page_title: Douglas Lapraik
section_title: Hong Kong
hierarchical_section_title: Douglas Lapraik / Biography / Career / Hong Kong
caption_attribution_description: University Hall (University of Hong Kong)
context_page_description: Douglas Lapraik was a British watchmaker, shipbuilder and shipping magnate of Scottish origins, most famous for his business empire and his role in the founding of many of Hong Kong's early conglomerates such as HSBC.
context_section_description: Lapraik arrived in the crown colony of Hong Kong in 1842 from Macao, following the cession of Hong Kong to the British Crown in perpetuity after the First Opium War the previous year. Soon after arriving in the colony, Lapraik established himself with his own business as a watchmaker by 1846, apparently concurrently while executing similar duties for Just & Son.
  Due to his trade in chronometers and watchmaking and given the need in the colony for shipping companies to register a local address, Lapraik soon found himself drafted as a shipping agent.
  Lapraik became established as a wealthy Hong Kong Taipan during the 1850s and 1860s, taking part in the founding of many of the colony's business ventures and expanding his business interests to many sectors of the colony's economy.
  Starting in 1855 with its founding, Lapraik served on the committee of the colony's first English language public school, the St. Andrew's School which closed in 1861.
  In 1858, John Steward Lapraik, the son of Lapraik's eldest brother arrived in Hong Kong to join his uncle's business. Steward Lapraik would go on to later largely inherit his uncle's business empire after Lapraik's death in 1869.
  In 1861, Lapraik became one of the founders of the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce.
  In 1862, Lapraik made significant contributions to the erection of the Pedder Street Clock Tower. The tower, which stood at the corner of Pedder Street and Queen's Road Central, could be seen from Victoria Harbour and debuted on New Year's Eve 1862, standing until 1913. One of the clock's faces was later incorporated into the Kowloon-Canton Railway Clock Tower at Tsimshatsui.
  In 1863, after acquiring a shipyard off Queen's Road and building two more at Aberdeen and Whampoa, Lapraik co-founded the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company together with Jardine Matheson & Company and Thomas Sutherland, the Hong Kong agent of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. The company's incorporation was announced in the Hong Kong Daily Press on 4 January 1864. The dockyard would go on to become the largest shipyard in Asia at its zenith. The resulting company also became the first limited company to be registered in Hong Kong, prompting the government to begin work on the Companies Ordinance of 1865.
  In 1864, Lapraik went on to be appointed as a member of the provisional founders committee of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation which would be founded in 1865. Later in 1864, Lapraik also oversaw the completion of his Gothic style mansion at Pok Fu Lam, dubbed as Douglas Castle and today known as Nazareth House, a university house of the University of Hong Kong. Lapraik leased the 310,227sqft. plot, then known as Rural Building Lot 32 from the government for a period of 75 years in 1861 and had been building his home and base of operations at the castle since that time, though he would not long enjoy its use.
  Lapraik was also a founding director of the Hongkong, Canton & Macao Steamboat Company which was incorporated as company number 0000002 in the Hong Kong Companies Registry in 1865 when the registry was also first formed. 1865 was also the year that Lapraik began his involvement as a founding Director in the Hongkong Hotel Company together with Englishman Charles Henri Maurice Bosman (father of Ho Fook and Robert Hotung), a Director of the Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock Company and a German, Baron Gustav von Overbeck, the Prussian and Austrian Consul in Hong Kong. The company opened the Hongkong Hotel in 1868 on Pedder Street and Queen's Road, then the first luxury hotel in the city. The hotel group would go on to become the Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Group.
  Lapraik left Hong Kong and returned to London in mid 1866, apparently due to health issues. In 1855, Lapraik transferred all interest in his watchmaking company, Douglas Lapraik China to his colleague, George Falconer, with whom he had previously apprenticed in his youth at Just & Son. The company was renamed as George Falconer & Company, sold to the Lee Hing Group in 1997.
caption: View of the main entrance to Douglas Castle at Pok Fu Lam, now University Hall, taken in 2012.
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