'A position of usefulness': Gendering history of girls' education in colonial Hong Kong (1850s-1890s)

History of Education

Volumn 37, Issue 6, 2008, Pages 789-805

  Chiu, Patricia Pok Kwan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Colonial education; Gender; Identity; Missionary; Race

Indexed keywords

EID: 55649088504     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: 14645130     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600802368715     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (119)

1. Joan Scott, 'After History?', in Schools of Thought: Twenty-five Years of Interpretive Social Science, ed. Joan Scott and Debra Keates (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 100.
2. Smith to FES, Hong Kong, December 29, 1857, The Female Missionary Intelligencer, hereafter FMI, I (1858): 173. The first issue of the Female Missionary Intelligencer, monthly publication of the FES, was published in 1853 and the last one in July 1899. The issues were divided into three series: 1853-1857; 1858-1880; 1881-1899. Both the second and third series were called New Series and both started from Vol. I.
3. The school was described as an experiment undertaken with much anxiety in the First Annual Report of the local ladies' committee, dated March 15, 1860, on account of 'the unwillingness of the Chinese to entrust the education of girls to foreigners'. W.T. Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School and Orphanage, Hong Kong: the History and Records, 1869 to 1929 (Hong Kong: Diocesan Boys' School, 1930), 14.
4. FMI VII (July 1864): 143.
5. Speeches stressing the importance of educating native girls who would in future exert moral influence as wives and mothers can be found in various issues of FMI: V (July 1862): 135-7;
6. X (December 1868): 181-90;
7. V (November 1885): 160;
8. XVIII (August 1898): 130. For discussions of female education in terms of 'the female sphere', see the Education Reports of 1865 and 1867 by Inspector Frederick Stewart, and Inspector E.J. Eitel's Reports for 1889 and 1890.
9. Education Reports quoted in this article, unless stated otherwise, are taken from text reprinted in Gillian Bickley, The Development of Education in Hong Kong 1841-1897: as revealed by the Early Education Report by the Hong Kong Government 1848-1896 (Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2002).
10. See, for example, the discussions in Joan Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (London: Croom Helm, 1980);
11. Carol Dyhouse, 'Good Wives and Little Mothers: Social Anxieties and the Schoolgirl's Curriculum, 1890-1920' Oxford Review of Education 3, no. 1 (1977): 21-35;
12. Meg Gomersall, 'Religion, Reading and Really Useful Knowledge', in Working-class Girls in Nineteenth-century England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997);
13. Mary Hilton and Pam Hirsch, eds., Practical Visionaries: Women, Education and Social Progress, 1790-1930 (Harlow: Longman, 2000);
14. June Purvis, A History of Women's Education in England (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1991);
15. Rebecca Rogers, 'Learning to be Good Girls and Women', in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. Deborah Simonton (London: Routledge, 2006), 93-131.
16. In this article, I have adopted Rogers's definition of 'domestic ideology' as a set of ideas emphasising women's special qualities, ascribing their position within the home, and proclaiming the importance of the home and family in society: Rogers, 'Good Girls and Women', 107.
17. For discussion of women's education and social class, see Purvis, History of Women's Education;
18. Jane Martin, Women and the Politics of Schooling in Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Leicester University Press, 1999);
19. Stephanie Spencer, 'Reflections on the "Site of Struggle": Girls' Experience of Secondary Education in the late 1950s', History of Education 33 (2004): 437-49.
20. On gender and colonial education, see Rogers, 'Good Girls and Women', 112-13;
21. Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin, 'Introduction: "Gender", "Colonialism", "Politics" and 'Experience": Challenging and Troubling Histories of Education', in Gender, Colonialism and Education: the Politics of Experience, ed. Joyce Goodman and Jane Martin (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 1-22.
22. For missionaries and girls' education, see Fiona Bowie, Deborah Kirkwood and Shirley Ardener, eds., Women and Missions: Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1993).
23. FES was a non-denominational women's mission society governed by a ladies' committee, which sent out single women and supported missionary wives to work in the field of female education. The two big British mission societies, the London Missionary Society (LMS) and the Church Missionary Society (CMS), also ran girls' schools operated by wives of missionaries alongside their boys' schools until the late nineteenth century, when both societies began to send single women as missionaries. Including other Protestant and Roman Catholic missions, mission schools provided 90% of girls' education in Hong Kong according to the 1891 statistics recorded in the Education Report of that year. The scope of this article is limited to the examination of two girls' boarding schools supported by the FES as a case study.
24. 'The Importance of Female Agency in Evangelizing Pagan Nations', in Jemima Thompson, Memoirs of British Female Missionaries (London: William Smith, 1841).
25. See also Midgley's discussion: Clare Midgley, 'Can Women be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth-century British Empire', Journal of British Studies 45, April (2006): 335-58.
26. Ibid.
27. According to data drawn from the FES committee minutes and the FMI, from 1859 to 1899, FES had sent out a total of 11 stipendiary and honorary agents to Hong Kong, with one boarding school and eight day schools operating under the Mission by 1899. See, for example, Question 4 for referees: 'What is your opinion of her as to temper, good sense, judgment and prudence? Has she a cheerful and obliging disposition? Is she mild, courteous, and humble in her demeanor? Has she acquired the esteem and good will of those with whom she has come in contact? And has she evidenced patience and perseverance in her undertaking?', in 'Mission's regulation, by-laws, questions for agents and referees', FMI I (1853): 1-2.
28. Midgley, 'Can Women be Missionaries', 357.
29. Alison Twells, 'Missionary Domesticity, Global Reform and "Woman's Sphere" in Early Nineteenth-Century England', Gender and History 18, no. 2 (2006): 266-84 discusses the agency of women participating in missionary philanthropic activities 'at home'.
30. Jane Haggis, '"A Heart That Has Felt the Love of God and Longs for Others to Know It": Conventions of Gender, Tensions of Self and Constructions of Difference in Offering to be a Lady Missionary', Women's History Review 7 (1998): 171-93.
31. For the representation of native women in female missionary reports, see Judith Rowbotham, '"Hear an Indian Sister's Plea": reporting the work of 19th century British female missionaries', Women's Studies International Forum 21 (1998): 247-61.
32. Haggis, 'A Heart That Has Felt the Love', 172.
33. The History and Correspondence of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East Founded in 1834 (London: Edward Sueter, 1850), 5.
34. Individual research-based histories of girls' mission schools founded in Hong Kong published in the past decade have contributed to the recording of girls' schooling experience. These include Kathleen Barker, Change and Continuity (Hong Kong: St Stephen's Girls' College, 1996);
35. Ying Wa Girls' School, Ying Wa Girls' School: the Blessed Years 1900-2000 (Hong Kong: Ying Wa Girls' School, 2001);
36. Cindy Chu, The Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921-1969: In Love with the Chinese (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
37. G.B. Endacott, A History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 1973);
38. Anthony Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong Pre-1841 to 1941: Fact and Opinion (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1990);
39. Gillian Bickley, The Development of Education in Hong Kong 1841-1897: as revealed by the Early Education Report by the Hong Kong Government 1848-1896 (Hong Kong: Proverse Hong Kong, 2002);
40. Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Interactions of East and West: Development of Public Education in Early Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984).
41. Pictures of 'native' girls and women from FES mission stations across continents were frequently published on the cover page of the monthly FMI, sometimes with their stories told in the same issue. In the case of Hong Kong, these four girls were the only ones who had both their portraits on the cover and their life stories recounted in the FMI, though in different ways and styles.
42. Rogers, 'Good Girls and Women', 93.
43. 'Small-footed' was a term used for girls and women whose feet were bound from a young age according to a Chinese custom mostly adopted by families of the middle and upper classes in the nineteenth century. It was a symbol of a respectable family background as poor families needed the labour of daughters in the field and the household and could not afford to have servants to wait on girls with limited mobility. The practice of foot-binding and its damage to Chinese girls was consistently referred to and condemned as a barbaric culture in different issues of the FMI. An article elaborating the method, process and suffering of this practice was published in FMI XIII (March 1871): 51-3.
44. FMI V (July 1862): 21-2.
45. Leung's sincerity and devotion to the Christian faith was mentioned again in a later issue. FMI VI (January 1863): 2-4.
46. FMI IV (November, 1861): 200-3.
47. FMI IV (May, November 1861).
48. st, 1863', Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 92.
49. Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 94.
50. FMI VII (August, 1864): 158-61.
51. FMI VII (November, 1864): 218-9.
52. FMI XIV (July 1871): 84;
53. XIX (1876): 15;
54. XXI (1878): 85-9.
55. nd, 1869 (London: Seeleys; Hong Kong: Noronha & Sons, 1869), 54.
56. The sale of girls was recorded in the local committee minutes of July 19, 1865, Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 95.
57. In a letter to the Colonial Secretary on July 5, 1889, E.J. Eitel stated that almost every one of the girls became the kept mistress of a European upon leaving school. Letter no. 41, CO 129/342, 80 ff, quoted in Sweeting, Education in Hong Kong, 1990, 247-50.
58. At an FES meeting in London, Bishop Smith commended the training of DNFTS students, saying that 'the very refinement in their countenances told the work begun in their hearts'. FMI VII (August 1864): 173-5.
59. It was recorded in the committee minutes that FES missionary Eaton was taken ill after an attempted attack by a group of thieves in December 1864 and had been in conflict with the governing ladies' committee. Cf FES/AM3/4250, 4251, 4263; Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 94-5.
60. Restructuring of the school was recorded in Alford, China and Japan: A Charge, 56-7
61. and Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 98-9.
62. Education Report 1865, paragraph 43; 1867, paragraph 14.
63. Education Report 1867, paragraph 15.
64. Alford, China and Japan: A Charge, 56.
65. For a general background to racial divides and class relations in colonial Hong Kong, see H.J. Lethbridge, Hong Kong: Stability and Change (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1978), 167-77;
66. for further discussion of the tensions, strategies and dynamics at play between different racial groups to protect their rights and interests, see John Carroll, Edges of Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 84-107.
67. See, for example, Ng, Interactions of East and West, 65-77.
68. See, for example, Carroll, Edges of Empire, 75-80;
69. Carl T. Smith, Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), 139-71.
70. Martin, Women and the Politics of Schooling, 73.
71. Goodman and Martin, '"Gender", "Colonialism", "Politics" and "Experiences"', 13.
72. FMI XI (February 1868): 17;
73. XIV (July 1871): 8-9;
74. IV (March 1884): 42-7.
75. FMI VIII (October 1865).
76. The text accompanying the photo, written by Oxlad herself, conveyed that feeling of familial intimacy, with Oxlad describing the little one as 'my pet Johanna, a baby in arms when I came to China'. FMI XI (February 1868): 17.
77. In another article, Oxlad referred to her students as 'my daughters'. FMI X (1867): 140.
78. It was stated in the FES minutes that Louisa Rickomartz together with the Chinese teacher in Baxter's school took care of the vernacular day school established by Bishop Alford and originally superintended by Oxlad when Oxlad left for England in 1869. Minutes of July 30, 1869, FES/AM3/5141; July 14, 1870, FES/AM3/5314; FES Annual Report, 1871, 8-9.
79. Minutes of June 9, 1881, FES/AM4/7524.
80. FMI IV (March 1884): 42-47 (emphasis added).
81. Accounts of Mrs Henrietta Rickomartz (née Ambrook) (her milliner's shop, marriage in the Cathedral, her children and her untimely death) can be found in Susanna Hoe, The Private Life of Old Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991), 88-92;
82. Carl T. Smith, 'The German Speaking Community in Hong Kong 1846-1918', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 34 (1994): 1-55.
83. Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (London: Routledge, 2003), 5-7;
84. Ann Stoler, 'Cultivating Bourgeois Bodies and Racial Selves', in Cultures of the Empire: A Reader, ed. Catherine Hall (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 87-119.
85. See, for example, Caroll, Edges of Empire, 88-90 for discussion of measures implemented by government and companies to discourage European men from marrying Chinese or Eurasian women.
86. Carl T. Smith, 'Protected Women in Nineteenth-century Hong Kong', in Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submissions, Servitude and Escape, ed. Maria Jaschok and Suzanne Miers (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994), 221-37.
87. These anomalous relationships could be lifelong or short-term, with the women and their children living an affluent life or one of poverty, dependent on their 'protectors'. See also Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics, 301-2 for discussion of distinction between protected women and prostitutes.
88. Education Report 1868, paragraph 55.
89. Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 5.
90. Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper, 'Between Metropole and Colony', in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1997), 3-4.
91. Inspector Eitel argued that prejudice against Eurasian girls and the stigma of want of respectability had kept them out of the education net. Education Report 1890, paragraph 9.
92. Margaret Johnstone was an Irish student in one of Baxter's schools in her early teens while her father's regiment was stationed in Hong Kong during 1860s. She later moved back to Britain but returned to Hong Kong in 1874 as an FES agent to assist Oxlad. After Oxlad was relocated to Japan in 1878, Johnstone took charge of the schools and expanded the work gradually to one boarding school and eight day schools by the turn of the century. FMI XVII (1897): 145-7.
93. Minutes of February 12, 1885, FES/AM4/8482, 8483.
94. Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 31. In the 1893-1894 Report, it was recorded that out of the 109 boys, there were 59 Chinese, 36 Eurasians and 14 Europeans.
95. Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 30.
96. According to the findings of Oakley's current research project, siblings of at least two families, all Eurasians, can be identified from the School Register of DHO in the 1880s to 1890s. David Oakley, email correspondence with author, April 8-10, 2008. See Featherstone, The Diocesan Boys' School, 153-65.
97. FMI XIII (July 1893): 99-103. Descriptions of the 'poor fallen' states of Eurasian women following the life that their mother had led were found in an article documenting the conversion and death of two Eurasian women by Johnstone's colleague Lucy Eyre.
98. FMI (January, 1894, November, 1898).
99. Compare her life accounts with FES requirements of a woman missionary quoted in note 11.
100. FMI II (1882): 191-3.
101. FMI XIV (September, 1894): 129-32.
102. FMI (December 1893): 177-82.
103. Christina De Bellaigue, 'Abstract', in 'A Comparative Study of Boarding Schools for Girls in England and France, c.1810-1867' (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2005).
104. Names of orphaned girls from Fairlea baptised in St Stephen's Church can be found in the Baptismal Registrar, with names of parents, birthplace and province all left blank. A new Christian name was recorded with Fairlea School as current residential address.
105. FMI XV (October 1895): 150-2.
106. Extracts taken from the following issues: FMI XIII (April 1893): 55-8
107. and XIII (December 1893): 183-5.
108. FMI III (October 1883): 146-7.
109. FMI XIII (December 1893): 183-5.
110. Cf Mary Jane Oxlad, 'Words of Appreciation for the late Margaret Johnstone', Church Missionary Review LX (1909): 681.
111. FMI XIX (1877, 138-9.
112. FMI XIV (September 1894): 129-32.
113. Various scholars have explored the political, social and cultural dimensions of the 'mui tsai' debate over half a century from different perspectives. Discussion in this article was informed mainly by the following literature: Susan Pederson, 'The Maternalist Moment in British Colony Policy: the Controversy over "Child Slavery" in Hong Kong: 1917-1941' , Past and Present 171 (2001): 161-202;
114. Elizabeth Sinn, 'Chinese Patriarchy and the Protection of Women in Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong', in Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape, ed. Maria Jaschok and Susan Miers (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994), 141-70;
115. Pui-ting Poon, 'The Mui Tsai Question in Hong Kong (1901-1940), with Special Emphasis on the Role of the Po Leung Kuk' (MPhil thesis, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong, 2000).
116. Education Report 1881.
117. Minute by the Acting Registrar General to Colonial Secretary, April 17, 1890. PRO, CO/129/245, 408-11.
118. Poon, 'Mui Tsai Question', 141.
119. Sinn, 'Chinese Patriarchy and the Protection of Women', 142-3, 151-5.