Douglas Lapraik

Hong Kong View of the main entrance to Douglas Castle at Pok Fu Lam, now University Hall, taken in 2012. 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. The company's incorporation was announced in the Hong Kong Daily Press on 4 January 1864. Lapraik leased the 310,227-sqft. 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. 1865 was also the year that Lapraik began his involvement as a founding Director in the Hongkong Hotel Company together with Dutchman 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 Central, 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.

Namesakes Douglas Street, Central, Hong Kong Douglas Lane, Central, Hong Kong Douglas Castle, Pok Fu Lam Douglas Villas, Central Mid-Levels, Hong Kong