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Sir Alexander William George Herder Grantham, GCMG (Chinese: 葛量洪; 15 March 1899 – 4 October 1978) was a British colonial administrator who governed Hong Kong and Fiji.
He was gazetted in the 18th Hussars in 1917 and joined the Colonial Administrative Service in Hong Kong in 1922. He was the Deputy Clerk of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong for a short period in 1933. In 1934, he was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple and attended the Imperial Defence College later that year.
Immediately after his tenure as High Commissioner ended, he became Governor of Hong Kong, until 1957. He opposed his predecessor, Sir Mark Young's proposal of expanding social services on the grounds that the local Chinese population cared little about social welfare.[1] Instead, he proposed the election of Unofficial members of the Legislative Council among British subjects only with the Governor holding reserved power to override LegCo decisions.[2]
Legacy of governorship
His tenure marked the beginning of a unitary housing policy by the Hong Kong Government. In December 1953, a fire burned down a large slum area in Shek Kip Mei, Kowloon, killing nine and leaving many homeless. It was under Grantham's administration that the government began to build settlement houses for the homeless. From that point on, the government was deeply involved in low-cost public housing programmes that allowed many Hong Kong people who could not afford to own a flat to live in government-owned housing estates at relatively low cost. The housing programme eventually evolved over time to allow people to buy low-cost housing and receive favourable loans to buy their own houses.
Grantham grew up partly in Tianjin, where his father practised law. Both his father and brother were killed in World War I. His mother then remarried, to Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe, and the family moved to Beijing.
Grantham was married twice. His first marriage, in 1925, was to the well-travelled Maurine Samson, daughter of the late Amos Roland Samson and Liberty "Libby" Cole (Neal) of Champaign County, Illinois. The Governor's official yacht, a Hong Kong health clinic, and a locomotive, were named "Lady Maurine" after her.[3] His first wife died in 1970, and Grantham married (Mrs) M.E. Lumley in 1972. He died on 4 October 1978.
^Goodstadt, Leo F. (2004). "The Rise and Fall of Social, Economic and Political Reforms in Hong Kong, 1930–1955". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch. 44: 66.
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