Solicitor Advocate - Arbitrator - IP Lawyer - Author
If you were a British male under 60 living in Shanghai who made over 50 pounds per year, you were required to perform jury service. There were very few exemptions. Officially even Municipal Councillors had to attend. The small size of the British community living in Shanghai meant that members of the community could be quite often called out to sit a jury members on civil and criminal cases. A number of residents served multiple times.
Read MoreInfidelity and Murder - the Carew case in Yokohama had both and more - a mysterious former lover; a falsely accused maid; disappearing evidence; and the highest British official in Japan giving evidence against her.
Read MoreThe French Club, or Cercle Sportif, was the centre of social life in old Shanghai. In this video from 1928 we get to see some rare footage of guests at play at the club. Most exciting for me is that it appears that from 0.30 to 1.12 we get 42 seconds of the life of the then Crown Advocate and later Judge of the British Supreme Court at play with his wife Linda Maud and two friends.
Read MoreOn a very cold winter's night on 1 December 1935, Sergeant Ernest Peters and Probationary Sergeant Ernest Peter were alleged to have thrown a Chinese beggar, Mau Te-Piau, into a freezing river in Shanghai. Peters and Judd admitted that Mau had been in their care - they had picked him up in a police car intending to "deport" him to Chinese territory. They claimed they had placed him on a "beggar boat" that was "about 20 foot long, dilapidated, cloth covered in the centre.” Mau had however been fished out of the river soon after, fighting for his life. He died a few days later in hospital.
Read MorePart of writing history is to try to track down those small reminders that remain of the people who made that history. Scattered around the world are the graves of many of the judges of the British and American courts in China and Japan and the lawyers and parties who appeared before them. As described in Gunboat Justice, the best preserved graves are in the Yokohama and Kobe foreigners' cemetery - all the graves in China have disappeared. All of the American judges made it home. 5 out the 7 gentlemen who served as judges of the United States Court for China can be find on findagrave.com.
Read MoreI visited the British Naval Museum in Portsmouth earlier this year. Well worth a visit. While it may be Chinese hyperbole to describe the century following the first Opium War as the "Century of Humiliation", the British are at their best when it comes to understatement. Philip Newton aboard the HEICS* Nemesis (a nice touch of irony) won the 1st China War Medal.
Read MoreAs war between America and Britain and Japan loomed ever and ever closer in 1941, the Japanese upped their propaganda. In this cartoon, they created a history of extraterritoriality based on evil opium pushing foreigners sucking the blood out of the Chinese heart. It could be used today by the Chinese government save that there is no mention of the Japanese and their imposition of extraterritoriality on China and their eventual occupation of the Eastern seaboard of China. Certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black if there is one!
Read MoreIs a detective seeing you in a hotel room with your darling in
For most judges in the British and American courts in Shanghai it was, particularly if the divorce was uncontested. They played along with a game that even indirect evidence of adultery would be sufficient to grant a divorce.
Read MoreThe foreign courts in China did not just sit in Shanghai. Here is an article about the US Court for China heading out on a northern circuit taking a "contingent of Shanghai attorneys" with it. First stop Tianjin, then Dalian by steamer, Changchun by train and finally Harbin.
Read MoreWhat does a murderess do when she gets out of prison? Edith Carew spent 14 years in prison for poisoning her husband Walter in Yokohama. On her release from HM Prison Aylesbury, she moved to a small village in Wales, Cwm yr Eglwys, with one of her daughters. She called her new home "Penfeidr" or, "end of the road" in Welsh. It was, indeed, the end of the road for her. She stayed in the village for the rest of her life.
Read MoreCurrently practicing as a barrister in Hong Kong.
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