Kadoorie family

Why Shanghai knows the name

The Kadoories left Shanghai one building: the Marble Hall (大理石大厦, Dàlǐshí Dàshà) on Yan’an West Road, which since 1953 has been the China Welfare Institute Children’s Palace. They are better known in Hong Kong, where the family controls the electricity company CLP and has a large stake in the Peninsula hotel group. The family began with two brothers from Baghdad, Elly and Ellis, who reached Hong Kong in the 1880s as employees of the Sassoon firm and went into business for themselves. Their sons Lawrence and Horace carried the family through the Japanese occupation of Shanghai.

Where did the Kadoories come from, and how did they start?

The Kadoories are Jews from Baghdad who settled in Bombay before the brothers went east. Sources differ on when the Bombay move happened, and the next section returns to that.

Elly was born in 1867 and reached Hong Kong in 1880. Until 1901 he was known as Eleazar Silas Kelly, and the brokerage he later ran carried the name Kelly. The Science Museum Group’s record says he began as a clerk at E. D. Sassoon & Co. and then became a broker. Ellis followed in 1883, having worked for the older Sassoon house, David Sassoon & Sons. The Sassoons were therefore not only the Kadoories’ employers but their model. The Sassoon family and E. D. Sassoon & Co. have their own entries on this site.

A review of Jonathan Kaufman’s 2020 book The Last Kings of Shanghai says Elly had learned the trade on the China coast and that, even in his late teens, his ideas did not match the Sassoons’. In one episode at a Weihaiwei warehouse he disinfected the building against rats and fleas, offered disinfectant to the Chinese staff on credit, and was reprimanded for acting without permission. The review stops at the reprimand. Accounts that say he was fired are retellings, and I could not trace one to a primary record. A Hong Kong Heritage Project summary, which I could read only through a search snippet, says he formed a brokerage partnership under the Kelly name, went solo in 1906, and renamed the firm Sir Elly Kadoorie & Sons in 1927.

What did the family own?

Broking was the base. The brothers then put money into banking, rubber plantations, electric power, docks and property, and took a large shareholding in the hotel company that became Hongkong & Shanghai Hotels. Wikipedia says Elly became the largest shareholder of China Light & Power after it was restructured in the early twentieth century. That is a secondary claim, and it does not give a year.

The company’s own dates are firmer. China Light & Power was founded in Hong Kong in 1901 by others, and the Kadoorie family joined its board in 1930. By then Elly sat on the boards of several Hong Kong and Shanghai companies. Ellis was knighted in 1917 and died on 24 February 1922, leaving 100,000 pounds in his will for education in Palestine. Elly was made an honorary KBE in the 1926 Birthday Honours.

How did Marble Hall come to be built?

Start with the date nobody disputes: in 1919 Laura Kadoorie died. She was Elly’s wife and the mother of Lawrence and Horace. A tour report on the Historic Shanghai site adds that she died in February 1919 in a fire at the family’s house on Bubbling Well Road, going back inside for the governess. The report names no source for this, and I found no independent record of the fire, so treat it as a story rather than a documented event.

The same report gives a different origin for the building. Elly had bought about 20 mou on the western edge of Bubbling Well Road for a Jewish Country Club, to serve the Sephardi community. Abelardo Lafuente and Gerald Wootten designed it; the upper floors burned in May 1920. Elly hired Graham-Brown & Wingrove to rebuild, and when the community club proved too large for its purpose he took the structure as his own house. Lawrence later told visitors that a different architect finished it, so the question of who designed Marble Hall has no clean answer.

Dates also vary. A North-China Herald article of March 1924 describes the finished house. Chinese Wikipedia, drawing on the Shanghai gazetteer of famous buildings and several media pieces, gives 1919 to 1924 in its infobox, and elsewhere says the work took five years. Local articles say the contractor needed four years. These are probably describing the same thing from different starting points, but none of them gives a signed building contract.

How big was the ballroom?

Lawrence Kadoorie’s figures for the ballroom, as repeated by a tour guide, were 65 feet high, 80 feet long and 50 feet wide, under 3,600 coloured bulbs. Chinese sources say about 20 metres high and nearly 400 square metres, with a teak dance floor in the centre and marble around the edge. The two sets of figures agree: 80 by 50 feet is about 370 square metres and 65 feet is about 20 metres. The guide adds that no ballroom appeared in the first plans and that about 150 tons of marble went into the house. The Chinese sources give the site as about 14,000 square metres and the floor area as about 4,700.

What was the family doing for refugees in Shanghai?

Horace Kadoorie, born in 1902, founded the Shanghai Jewish Youth Association in February 1937, after visiting the Shanghai Jewish School and finding malnourished children, some with tuberculosis. This was before most refugees from Nazi-controlled Europe arrived. When they came, Harpuder’s account counts roughly 18,000, and the association moved into regular schooling.

The school went by two names, the SJYA School and the Kadoorie School. It stood at 100 Kinchow Road in Hongkou, beside a refugee camp, in a building originally a Chinese college that the Shanghai Municipal Council leased to the refugees in mid-1939. The dates for its opening vary: February 1939 in Allsop’s article, November 1939 in an archive record, and mid-1939 for the lease. In 1941 the building went back to its Chinese owners. Horace raised funds for a new site, and on 2 January 1942 the school opened at 627 East Yuhuang Road with about 600 pupils and 17 teachers under its headmistress, Lucie Hartwich. In 1947 its pupils scored a 99 per cent pass rate in the Cambridge Senior Examination. By 1949 only 40 pupils remained.

What happened during the occupation?

The Historic Shanghai report says the Kadoories were interned as British citizens, first at Stanley Camp in Hong Kong; Lawrence’s family later went to the Chapei camp in Shanghai. Elly became ill and was allowed back into Marble Hall, but only in part: he and Horace lived in a room above the stables. Elly died there in 1944 and was buried beside Laura.

Accounts of his death do not agree. The Science Museum Group and Wikipedia say he died in a Japanese camp or prison. Kaufman’s reviewer says he died in Shanghai under occupation. Wikipedia gives two dates, 8 February and 2 August 1944. Until a probate or burial record turns up, neither the date nor the exact place is settled.

Did the Kadoories lose everything in Shanghai?

The popular line is that they did. The record is more mixed. Horace visited Hong Kong in 1948 and never went back to Shanghai. The SJYA school was nearly empty by 1949. In 1953 Song Qingling asked for the house for a children’s institution and the family agreed; a Hong Kong oral history describes the decision as the outcome of talks between Song Qingling and Zhou Enlai. They gave up Marble Hall, but the group’s core was in Hong Kong. Lawrence returned there in 1945 to run China Light and Power, whose capacity rose from 19.5 MW in 1946 to 2,656 MW in 1981. He became Baron Kadoorie in 1981, the first Hong Kong-born person to be made a life peer. The family still holds about 35 per cent of CLP. Lawrence and Horace together founded the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association in 1951 for farmers in the New Territories and shared the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 1962. Horace died in 1995; Lawrence in 1993.

What the sources disagree on

• Where the family was established. Wikipedia’s family article says Bombay from the mid-18th century; its articles on Elly and Ellis say the Bombay move came in the late 19th century.
• Where Elly landed in 1880. The Science Museum Group says Hong Kong. Wikipedia’s Elly article says Shanghai.
• How he left the Sassoons. Kaufman’s reviewer says reprimanded; popular accounts say fired. No source in this entry says he was dismissed.
• Who built the house. Graham-Brown & Wingrove are named in 1924; Lawrence Kadoorie said another architect finished it; Chinese Wikipedia gives a different name again, in two spellings.
• When it was built. Between 1919 or 1924 and 1924, depending on source.
• How Elly died. Date and place both vary (see above).
• How the Children’s Palace began. Chinese Wikipedia says Song Qingling founded it with the family’s consent; the oral history says it followed talks with Zhou Enlai. These are not incompatible.

What to look for

Go to the Children’s Palace at 64 Yan’an West Road, west of Jing’an Park. Lonely Planet describes it as closed to the public, with the grounds open to wander; I have no checked opening information, so confirm before you go. Look for the marble that gave the house its name. The ballroom with its dance floor, the marble staircase and the rest of the interior are inside the working centre. The 2019 national listing covers the whole complex. Gone from the district: the Bubbling Well Road house, whose exact site I could not find, and the Kinchow Road school, whose address survives in the records only.