Nearly half a century had passed and the scornful description in 1840 of Hong Kong as "barren rock with hardly a house upon it" had given way: the harbour was busy with ships, the foreshore lined with buildings and houses beginning to stretch their way towards the peak of the barren rock! The story which is told in these pages is typical of the rich amalgam of voices from distant places that continue to make the great city of Hong Kong today. A black-suited evangelical missionary from Germany and a bewhiskered trader from Calcutta, son of a merchant from Baghdad coming together to found the school whose 120th anniversary we commemorate.
Dr Eitel appears in this story as a young missionary from Wurttemberg, Germany working first among
the villages and farmland of Guangdong learning the language of the people and then making his way
to Hong Kong at the age of thirty-two to continue his missionary work. There he married a young
lady, like himself concerned with education and especially the education of women. His energy and
ideas attracted the attention of the Government which invited him to become Inspector of Schools.
Foremost among the providers of schools were churches and religious bodies and there seemed little
doubt that armed with his knowledge of the successful policies for the education of girls in the Middle
East and India and no doubt and spurred on by his wife, the first Central School for Girls came into
being in 1890 in leased premises in Hollywood Road. It was to have a Headmistress recruited from
England for a six year term and paid 1,200 Mexican silver dollars a year. (These dollars were the only
legal currency of those years). The first two Headmistresses did not last long but in 1891 with the
appointment of Mrs. Bateman, who led the school for 15 years, the school settled down and began its
long history of great Headmistresses each of whom has left her mark on the school.
At this point Emanuel Raphael Belilios enters our story. A Venetian born in Calcutta in 1837 the son
of a merchant from Baghdad. He was educated there and later married the daughter, Simha, of Ezra,
another wealthy merchant.
From the very early years, merchants from India began to play their part in the history of Hong Kong. Belilios was one such. He comes to notice as a Board member of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1866 at the age of 29 and later Chairman from 1876 until 1882. A philanthropist and given to good works, the Government Central School for Girls attracted his generosity. He offered 25,000 dollars to the Government to build a new school for girls on the site of the old Central School but wished the school to be given his name (like so many donors today!) This was a precedent and Sir William des Voeux resisted it.
His successor Sir William Robinson relented and the first among many sites of the Belilios Public
School was decided. It was opened in 1893 and on the day of its opening Emanuel Raphael Belilio s
was bestowed the Cross of St Michael and St George awarded by HM the Queen Victoria. We cannot
leave the scene without saying a few more words about this extraordinary man who built a house, the
Eyrie, on the highest part of the Peak - now a public park, had a camel to carry his baggage (the tram
had opened in 1886); owned at one time a stretch of property along Kennedy Road, now the site of
a string of high rises; and owned Beaconsfield House which eventually was incorporated into the
Building of Cheung Kong Center.
We leave this colourful figure with the first "Belilios" well established. In the succeeding 120 years Belilios has had to move many times but always carrying its identity and spirit with it; it survived the horrors of the three outbreaks of plague; the hardships of several years of imprisonment; and the ransacking at the end of the war. Now Belilios has a new home in Tin Hau Temple Road. It is a wonderful story of successful decision making, of movement and rebuilding, of great and dedicated Headmistresses and their staff, of all those who have benefitted from their years at Belilios which is captured in the pages of this excellent anniversary volume. It is one of the rich strands of our Hong Kong History.
by Sir David Akers Jones