Frederick Maze
|
Sir Frederick Maze KCMG KBE |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| 4th Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service | |
|
In office 8 January 1929 – 31 May 1943 |
|
| Preceded by | A. H. F. Edwardes (OIG) |
| Succeeded by | Lester Knox Little |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
2 July 1871 Belfast, Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Died | 25 March 1959 (aged 87) Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
| Spouse(s) | Laura Gwendoline Bullmore (1888–1972) |
| Relations | Sir Robert Hart, 1st Baronet (Uncle) |
| Occupation | Civil servant |
Sir Frederick William Maze KCMG KBE (梅樂和爵士; 2 July 1871 – 25 March 1959) was a British civil servant and Chinese customs commissioner, serving as Inspector-General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service from 1929 to 1943.
Maze was born on 2 July 1871 at 11 Abercorn Terrace in Belfast, the younger son of James Maze, a linen merchant, of Ballinderry, and Mary Hart, one of two daughters of Henry Hart of Lisburn. He was educated at Wesley College, Dublin and later followed his uncle, Sir Robert Hart, into the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service in 1891 and was appointed in 1899 as acting audit secretary at the inspectorate-general in Peking. By the time of the Boxer uprising in 1900, he was acting commissioner at Ichang. Appointed Deputy Commissioner at Foochow in 1901, and at Canton two years later. Tn 1904 he opened a new Customs House at Kongmoon, serving as commissioner there until 1906. Then he was appointed Commissioner to the town of Tengyueh which was the site of a British consulate close to the frontier with Burma, serving until 1908. On 3 June 1909 the Chinese government awarded him with the Order of the Double Dragon, Third Class. The significant rate of Maze's ascension within the customs service did not go without comment however, especially given his familial ties (Hart's successor as acting Inspector-General in 1909, Sir Robert Bredon, was also Maze's mother's and Hart's brother-in-law). Times Peking correspondent G. E. Morrison in particular made no secret of his abhorrence for the "half-witted" Maze and the nepotism he saw working against more experienced candidates within the service, and at one point noted the lack of promotion for his friend, ornithologist and Customs Deputy Commissioner John La Touche, "who, 35 years in China with world wide reputation, is still Deputy Commissioner under a nonentity named Maze who has been 21 years in China, for 10 of which he has been full commissioner. Such is justice!".
...
Wikipedia