Jehangir Hormusjee Ruttonjee - Biography

Biography

Ruttonjee was born in 1880 in Bombay to Hormusjee Ruttonjee and Dina Ruttonjee and came to Hong Kong in 1892 to join his father and business man. Ruttonjee studied at St. Joseph's College, Hong Kong on Hong Kong Island and joined his father's business after graduation. He founded a brewery in 1913 and sold it to San Miguel and opened another in 1948 in Sham Tseng. Ruttonjee lived just along the Castle Peak Road from Homi Villa, which he owned, and is now the Airport Core Programme Exhibition Centre.

Ruttonjee donated a great deal of money to build Ruttonjee Sanatorium, now Ruttonjee Hospital, to fight against tuberculosis.

His concerns about an epidemic of tuberculosis in the 1940s, during the Japanese occupation, which claimed the life of his daughter in 1943, led him to found the Hong Kong Anti-Tuberculosis Association (now the Hong Kong Tuberculosis, Chest and Heart Diseases Association) in 1948.

Ruttonjee died in 1960 in Hong Kong. His son, Dhun Jehangir Ruttonjee, who also carried on his philanthropic work, was a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong in the 1960s.

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