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Historique
The Harland family were based in Scarborough, North Yorkshire.
Dr. William Harland (1786?-1866) trained at Edinburgh before practising in Scarborough; he was three times Mayor of the town, a friend of the engineer George Stephenson and the designer of a steam-powered car.
His son Dr. William Aurelius Harland (1822-1858) likewise trained at Edinburgh; as a consequence of an unwise marriage to a servant girl (see MS. 7682/22-23), he left England for Hong Kong in 1846. Here he became resident surgeon of the Victoria Seamen's Hospital and studied natural history, mineralogy and Chinese medical jurisprudence, publishing extensively in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He died of a fever in 1858, shortly before he was due to publish a study of the natural history of Hong Kong.
Another son of Dr. William Harland, Edward Harland (1831-1895) (whom the letters mention in passing), was joint founder of the Harland and Wolff ship-building firm.
"On William Aurelius Harland, collector of Hong Kong plants" by James R. Troyer, in Archives of natural history (Vol. 24, pt. 1 (Feb. 1997), pp.149-152), gives further information but gives his birth-date as 1818/19 on the basis of an error in the age given on his tombstone.