Rutherford Alcock

In 1844, he was appointed consul at Fuzhou in China, where, after a short official stay at Amoy, he performed the functions, as he expressed it, "of everything from a lord chancellor to a sheriff's officer."

Fuchow was one of the ports opened to trade by the Treaty of Nanking, and Alcock had to perform an entirely new role with regard to the Chinese authorities.

[4] Alcock, along with his wife, Henrietta, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law, moved to Shanghai in the fall of 1846, where they were part of a burgeoning community of expats, merchants and missionaries from England, France, and North America.

This included initially hosting a small church in his home, which his sister in law described as "...an immense rambling Chinese House containing fifty two Rooms / surrounded by courtyards, and divided by Galleries and Passages in all directions".

[5] Emma S. Bacon, Alcock's sister-in-law, wrote in April 1847, that the consulate was about two miles from Alcock's house and was to be built on ground "...by the River Side appropriated to the English...but as it is not yet commenced, it is uncertain when we shall inhabit it + but on the site appropriated for the Building Rutherford has at present Offices and a pretty sitting Room for our use, opening into a garden very nicely arranged...".

[4] Alcock remained in Shanghai until April of that year to restore peace and order, and then moved on to the Consulate in Canton, the original seat of much unrest in the 1840s.

Although these men were bound by personal friendship, national rivalries and differences in dealing with the Japanese led to conflict and antagonism.

He saw "peace, plenty, apparent content, and a country more perfectly cultivated and kept, with more ornamental timber everywhere, than can be matched even in England", Sir Rutherford Alcock, 1860.

He died in London on 2 November 1897, and is buried adjacent to Sir Lewis Pelly in St Katharine's Churchyard at Merstham in Surrey.

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Rutherford Alcock, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 70+ works in 100+ publications in 5 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.