Robert Thomas Bryan Jr

Robert Thomas Bryan Jr (博良, Bóliáng) ran the Shanghai Municipal Council’s Legal Department for the last decade of its work before the Pacific War. He was born in Shanghai, the son of the Baptist missionary who founded the University of Shanghai.

After training in North Carolina, he practised in Shanghai from 1917 to 1928 and taught at the Soochow University law school. In 1928 the Council’s secretary-general, Stirling Fessenden (费信惇), brought him in as legal adviser, and in 1930 he became head of the Legal Department. The gazetteer notes that he staffed it with his former Soochow students, making it the only Council department led by an American and without British staff.

He wrote books on Chinese trademark and divorce law and on extraterritoriality. The Japanese interned him in 1941; after the war he served the US embassy and consulate-general, took part in the commercial treaty talks, and in November 1946 formed a firm with Cornell Franklin (樊克令). The gazetteer gives no death date.