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Montgomery, John Collection

John Montgomery (1900-1974), who was generally known as Jack, and also as Monte, was born in Manchester, England, on 26 October 1900. After war service with the King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) between 1918 and 1920, he joined the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) in 1924. John Montgomery married Phyllis Amy Harrop in 1929 in Manchester. The couple divorced in 1933. Montgomery resigned from the police force on 22 May 1938 and returned to England. Phyllis Harrop (1904-1994) remained in China, later moving to Hong Kong where she worked as a social worker, and in 1943, having escaped from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, published the book ‘Hong Kong Incident’. The John Montgomery Collection includes many images of the Battle of Shanghai in 1937. The images in JM04 are from a volume of two hundred photographs entitled ‘The Sino-Japanese Hostilities 1937, Shanghai’, published and sold by Ah Fong, 819 Nanking Road, Shanghai. Most of these photographs were taken between August and November 1937, and are attributed to two photographers identified only as "S.S." and S.C.S. By way of warning: some of the images in the John Montgomery Collection are potentially distressing, depicting victims of warfare or violence. Items once owned by John Montgomery, including his photograph albums, are held in Special Collections, University of Bristol Library, ref DM2836. HPC refs: JM-n, JM-s, JM01, JM02, JM03, JM04.