Jury duty in British Shanghai

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. 

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A Crown Advocate at Play?

The 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.  

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Scene of the Crime I - The beggar in the River

On 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.

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