiang'an, Wuhan [Hankow and two other cities, Wuchang and Hanyang, merged in 1926 to become Wuhan.] The Chinese name of the store remains the same as in the 1900s, i.e. 波衣也琴行. The English name becomes Boyiye Musical Instrument Shop. Boyiye is the phonetic translation of 波衣也, which in turn is the phonetic translation of Boyack. I have been contacted in January 2017 by the daughter of the current owner of the shop, Maggie Liu, who told me that Lawrence sold the business to Lin Zhengwen 林正文, her great grandfather (father of her grandmother) who was employed by the shop, in 1927. Her granduncle, Liu Wuyu 劉五育 ran the shop after Mr. Lin passed on, and now her father owns and operates the more than 100 years old business, which, as far as I know, is the oldest musical instruments shop in that city.
[2]Cecilia, Lawrence and Mary's first daughter, would later recall going with his father to inspect the junks; and the smells of opium smoke from below decks.
[3]Lawrence received this telegram from Alexander Cadogan, British Minister to China, “Peiping. The King has graciously approved that you be awarded the medal of the Order of the British Empire (Civil Division) for meritorious services. Formal notification is being sent by post from Shanghai. I would like to add my personal congratulations on this well-merited recognition of your long and loyal services to H.M. Government. Cadogan.”
[4] Hefilley was the name written in the US Congress record relating to Cecilia's residency application. The correct name probably is Haefeli, or Häfeli, in Swiss writing. There was a M. Haefeli listed under China Engineers Ltd. in 1941. [cit]

Peter Quincey Wong

Peter Quincey Wong 王文昭, M.D. (b.1882, Hong Kong – d. November 22, 1948, Hong Kong) was the third son of William Quincey. He attended the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (HKCMC), and in 1903, he, as a senior student, was appointed by William Hunter, the Government Bacteriologist, to be his laboratory assistant. Dr. Hunter was leading an intensive study on the plague, while unfortunately one of the bacteriological assistants, Dr. Chan Fai-kwong, had died suddenly of Acute Yellow Atrophy. Peter Quincey, as he was known at the time, and another HKCMC senior student, Fung Chi-ming, were hand-picked by Hunter to carry on the systemic examination of rats. The appointment was for 8 months; their works were taken over by Laboratory Assistant, Dr. Lee Yin-sze, at the end of their appointments. There was no record that showed Peter had practiced medicine in Hong Kong immediately after graduating from HKCMC. It is quite likely that he went to Shanghai to join his father and others in the family as soon as he finished school in Hong Kong. When Quincey moved to Tsinan Fu, so did Peter; he was appointed the city's medical officer with the Sanitary Department. [cit]


Official photograph taken after the opening ceremony of the International Plague Conference, April 3, 1911. The original photo caption identified the man who stood in front of the door on the far right as Peter. There were three men standing in front of that door, I suppose it meant the tallest man in the center.[1] Credit: Report of the International Plague Conference Held at Mukden, April 1911.
He moved back to Shanghai with Quincey and became a resident surgeon of the new Public Chinese Hospital, a.k.a., the Shanghai Hospital, 中國公立醫院 when it opened in 1910. The hospital, paid for by public subscription, was the first specialized in epidemiological diseases in Shanghai. It was located in Chapei (Zhabei) District 閘北區 (present day Xijiangwan Lu and West Huayuan Lu 西江灣路花園路西, next to the Luxun Park 魯迅公園). In 1911, Peter was made head of the Chapei Plague Prevention corps, at the time Shanghai had turned into a plague-infested city. In that capacity, he became a government-appointed deputy of the Chinese delegation at the International Plague Conference 奉天萬國鼠疫研究會 held in Mukden (Shenyang) 沈陽 between April 3 and 28, 1911. The conference was hosted by the Qing Government.

Peter, when exactly is unknown to me, returned to the place of his birth -- Hong Kong, where he practiced medicine in the private sector. He died at his residence at #173 Island Road 香島道 on November 22, 1948. He was survived by his wife, Rose Yeung (or Young), of Canton, and three sons: Martin[2], exchange broker, and Christopher, who was born on December 25, 1904 in Tientsin. I was unable to find information on the third son so far. According to the obituary in the China Mail, Peter was one of Hong Kong's oldest practicing doctors.


Sister Mary Teresita Wong. Credit: Maryknoll Mission Archives.
Peter and Rose in fact had a daughter, Phyllis Wong (b. January 3, 1907, Hong Kong – d. February 13, 1935, Monrovia, California), who was educated at the Italian Convent grammar school (renamed Sacred Heart Canossian College 嘉諾撒聖心書院 in 1960) in Hong Kong and Holy Family School in Shanghai 聖家女學校. She worked as a stenographer in Hong Kong from 1926, but decided to enter the Maryknoll Mission in 1929. She became Sister Mary Teresita Wong after being received into the Maryknoll Congregation on April 30, 1930. Sadly, she died five years later. The remains of Sister Teresita, as she was commonly known, was shipped from the United States to Hong Kong via. the ship President Hoover. She liad to rest by her mother at the Hong Kong Cemetery on March 14, 1935. For unknown reasons, Peter was not present at the funeral and pitcures of the late sister was taken for showing to her father.

[Sel.bibliog. Chu, C, ed., The Diaries of the Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921–1966, Springer, 2007, p.60.]


[1] I took a closer look of the photo and surmised that the man on the far right on the last row is a better bet than the one I had previously picked.
[2] Martin Quincey Wong 王崑士 (b. October 30, 1908, probably in California - d. August 10, 1993, San Francisco). He was in possession of a U.S. Social Security Card #568963357, which corresponds to California, but was probably, as in the case of Phyllis, educated in Hong Kong. He was a pious Roman Catholic[a]; he was the President of the Chinese Catholic Club (1967, and probably in some other years) and one of the seven founders of the Serra Club of Hong Kong 香港培聖會 (1961). Martin owns a company in Hong Kong, M. Quincey Wong Co., Ltd. 王崑士有限公司, which he registered on September 12, 1975. Several changes of the company name took place between 1975 and 1995; the company was last known as Associated Capital Ltd. 旭峰國際有限公司. The business of the company was transferred on April 9, 2010 to Korea Money Brokerage Corporation in Seoul, but the day-to-day business was to carry on in Hong Kong.
[a] It appears that the families of both Peter and Charles were devout Catholics.

Charles Quincey


1903 photo titled “Guard, Chinese Regiment, Weihaiwei. Credit: Historical Photographs of China.
Charles Quincey {Wang Wenzhou} 王文宙 served in the First Chinese Regiment during the Boxer Rebellion as a military sergeant interpreter. He was awarded the China Medal 1900 with clasp "Relief of Pekin". The First Chinese Regiment was disbanded in 1906. Charles' name next appeared in 1913 as being the Chief Electrician of the Hanyang Iron Works, the same establishment in which his brother Patrick worked as a secretary. According to Denny Wong, Charles' great grandson, Charles remained in China all that time until well after the end of the Pacific War. He later moved to Macau to be with her daughter and died there in the 1950s. In addition to a daughter, whose name remains unknown, Charles also had a son Joseph Wong. Joseph was the father of John Wong Sai Yee, who is the father of Denny Wong Wang Chau (b.1973,Hong Kong). Joseph and John lived in China until the 1960s when John moved to Hong Kong to be with her aunt, Charles' daughter, who went from Macau to Hong Kong after Charles' death. Denny presently lives in New York.

[Thanks to David Deptford for providing the information regarding Charles being a recipient of the medal. Sel. bibliog. Denny Wong's letter to William Gordon Quincey, 4/29/2006. 刘军, 威廉·昆西:中国近代警务开拓者, 寻根 (Liu Jun, William Quincey, Pioneer of Modern Police Force in China, Roots), 2021, 4th issue.]


Lewis Patrick Wong-Quincey


A dandy portrait of L.P. Quincey. Credit: The Tatler, London, April 11, 1934, p.16.
According to oral family history, Patrick (b.1893, Shanghai (TBC) – d. February, 1984, San Francisco, California), as he was commonly known, was born in Shanghai in 1893. If this is true then there is a high possibility that Quincey was keeping two families simultaneously, one in Hong Kong and the other in Shanghai. Quincey at that time lived in Hong Kong and was under the full-time employment of HKPF; although there are records that show he went to China from time to time on police business. And, it wasn't until 1898 that he left Hong Kong for Shanghai to start up the Taotai Police force there. It is therefore quite likely that Patrick was the son of Quincey's co-wife in Shanghai. The first record of Patrick shows that in 1913, he, at the age of 20, worked for the Hanyang Iron Works 漢陽鐵廠 as a secretary; meanwhile, his brother, Charles, also worked there as the Chief Electrician [cit]. In connection with his work involving iron ore, Patrick had contributed an article to The Chinese Review (Vol. I, July 1914 ), a monthly magazine published in London and edited by his brother, John, who was going to school in the University of London. The title of the article was "A trip to Tayeh District: One of the Richest Iron Ore Deposits in China". Patrick moved to Shanghai no later than 1917, and there he landed on a job as an assistant in the accounting department of the Shanghai Nanking Railway Company [cit]; the very company in which Quincey was employed since 1910 to head its railway police. In 1920, Patrick was listed as an assistant with the Shanghai office of the New York based mercantile firm, Fearon, Daniel & Co. 協隆洋行 [cit]. The firm imported machinery from the United States to China. He worked for the investment banker and securities broker Swan, Culbertson & Fritz 新豐洋行 in 1934 and kept that job until he was interned by the Japanese in 1943 [cit].

Patrick was married to Anna Magadalena Anderson (b.1901 – d. 10/4/1934, Shanghai), who was the daughter of Swedish national, Gustav Alexander Anderson[1]. Anna died on October 4, 1934 at the Shanghai General Hospital. She was buried at the Hungjao Road Cemetery [cit]. The report of her funeral in the October 5, 1934 issue of The China Mail said in the opening paragraph that both Patrick and Anna were "well known in the social circles". The couple was at that time living with Anna's parents at #742, Kiangwan Road 江灣路. Patrick and Anna had three children: Leonora (Nora) Patricia Quincey, William Gordon Quincey, and Terence Hugh Quincey. Patrick later married Pearl Irene (b.1908); the family continued to live in Shanghai until after the Pacific War. They were all interned between 1943 and 1945 [cit]. Patrick moved to the United States after the war and died in February 1984 in San Francisco [cit].



L.P. Quincey (far right) posted with his mates in the Shanghai All-Chinese Polo Team. They were: Z.L. Koo[2], T.Y. Tung 童振遠 and William Hu. Credit: The Tatler, London, January 11, 1933, p.24.
Patrick was an avid horseman and a key figure in the game of polo in Shanghai. He was also a well-known member of the Shanghai Paper-Hunt Club (since there were no foxes around Shanghai, hunting takes the form of a paper-chase). The 1924 Report of the Shanghai Municipal Council showed that on November 2, Patrick had presented a pony named Beautiful-fellow to the Mounted Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police.



Nora Quincey. Credit: The Oklahoman.
Nora Quincey (4th) posted for this 1945 photo at Yangchow Camp C with four other women with loaves of bread resting on their laps; in the back row were members of the Bakery team D. Credit: Australian War Memorial.
Lora (b. September 29, 1921, Shanghai - d. December 26, 2005, Oklahoma City) received her high school education at British schools in Shanghai. She was admitted to the University of Hong Kong at the onset of the Pacific War; owing to predictions and rumors that Hong Kong would soon come under Japanese attack, she stayed in Shanghai and went to a local business school instead. When the Japanese completely occupied Shanghai in April 1943, Lora and her family were sent to the Yangchow Internment Camp C, which had been the American Episcopalian Boys' School 美漢中學, and so was her fiancé, Robert George John Bulldeath. Robert (b. June 21, 1915 – d. January 29, 1998, Oklahoma City), also an Eurasian, was the son of Robert Bulldeath (Sr.) and Wong Lim-kum. He had worked for the British American Tobacco in Shanghai and was a sergeant-major in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. Lora and Robert got married on September 1, 1943 in the camp. They remained in Shanghai after the war and went to Hong Kong just three weeks before Shanghai came under Communist control on May 27, 1949. They immigrated to the United States in December 1951 and moved to Oklahoma City in 1961 to join a sister of Robert's. Nora was employed for 28 years by Amoco Production Co. in Duncan and Oklahoma City.


August 1945 photo of the Yangchow Internment Camp, Terence Quincey (holding emblem banner) posted with other inmates, young men known as the "Night Hawks", and their camp leader Geordie Grant. Credit: The Australian War Memorial.
No information about Terence was found, except the photo on the left. William, at the time of Lora's death, lived in England. He had a son Brett and two grandsons James and Christopher who lived in New Zealand.



[1] G.A. Anderson was a missionary belonging to the Scandinavian China Alliance Mission from Chicago, and came to China in or before 1905 working under the auspices of the China Inland Mission. He was stationed in Taichow {Taizhou} 台州 near Ningpo {Ningbo} in 1905, and in Kaifeng Fu 開封府 between 1906 and 1908. He was listed working for the British and Foreign Bible Society in Tientsin in 1918, and in Shanghai between 1930 and 1934. [cit]
[2] I'm making further investigations to see if Z.L. Koo was C.K. Koo (Koo Zongrui) 顧宗瑞 (b.1886-d.1972), modern China's first shipping magnate and the maternal grandfather of Hong Kong's first Chief Executive, Tung Chee-wah 董建華. Both Koo and T.Y. Tung hailed from Ningbo寧波市


- TO BE COMPLETED -







13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting - I have the original Hong Kong Plague Medal to Police Sergeant Phelps and also have the full list of Police recipients of the Hong Kong Plague medal. Karl Spencer (spence@netvigator.com)

rudi butt said...

Hi Karl, What a fantastic item to have in possession. Do you mind sharing with me if William Quincey was on your list. Thanks. Rudi

Anonymous said...

Hi Rudi,
Sadly he is not.
Karl

rudi butt said...

Thank you for letting me know, Karl. I was hoping that he was a recipient, but understandably, the medals were awarded to policemen, chiefly, who were assigned full time medical / health details and who had worked selflessly. I believe the only extraordinary duties that deterred Quincey from his regular detective responsibilities were house-to-house visitations and what was called the “scavenger duty”. Rudi

Anonymous said...

Hi Rudi - I apologize profusely ! Quincey was on the list ! The report states 'Inspector Quincey was employed on actual plague work for a few days only, his state of health not permitting, but he rendered valuable service as an interpreter in obtaining information on all matters connected with the movements of the Chinese and otherwise'.

On Friday 1st March 1895, Inspector Quincey received his Plague Medal from the Governor of Hong Kong at the parade ground of the old Central Police Station together with Chief Inspector Mathieson, and Inspectors Hennessy, Kemp, Mackie, Hanson, Man, and Acting Inspector Baker. My Sgt. Phelps received his medal at the same time.

Hope this helps.

Karl

Karl

rudi butt said...

No apology necessary, Karl, and I'm truly thankful for your letting me know. Since I've become quite a fan of Quincey's, I feel so much better now that I know he was an awardee of the medal. Rudi

Unknown said...

Hi Rudi,

I came across your site completely by chance, while looking up an 1893 embezzlement case on the internet in which the absconding Treasury clerk, one A.F. Alves, was apprehended by Inspector Quincey -- and until I read your article, I had absolutely no idea that Quincey was Chinese!

Here are a couple of links to the Alves case:

http://www.lingkee.com/chist/html/chiculture/hk../cbfz/1893/1893_gksx.htm

http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/dailyadvertiser18930307.2.5.aspx

Best, Trev

rudi butt said...

Hi Trev,
Thanks for the links, I'll certainly look them up. I first found Quincy's name in his naturalization document and I wondered why did a French want to become a British subject in Hong Kong...
Best wishes for the holiday season,
Rudi

Unknown said...

Merry X'mas and Happy New Year!

Dark Avenger said...

I am a grandson of Agnes Boyack Bell, and I can confirm that she and I are both descendants of Quincy-Wong thru the daughter you mention.

rudi butt said...

Hi Dark Avenger,
Thank you for confirming Mrs. Bell's and your link to the Quincey-Wong family. Please feel welcome to write to me on rudibutt@hotmail.com if there are further information you could share in respect of branches of the Quincey-Wong family that were in Hankow.

Unknown said...

I haven't finished reading this informative article but want to say to the author "Well-done!" I'm interested in John Wong-Quincey's life. There are 2 points I'd like to add. (1) John's book Chinese Hunter was not first published by John Day in USA. There was a British edition published the same year 1939 but earlier. This is because the manuscript was first smuggled to Europe and was accepted by the publisher Robert Hale in London. The golden dust jacket shown in your article is the American edition (with a tiger in the cover), while the British edition pictures a Chinese gentleman with a gun in the jacket. The British edition also carries its Chinese title 《幽并纪猎》 which is absent in the American edition. (2) among John's many students in Tsing Hua, some would become famous as playwrights later in 1930s/40s, including 李健吾、曹禺、张骏祥、杨绛. Mr Li (李健吾)not only translated John's two plays before 1949 but also did everything to enable the publication of The Selected Plays of John Wong-Quincey (《王文显戏剧选》)in 1983 by the People's Literature Press in Beijing, which should be credited for John's not being forgotten entirely in mainland China.

Jiangbo, Australia

Unknown said...

Rudi, there is an interesting essay about John Wong-Quincey in a book titled Imperfect Understanding (1935) by Wen Yuan-ning. Wen was a English professor in Peking University before the war and knew John well. His book includes 17 articles about 17 eminent Chinese scholars such as Dr Hu Shih and John is among them. It's good reading.
Jiangbo

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