WHO WAS THIS MAN CHATER?
South China Morning Post, Hong Kong
December 16, 2007 Sunday
A bored new mum’s internet surfing led her to the greatest life story
never told, writes Vaudine England
He’s one of those men everyone in Hong Kong should know about, but
almost no one does. Chater Road, Chater Square, Chater Garden, even
Catchick Street, the extension of Kennedy Town Praya – who was this
Chater person?
The author of a rare study on the Armenians who ventured east to
India and the China Coast, Mesrovb Jacob Seth, wrote in his 1937 book,
Armenians in India: "The future historian of Hong Kong will find his
task as regards the past sixty years a sinecure, for the record of
Hong Kong will be a replica of the career of Sir Paul Chater."
Yet there is no biography of the man who helped build Hong Kong.
Some clues can be gleaned from The Chater Legacy, an exhibition now
being held by the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Due to close in January,
the exhibition has been extended to June 2008.
This features a selection of the varied art collections that Chater
accumulated in his lifetime, but still leaves a lot of his life in
the shadows.
Geoffrey Bonsall, adviser to the museum among many other things, notes
that "although he represented Hong Kong in 1902 at the coronation of
King Edward VII, he was not Chinese, nor even born in Hong Kong".
Yet Catchick Paul Chater was one of those legendary characters,
instigator of just about anything that moved in Hong Kong at the turn
of the last century.
He was a leading figure in the (then Royal) Hong Kong Jockey Club,
one of the first two unofficial members appointed to the Executive
Council, adviser to governors, and helped found Hongkong Land,
Hongkong Electric, and the original Hong Kong and Kowloon Wharf and
Godown Company.
With all the talk lately about the need to preserve Hong Kong’s
heritage, a dedicated band of historians, urged on by descendant
and eager researcher Liz Chater, thinks it’s time a book told all
about Chater.
So far, they’ve managed to get part- sponsorship of what should
be a thorough research, writing and publication job. But they need
financial support from within Hong Kong – preferably from the hongs
who owe most to his vision – if another piece in Hong Kong’s history
jigsaw is to fall into place.
Liz Chater, who lives in Hampshire, traces her roots back to the big
man and has taken on the mantle of lead fact-digger.
"We owe thanks to a lady in the south of England, Liz Chater, for
much of the current interest in Sir Paul," said Mr Bonsall.
She has amassed a raft of material, tracking down mementoes, grave
stones and key marriage certificates, tracing the vast family tree
of Chaters and the larger Armenian community, and bringing together
people similarly interested in the subject.
"I knew nothing about Sir Paul when I started," she said. "I had a baby
in 2000 and he just slept and slept, so I had a lot of time on my hands
and starting flicking through the computer on family history pages.
"I found my father, my grandfather, and before long I was hooked. The
questions kept coming, and one name just kept leading to another.
"When I came to Sir Paul, I realised he was famous and looked around
for a biography of him – but there was nothing," she said.
Since then, she’s set up a hugely informative website, published a
short booklet, and organised several trips and Chater reunions.
Earlier this year, in May, she helped commemorate Chater’s death at
his grave in Hong Kong. She also helped organise the previous year’s
gathering of more than 100 Armenians in Hong Kong.
This year she pursued her talks with Father Oshagan Gulgulian, from
the church which once played a key role in the young Chater’s life and
to which he left part of his fortune – the Armenian church of Calcutta.
On Chater’s death in 1926, the bulk of his estate went to the Armenian
Holy Nazareth Church in Calcutta, which runs a Home for Armenians
where elderly members of the community still live.
The priest met Robert Nield, president of the Royal Asiatic
Society in Hong Kong, and Denis Way, co-authors of a fine book
about PricewaterhouseCoopers called The Counting House. Liz Chater
is hoping these men will be her co-authors of a book on Chater – and
to that end they all went to Calcutta in July. A subsequent trip by
Liz Chater alone helped pin down an agreement from the church to help.
"Myself, Denis and Robert have a [statement of] firm interest of
part-sponsorship from the Armenian Church in Calcutta, but as a team
are still seeking further sponsors. [We’re] hopeful that a major Hong
Kong corporate would like to join in on this unique joint venture on
the story of Sir Paul," Liz Chater said. "I never, ever thought in
my wildest dreams that I would get this far with my little research
project on Sir Paul Chater, and I hope that 2008 will be the year
that sees the full editorial process begin. Now if I can just find
one or two more sponsors – I’ve run out of stuff to sell on eBay!"
Her forebear would have been rightly miffed if he had imagined how
hard it would be for the place he loved to recognise his contributions
to it.
Catchick Paul Chater was born in Calcutta in 1846 to a family of
Armenian merchants, one of 14 children. But he was orphaned by the
time he was nine and became a scholarship boy.
At 18 he reached Hong Kong, where he worked in the Bank of Hindustan,
China and Japan, staying with the family of his relatives, the Jordans.
Within a couple of years he was trading in gold and bullion on his
own account and investing in land.
His business partners and friends included Sir Hormusjee Mody, the
Sassoon family, William Keswick and John Bell-Irving – the other
leading unofficial member of the Executive Council – and the entire
Freemason community of which he was a prominent member.
By the late 1880s, new ideas or enterprises didn’t get off the ground
without Chater – be it shipping, insurance, utilities or the ground
itself.
Liz Chater has doggedly filled in many more details. She believes
the grand old man got his leg-up in life by asking for it.
"One day he plucked up the courage to ask the head of Sassoons whether
they would help him if he started as an Exchange broker.
They said yes and Catchick resigned from the bank. In his first month
of trading he cleared $600 and very quickly he rose to be the greatest
financial magnate of the colony."
The China Mail once wondered why a young Chater was getting into a
sampan at dusk, night after night, and pottering around the harbour
of Hong Kong in the shadows of the shore.
He was taking soundings to measure the depth of different parts of the
foreshore because of his idea that some land reclamation might make
sense – and to find water deep enough to handle ocean-going steamers.
The result of his searches were the first Kowloon wharfs. He is
also credited with the first reclamations of parts of the harbour
in Kowloon and Wan Chai, starting a trend that many might wish had
stopped with his lifetime.
Mr Bonsall points out that Connaught Road is named after the Duke of
Connaught, who laid the foundation stone for Chater’s reclamation
that created Connaught Road along the waterfront – though it’s now
far inland.
He also was the first to suggest to the government that new lands
should be acquired beyond Kowloon – namely the New Territories.
Catchick Street in Kennedy Town marks where he was responsible for
reclaiming 10.5 hectares.
He pioneered iron mining in the New Territories, coal-mining in Tonkin
Indo-China – hence his award of the Legion d’Honneur from a grateful
France – and initiated cotton-spinning factories. He gave money to
the University of Hong Kong, St John’s Cathedral and Kowloon Union
Church as well as St Andrew’s in Kowloon.
Not everything he touched turned to gold – while in partnership with
Mody, they suffered the failure in 1908 of the Hong Kong Flour Mill
in Junk Bay, otherwise known as Rennie’s Mill.
"There was already a bad omen at the opening ceremony when Mody
hesitated and fell at the top of what was described as, ‘an ingenious
staircase [like an early escalator perhaps] consisting of a succession
of wooden steps attached to an endless moving belt’.
"Mody had to be taken away by launch to recover in hospital," recounted
Mr Bonsall at a recent talk.
But Chater had style, not least with his lavish entertainment at
his home, Marble Hall. Like Mody’s Buxey Lodge, this mansion has
disappeared.
Liz Chater’s work has got almost out of hand, leading her into a
massive documentation of Armenian graves across Asia, alongside her
ongoing Chater research.
But why ask others for money; surely the Chater coffers must be
overflowing?
"Yes, Chater left money to the family, but in the 80 years since
his death it has dwindled as the families have grown and there is no
money left," she says.
Some individuals at Hong Kong’s leading companies and clubs – many of
which owe so much to this man – have allowed access to their records.
But none has yet put up the money required for a professional job,
which Liz knows she can’t do on her own.
"It’s a question of finding the right person at the right time –
there are funds for worthy projects in Hong Kong," said Peter Stuckey,
vice-president of the Royal Asiatic Society.
"It will begin to be seen to be in some company’s interests," he said.