About the Collection

The Hong Kong Cemetery which is the oldest in Hong Kong opens in 1845. Throughout the rest of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, all European Protestants and Nonconformists were buried in this Cemetery. Besides the Europeans about 165 Chinese, 450 Japanese and around 100 Russians, who are mostly refugees from the Communist advances, are also buried there. It is therefore reach in history.

This Collection is a database created by Ms Patricia Lim which includes all the graves in the Cemetery with the information found on their inscriptions and a further biographical material of the dead person where known. The material is cross-referenced and categorized into the place of birth, dates of death, age, sex, cause of death, occupations when alive.

For each entry in the database, a photograph has been taken of the head stone/monument. These photos show the architectural characteristics of the time in which the headstones were erected. Hong Kong Cemetery is perhaps the only venue in Hong Kong where architectural trends from 1845 to the present day can all be seen.

The author has also provided sketch maps of the sections so that those wishing to can pinpoint the location in the cemetery of the names they are interested in.

Records of the database have been licensed to the Hong Kong Memory Project in an exclusive license so that this rich pool of materials should be made available online to research and the general public.To make the database consistent with the template of Hong Kong Memory's online archives, the project research team has edited the texts and field data of the database in various ways. The scope of editing include correcting typing mistakes, expanding abbreviations into fully spelt words according to the conversion table supplied by the author, and combining information in separate fields to streamline the number of fields displayed. One major editing is to add information to the entries of graves in which more than one deceased are inscribed on the tombstone. The editing is strictly constrained by the principle of not making unnecessary modification to the original database. Wherever there are improper changes, it is the responsibility of the project team.

More technical details about the database are given under “User’s Guide to Database” and notes to "Abbreviations". Though the author and the project team have tried every effort to improve the database, it is inevitable that, with different people participating in data entry and with the large number of entries, there are a number of inaccuracies, typing mistakes and errors on the database. The author and the editors would like to apologize for any anomalies users may find in the database.