to practise in Hongkong in April of the following year, and from September, 1888, until August, 1889, he acted as Police Magis- trate. In June, 1892, he was appointed Acting Puisne Judge, and continued as such until December, 1892. During the plague epidemic of 1894 he rendered signal service to the authorities, and in recognition of this was awarded a gold medal. For nearly three years, at intervals between 1896 and Igor, he acted as Attorney-General, In 1900 he was appointed Queen’s Counsel, and since the death of Mr. J. J. Francis, K.C., in 1901, he has been the senior practising counsel in the Colony. He went to Fiji as Attorney-General in January, 1902, but left in the following April and resigned the appointment two months later, returning to Hongkong in October of that year. In 1903 he temporarily represented the Chamber of Commerce on the Legislative Council, and in 1905 he was elected to represent the Justices of the Peace on that body upon the retirement of Sir Paul Chater, C.M.G. He is one of the members of the Standing Law Committee. Mr. Pollock was elected a member of the Sanitary Board in March, 1903, and held office until January, 1906. He is president of the Hongkong Branch of the Navy League and of the Chess Club, secretary of the Odd Volumes Society, and a member on the committee of the Royal Hongkong Yacht Club. Mr. Pollock, who married in March, 1906, Lena Oakley, lives at “ Barrington,” the Peak.
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MR. WILLIAM JARDINE GRESSON is a son of the late Colonel Gresson, of the 27th Inniskillings and 65th Regiment. Upon the completion of his education at Bedford School he entered the London office of the Chartered Bank. In 1892 he came to Hong- kong to join the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd., of which his uncle, Sir Robert Jardine, was the head. Since that date he has represented the firm both at Hongkong and Shanghai. To his duties as an un- official member of the Legislative Council are added those of a member of the Public Works Committee. He is a thorough sports- man, and, as a steward of the Hongkong Jockey Club, takes an especially keen interest in racing. Mr. Gresson was recently married.
THE HON. MR. EDWARD OSBORNE, J.P., the Secretary of the Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company, is one of the men of whom the Colony has great reason to be proud. During his twenty-six years’ residence in Hongkong he has made himself master of many of the more difficult problems which have confronted the prime movers in commercial enterprise, and his opinion, based upon shrewd observation, is widely sought. Born in 1861, and educated at St. Anne's, Streatham Hill, Mr. Osborne entered the service of a Durham firm of solicitors, and then went into the London office of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. In 1882
he came out to the Company's Hongkong office, where he remained seven years, until the formation of the Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Godown Company. Since 1889 he has been closely identified with the Wharf Company's progress, and, as secretary, he has encountered innumerable difficulties arising out of the organised opposition of the Chinese guilds to the competition of the foreigner. It has been a long, uphill fight on his part against the co-operated exactions of the Chinese and in favour of European interests. As a member of the Sanitary Board, to which he was elected in 1900, Mr. Osborne devoted considerable time and labour to fighting the plague, and, so far as concerned the Wharf Company’s employees, found that the most effective measures were the extermination of rats and the enforcement of simple rules of health and cleanliness. With a few other gentlemen he was instru- mental in bringing about the erection of the new Hongkong Club building; whilst, at the request of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank and of the mortgagees of the Hongkong Hotel property, he was, some twelve years ago, largely responsible for rescuing the Hotel Company from imminent bankruptcy and placing it upon a dividend-paying basis. He also assisted in bringing about the forma- tion of the Star Ferry Company, and placing double-ended boats on the service between Hongkong and the mainland. He is a director of the Dairy Farm and of the Steam Laundry Company, and has a seat on the Consulting Committees of A. S. Watson & Co., Ltd., and the China-Borneo Company. In May, 1906, he succeeded the Hon. Mr. Gershom Stewart on the Legislative Council, and is a member of the Finance and Public Works Committees. A lover of outdoor sports, with a leaning especially towards rowing, riding, and shoot- ing, Mr. Osborne is also extremely partial to pedestrian exercise. He has seen in this way a good deal of the mainland adjacent to Hongkong, and was in Peking just after the Boxer troubles. He has walked across Korea, through parts of Japan, and recently went on foot from Hankow to Canton by way of Kweilin. In February, 1904, he was married to Phyllis Eliza, a daughter of Mr. G. Whittey, of Weybridge, by whom he has three children, He lives at the Peak, where he went to reside many years ago in the hope—since completely justified—of securing immunity from malarial fever.
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THE HON. COMMANDER BASIL REGINALD HAMILTON TAYLOR, R.N., who is acting as a member of the Legislative Council during the absence on leave of Mr. Badeley, the Captain-Superintendent of Police, has been connected with the Harbour Department of the Colony since July, 1899. His father was the late Colonel Thomas Edward Taylor, Chief Conservative Whip for many years, and for forty-two conseculive years Member for County Dublin. He was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Lord Derby’s last Cabinet, and in Lord Beaconsfield’s Cabinet of 1874. Commander Taylor's grandfather
was the eldest son of the Rev. the Hon. Henry Edward Taylor, a son of the first Earl of Bective, and brother of the first Marquis of Headfort. Born on April 8, 1865, and educated at a private school at Cheam, in Surrey, Commander Taylor entered the Royal Navy in 1878. He served in the Egyptian War of 1882, and was present at the bombardment of Alexandria in July of that year, subsequently landing with the Naval Brigade at Alexandria and Port Said for police and guard duties, For his services he was awarded the Egyptian medal, Alexandria clasp, and bronze star. He was commissioned a_ lieutenant in 1888, and served on the Mediterranean, North American, China, and Home Stations. He resigned his commission in 1898, and in the following year was appointed Assistant Harbour Master of Hongkong. Since that time the total tonnage of vessels entered and cleared has doubled, Great improvements have been made in lighting and much of the foreshore has been reclaimed. Besides being Harbour Master, Commander Taylor is Marine Magis- trate, Emigration and Customs Officer, Registrar of Shipping, Superintendent of the Gunpowder Depot, Collector of Light Dues, Superintendent of Imports and Exports, and Board of Trade Agent for Commercial Intelligence. He was confirmed in these appointments on his return from leave in February, 1907. For a while he acted as Assistant Superintendent of the Water Police, but, the arrangement by which that force was placed under the Harbour Department proving unsatisfactory, it was discontinued. In 1903 Commander Taylor was married to Harriet, a daughter of Brigadier-General H. B. Osgood, of the United States Army, and widow of the late Major Paul Clendennis, of the United States Army. He is a member of the Carlton, Bath, and Hongkong Clubs.
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MR. HENRY KESWICK, who is acting as a member of the Legislative Council during the absence of Mr, Gresson from the Colony, is the eldest son of Mr. William Keswick, M.P., of Beech Grove, Dumfriesshire. He was born in Shanghai in 1870, and was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cam- bridge, taking his B.A. degree in 1892, Mr. Keswick went to New York in 1893 for the firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd. Two years later he came East and remained until the outbreak of the Boer War in 1900, when he went to South Africa and served as a captain in the 3rd King’s Own Scottish Borderers. In the following year he returned East to take charge of the firm’s branch at Yokohama, and in 1904 he entered upon a similar position in Shanghai. He was chair- man of the Chamber of Commerce, and chairman of the Municipal Council in Shanghai during 1906-7. Karly in 1907 he was given charge of the head office in Hong- kong. He is a member of the committees of the Chamber of Commerce, the China Association, and the Royal Hongkong Yacht Club, and a steward of the Jockey Club.
