The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889)

Frederick Stewart was known by his contemporaries as the "founder of Hong Kong Government Education". He was the first headmaster of the Central School, now Queen's College, which led Hong Kong English education from 1862 until 1911 when the first university in Hong Kong was established.

Stewart became Registrar General, then Colonial Secretary (now Chief Secretary), acting as Governor of Hong Kong on several occasions. He was keenly aware of his historical context at the meeting of the two cultures of East and West, and of his role as a facilitator in the modernisation of Chinese thought. His consistent policy was to educate pupils in Western knowledge, while preserving their Chinese identity, and he insisted on equal time for Chinese and English studies. Although retiring, unassuming and modest, Stewart was highly popular among the Chinese, foreign and Portuguese communities. By the end of his life, Stewart's intimate knowledge of Hong Kong was considered unequalled among non-Chinese in Hong Kong at the time.

The change in Hong Kong, effect in 1997, makes it all the more important to reassess the purposes of the continued meeting of East and West, and the educational and cultural means by which co-operation is promoted.

This book is a product of eight years research.

Gillian Bickley, born and educated in the United Kingdom, has lived mostly in Hong Kong since 1970. Her writings include Moving House and other Poems from Hong Kong, which has been translated into Chinese under the leadership of Tony Ming-Tak Yip, For the Record and other Poems of Hong Kong, which has been translated into Chinese by Simon Sui-cheong Chau; The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889), part of which has been translated into Chinese by Hong Lok; and The Stewarts of Bourtreebush. She is the contributing editor of Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare, The Development of Education in Hong Kong, 1841-1897 and A Magistrate's Court in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong: Court in Time. Her poetry has been included in anthologies published in Hong Kong and the Philippines. It will appear in two further anthologies, one published in the United Kingdom and the other (in the Arabic translation of Sayed Gouda) in Egypt. A long-term adjudicator at the Hong Kong Schools' Speech Festival, she was one of the Adjudicators for the Royal Commonwealth Society Hong Kong Poetry Writing Competition, and one of four voices in the full audio recording of Verner Bickley's three volume anthology, Poems to Enjoy. Her poems are popular with students and teachers for competitions, festivals and grade examinations. Dr Bickley taught in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Baptist University, as Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor, for twenty-two years. She has also taught at Universities in Lagos, Nigeria; Auckland, New Zealand; and the University of Hong Kong. In 2006, she was appointed Honorary Research Fellow, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong.

Imprint and Credits

Foreword by Lady Saltoun

Introduction by Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, G.C.M.G., Ph.D.; Chancellor, University of Aberdeen; Governor of Hong Kong, 1987-1992.

Author's Note

Table of Illustrations



1 The Flowers are Still There

2 The Earnest Student

3 Rathen Parish School

4 Aberdeen Grammar School

5 University: King's College, Aberdeen

6 Divinity Hall

7 New Horizons

8 Chief Cabin Passenger

9 A Particularly Interesting Sphere of Usefulness

10 Their Own Ideas of Education

11 No Directly Hopeful Signs

12 Tours of Inspection

13 They Would Not Send their Children to Read

14 I Have Seen Boys Cry

15 Not a Superfluity Merely but a Mistake

16 Government Central School for Boys

17 Two Languages, Two Cultures

18 Building a System

19 A Great Ambition on the Part of the Boys

20 Two-Tier System

21 The Grafitication of their Fancies

22 The Disciplinary Term Begins

23 Defects and Failures

24 A Fabian Policy

25 A Hearty Demonstration of Feeling

26 A Short Run Home

27 In Scotland

28 Worries about Work

29 Beyond the Mainstream

30 Home to Hong Kong

31 Frederick Stewart and Ernst Eitel

32 Farewell to the Central School

33 Exceedingly Irksome

34 Police Magistrate

35 Registrar General

36 A Necessary Lighthouse

37 An Experiment Renewed

38 Going to a Better Place

39 Achievements and Evaluation

40 Memories and Memorials



Acknowledgements

Further Reading

Select Bibliography

Index

About The David C. Lam Institute