29 Aug 1902 Armagh Guardian

 

AN ILLUSTRIOUS COUNTY ARMAGH MAN.

His work in the East.

 

Sir Thomas Jackson, one of the new baronets, whose name appeared in the lists of 26 June last, hails from across Crossmaglen, County Armagh, where he was born in 1841, and where, we understand, his respected mother still lives. He was in the service of the Belfast office of the Bank of Ireland until in 1864, when he went out to Hong Kong to join the staff of the Agra Bank. In 1866 he began his work in the service of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, whose chief manager he subsiquently became in 1876. From that year onward till May 1902, with the exception of a brief interval of two or three years when he was manager of the London office, he was the chief guiding mind of the affairs of this world-wide bank, whose principal business lies in financing and sustaining the immense commerce of the Far East, which is 60 per cent British.

 

So admirably as he done his work, that under him the bank has prospered abundantly, as well as in its own interest as in those of the British trade of which it is a mainstay in its own sphere. There is no citizen of the empire whose interests are not more or less concerned with the upholding and promoting of British trade in India and China and the Far East generally. Nor is there any agent more helpful towards the result than the head of a bank conducted with liberality and wide intelligence, and such has been the history of this great bank under Sir T. Jackson's guidance.

 

His government, knowing of his services to the interests of the empire, has given him a baronetcy, and the bank proprietors in Hong Kong have on two occasions voted him handsome gifts of money. In 1889 the annual meeting presented him with $50,000, and as lately as 16 August of this year, after his retirement from his important position, one of the most responsible the banking world, the proprietors at a meeting in Hong Kong not only voted him $100,000, but also, in token of their appreciation of his services, resolved to have a statue erected in Hong Kong, so that coming generations may not easily forget his work and worth.

 

He is an Ulsterman whose distinguished career is an honour to this commercial capital, which gave him his business training, and may, indeed, be taken as another illustration of the fact that Irishmen, no matter in what part of the world they may make their home, always come to the front, proving themselves worthy sons of the British Empire, connection with which has conferred such benefits on Ireland.