Stirling: The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum
Benjamin Hobson, Treatise on Midwifery (Shanghai, 1857). Collection of the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum. Image reproduced from East Asian Collections in Scottish Museums (2020), p.122.
Chinese objects donated by Mr J. Kirkwood, a businessman based in Stirling, include paintings on pith paper depicting the process of buying and smoking opium; eight vessels made with coconut shell and pewter; coin swords; and swords with scabbards. The collection also hosts a hanging scroll by the Qing landscape painter Qian Du 錢杜 (1844-1912), some newspapers of the 1860s and 1870s, and a print of the Ten Commandments in Chinese.
With one of the larger collections of Chinese objects in Central Scotland, Tayside and Fife, the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum houses a tiger suit, worn for battle by Han soldiers at the Third Battle of Taku Forts (1860) during the Second Opium War (1856-60). Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Beath (1867-1947), who donated the suit, took part in the Third Battle of the Taku Forts as a surgeon, as well as a banner with the Chinese words 中炮台 (Central Barbette), also taken from the Battle of Taku Forts. He also donated several musical instruments and three books of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) to the museum, including Official Civil and Military List (Daqing jinshen quanshu 大清搢紳全書), vol. 3 , Treatise on Midwifery (Fuying xinshuo 婦嬰新說), and Treatise on Internal Medicine (Neike xinshuo 內科新說) by the British missionary Benjamin Hobson (1816-1873).
