So far, this is all the information I have about Douglas Bruce, the recipient of the love letters I refer to in the previous post. I would be really grateful if anyone could find out more about him and/or his descendants .
Douglas G* Bruce was employed by the Asiatic Petroleum Company. The earliest evidence of his employment there is this company memo, dated in pencil, Wuchow 1915.
The memo itself was certainly not written during business hours, as you can see from my transcript of the original handwritten ‘poem’ .
The date on the back of the photo of Shing Mui is July 1916, so it is likely that her letters to Mr Bruce were written around that time.
(There were two studio photos of young Chinese women – the one here, and in my previous post has her name written on it. ) I’m not sure whether or not the girl below is a younger version of the same person. In one of my next posts I’ll be including an early, rather grainy photo of Mr Bruce with 4 young Chinese women, one of whom might be Shing Mui.
I’ve been trying to work out when and where Mr Bruce was born. There’s very little to go by, but he would probably have been in his late teens or early twenties, and this would place his birth in the early or mid 1890s.
The first letter from ‘Bessie’,
the married English woman,
would have been written in Canton in 1920,
or even 1919, and Mr Bruce must have been relatively young at that stage, as Bessie writes:
“What do you mean by upsetting the equilibrium of two highly respectable (!) ladies in their heretofore blissful states of married and single blessedness? And two at once mind you! And you so young and all.”
One of Bessie’s final letters to Mr Bruce shows that she also calls him ‘Gragg’, which seems to be his middle name*(see above).
If that is so, it could make him easier to track down as Douglas Graff Bruce, born sometime in the 1890’s, probably somewhere in London, as this picture seems to be the earliest one that I have and the picture was taken by London Portrait Co Ltd, 58, New Oxford St., W.C. 109 Finsbury Pavement 8 Aldgate High St, E.C.
In this one he might be a year or two older, because of what looks like the start of a moustache. It was taken by J.J. &S. Johnson – Artists & Photographers, Glossop Road, Sheffield. Is he wearing a uniform of some kind?
There are several more photos and a few more documents that might help readers to trace this man, and his friends, both men and women. This small photo below, taken in 1919 shows Mr Bruce on the right and his friend Mr Meyer, who appears in several other photgraphs and was clearly a very close friend, as there’s a picture of a baby boy named Bruce Meyer.
Although I know that readers of Paper Lanterns have enjoyed the novel, and the storyline of the main character’s grandmother that I’ve created, based on all this material, I have now become totally absorbed in all these real-life characters, most of whom, if not all, will have long departed this life. In fact, I have to admit that it’s becoming an obsession!
PLEASE do circulate the link to this challenge! (And remember that anyone who contacts me with new information will receive a free a copy of Paper Lanterns or The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society)
