THE NTH CORK COPS OF HONG KONG
AUTHOR PATRICIA O’SULLIVAN TELLS HOW HER GREAT GRANDFATHER AND A GROUP OF MEN FROM NEWMARKET CAME TO FORM A GROUP WITHIN THE POLICE FORCE OF HONG KONG IN THE LATE 1800S
HONG Kong is 10,000 miles from Newmarket but yet there are strong links between the two regions due to a body of 19 North Cork men who called it home and served in the police force there from 1864 until 1950.
Their fascinating story has been told by Patricia O’Sullivan who launched her book, ‘Policing Hong Kong – An Irish History’, on Friday as part of Scully’sFest in Newmarket.
In the summer of 2009, Patricia O’Sullivan visited her 90 year old aunt, Ann O’Brien in Dublin. Ann was the child of Patrick and Ellen O’Sullivan of Barnacurra in Newmarket. Patricia is the grand daughter of Patrick O’Sullivan.
Patricia explained that when both she and Ann began to look through a collection of old photographs, Ann got down on her knees and began to drag further boxes of treasures from under a sideboard when the subject of an uncle, Mortimer (Murt) arose.
Ann said to Patricia, that she was “good at that googly thing ... go on your computer and find out what happened to uncle Murt in Gresson Street. My parents were such Victorians that they never told us.”
“And that triggered my fascination and it was truly my stimulus to go about and search the family history about being in the Hong Kong police force,” Patricia told The Corkman.
So where did it all begin? She explained that in 1864 William Lysaught left Island in Newmarket for the Gold Rush in America but when he got there “it was over” and so he went to Hong Kong. He made a career in the police force and sent word home to Newmarket for family to come out.
“Coincidentally but not connected, in 1868, George Hennessy from Glenlara went to London to join to police force and at that time the Hong Kong police were recruiting from the Metropolitan police and so George, in 1873, opted to leave London for Hong Kong. After 11 years in Hong Kong, George returned on leave and married Bridget O’Sullivan of Curraduff. He then recommended cousins and nephews for the Hong Kong force,” she said.
The head of police, a man named Henry May, also asked George Hennessy to find men to recruit for the police force in Hong Kong and so, Patrick and Mortimer O’Sullivan of Barnacurra joined.
It was not all plain sailing living and working in the other side of the world. While Hong Kong in 1918 was a tranquil place compared to war torn Europe, on the morning of January 22, a running battle through the streets of Wanchai ended in the ‘Siege of Gresson Street,’ which saw the slaying of five policemen.
One of the dead was Mortimer O’Sullivan, who was shot five times in the head. This was so shocking in Hong Kong that Patricia said 250,000 people turned up to watch the funeral possession.
So what happened at the Siege of Gresson Street? Patricia explained that Inspector Mortimer O’Sullivan, Sgt Henry Coscombe Clarke and a team of nine Chinese detective constables went to a tenement in Gresson Street, Wanchai with a search warrant for stolen goods.
However, unknown to them, the gang they were looking for had previously raided a British army munitions store.
“The gang were probably tipped off about the arrival of the police. A bloodbath ensued with the police standing no chance and four were killed in the building, and one more in the chase. Two robbers were killed and at least one escaped and one stood trial,” said Patricia.
She said all the policemen killed were married which children. And just in the last month, her branch of the family has re-established contact with Murt’s children’s descendants – after nearly 100 years. They all live in Chicago.
Murt was married to Hanora Aherne and he is buried in Happy Valley, Hong Kong next to his distant cousin, Edmund O’Sullivan of Curraduff. Edmund died of TB and left behind his wife, Maria, and four young children.
This group of Newmarket
men were unlike many other migrants at the time - they were a tight-knit and discrete bunch and often preferring to work in the same stations and taking work leave together.
Patricia pointed out that getting started with her research was made possible by an article in a contemporary police magazine which was available online, and which
recorded a visit by Henry Goscombe Clarke’s grandsons to the sites involved in the Greeson Street deaths. She made contact with one of those grandsons, Dennis Clarke, who was then head of the Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong.
“I got an invite from Dennis Clarke to stay at the Conrad as a guest. Needless to say, I had
Photo supplied by Patricia O’Sullivan
scarcely finished reading his email before I booked my flight.
“Then a wealth of material gathered over the years or research from a serving Hong Kong policeman started me on a course where it became obvious that it was not just my grandfather and great uncle who had been in the police but so, too, had a large group of their kinsmen from Newmarket,” she said.
Patricia said her research had “taken over her life” and runs very deep. While she is based in the UK, the former music teacher spends four months of the year in Hong Kong.
Patricia’s book tells the story of the policeman and the criminals which they were dealing with, and it also follows the lives of the Newmarket men along with their wives and families when they first arrived and beyond.
She said she was delighted at the turn out for the launch of her book in Newmarket but added that, as the book is printed in Hong Kong, it will take up to four weeks for it to hit the bookshelves in Duhallow.