April 21, 2011 - London
HONOURS AND AWARDS BESTOWED UPON SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM MAZE, INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF CHINESE MARITIME CUSTOMS
Sir Frederick Maze (© National Portrait Gallery, London)
Sir Frederick William Maze, K.C.M.G., K.B.E., was born in Belfast in July 1871, the younger son of James Maze, a linen merchant, and Mary, the daughter of Henry Hart of Lisburn, and was educated at Wesley College, Dublin. In 1891 he followed his uncle, Sir Robert Hart, into the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, and in 1899 was appointed as acting audit secretary at the Inspectorate-General in Peking. During the Boxer uprising in 1900 he was serving as acting Commissioner at Ichang. Appointed Deputy Commissioner at Foochow in 1901, and at Canton two years later, in 1904 he opened a new Customs House at Kongmoon, West River. Subsequently, he served as Commissioner in Tengyueh, Canton, Tientsin, Hankow, and Shanghai. His period in the Customs service was a time of great political upheaval in China, and he witnessed the fall of the Ch’ing dynasty in 1911; the breakdown of the republic; the attempts of the Nationalist Party to unite the country; and the splitting away of the Communists and the invasions by Japan in the 1930s. In 1928 he was appointed by the Chinese Government Deputy-Inspector General of Customs; the following year he was promoted to the job of Inspector General of Chinese Maritime Customs. Created a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1932, he was appointed Counsellor to accompany Dr. Kung, the Envoy Extraordinary, to the Coronation of King George VI in 1937. Following the outbreak of the Second World War the situation in China became very difficult, and Maze was one of approximately 200 Britons and Americans held captive at the ‘Bridgehouse’ in Shanghai following the attack on Pearl Harbor. On his release in 1942 he was repatriated to Portuguese East Africa, but returned to China in an effort to help his staff still imprisoned there. He retired in 1943, and was created a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in recognition of his services. Upon retirement Sir Frederick Maze emigrated, first to Cape Town, before moving to Victoria, British Colombia, in 1948, where he died in March 1959. Page 65