This is the second in a new series of blogs by Historic Coventry Trust’s research volunteers. The blogs will reveal stories about people and events connected with our properties. This one is about Rose Duncan, buried in London Road Cemetery.
Denise Wolff, one of the team, says “I am interested in family research and have researched my mother’s family back to 14th Century. I also volunteer and am a trustee at our local community library. I was intrigued by the inscription on the memorial that Rose Duncan and her baby son “died at sea”“.
Residents of London Road Cemetery – Rose Duncan, 1842-1876
Rose, beloved wife of Robert B. Duncan and third daughter of Thomas Leavesley, died on passage from China in December 1876, on the ship Ajax en route from Hong Kong. Rose’s drowning was “supposed suicide” as recorded on the ship’s log and her infant son, James, died on board in January 1877 from enteritis, aged five months. The ship arrived back in England a few days later.
Rose Duncan was born in early 1842 in Coventry. She travelled to Hong Kong, around 1865, possibly due to lack of work in the silk industry. She married Robert Barclay Duncan on 13 March 1869 at the Union Church, Hong Kong. Robert Duncan was born in Scotland and arrived in Hong Kong around 1866 as a ship’s carpenter. By the time of their marriage he had prospered and was Superintendent of the prestigious Aberdeen Docks in Hong Kong.
Their first child was born 15 November 1869 and they had six children in all, all born in Hong Kong between 1869 and 1876.
According to the census of 1865, Hong Kong had a population of 125,504, of which some 2,100 were Americans and Europeans. By 1876 the population (including Kowloon) had increased to 140,000. The east portion of Colonial Hong Kong was mostly dedicated to the British filled with race courses, parade grounds, barracks, cricket and polo fields. The west portion was filled with Chinese shops, crowded markets and tea houses.
By 1874 Robert Duncan was further promoted to Secretary to the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company. Given his managerial job, it is likely that Robert, Rose and their children lived in a well-appointed house, with Chinese servants. British Kowloon had gas street lighting, telegraph communications, tree lined avenues and was a typical colonial experience for British Victorian ex-pats.
Unfortunately in April 1876 Rose’s husband was dismissed from his job as “unfit for the post” and accused of embezzlement: he drew pay for “coolies not employed” and also put timber he had bought and had been destroyed by the great typhoon of 1874 through the company books. He was sentenced to nine years “penal servitude” on 28 August 1876.
Rose and her five children (one had died in infancy in Hong Kong) may have sailed back to England due to the scandal and subsequent lack of income. Maybe this was also the cause of her death.
A footnote to the story is that Robert Barclay Duncan did not serve his whole sentence, returned to England, and in mid 1878 married Rose’s sister. In 1885 he took over his father-in-law’s dyeing business. However it seems he ran it into the ground, owing around £330,000 in today’s money. He was declared bankrupt in July 1893 and died in 1921 in Leicester.
The broken column on Rose’s memorial indicates a life cut short.
