Geoffry Alexander Stafford Northcote (1881–1948) was a British colonial administrator who served for years in the Colonial Office and was posted to African and Caribbean territories before becoming Hong Kong's twentieth Governor in October 1937, an office he held until September 1941. His term saw the colony move from peace into a war footing. After Canton fell in October 1938 refugees poured in, pushing the population above 1.6 million and straining housing, food supply and sanitation; as early as December 1937 he proposed emergency regulations to restrict immigration on the grounds that food supply and public health could not withstand an unlimited influx. When the Second World War began in Europe in 1939 Hong Kong stepped up air-raid precautions, food stockpiles and civil-defence drills, and in July that year he issued emergency legislation introducing conscription. To meet military costs the government set up a Taxation Committee in December 1938 and a War Revenue Committee in October 1939, and in 1940 the colony levied income tax for the first time. He invested in teacher training: in 1939 the government founded the Hong Kong Teachers' Training College, which in 1941 moved to a new campus at 9A Bonham Road and was renamed the Northcote Training College; it kept operating after the war, moved to a new Pokfulam campus in 1962, was renamed Northcote College of Education in 1967, and was merged into the Hong Kong Institute of Education in 1994, now part of the Education University of Hong Kong. He also had to handle food prices and housing shortages. Convinced that Britain could not hold Hong Kong, he wrote to London in 1940 urging the withdrawal of the British garrison to avoid civilian slaughter and destruction. He left on health grounds in September 1941, handing over to Mark Young; Japan attacked that December and the garrison surrendered on Christmas Day, beginning three years and eight months of Japanese occupation. He died in 1948.
The conscription and income tax introduced in Northcote's term were Hong Kong's first mobilisation of social resources for war; the teacher-training college founded in 1939 and named after him became a main source of teachers for post-war mass education, later merging into the Education University of Hong Kong. His handling of the pre-war refugee influx, civil defence and food stockpiling laid the groundwork of Hong Kong's wartime system.
Achievements
- 1937 · Became the twentieth Governor of Hong Kong
- 1939 · Issued emergency legislation introducing conscription; the Hong Kong Teachers' Training College was founded and in 1941 moved to Bonham Road and was renamed the Northcote Training College
- 1940 · Hong Kong levied income tax for the first time to cover rising military expenditure