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Part of this, at a later date, was due to the influence of the popular novelist Sax Rohmer who invented the sinister but suave Dr. Fu Manchu, perennially at war with the tight-lipped, establishment Nayland Smith (Ian Fleming's Dr. No revives this stale mythology).2 The British public came to believe, as a result of press reports, that the insidious Doctor had become incarnate in the person of 'Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurateur and 'dope-king', whose premises were located in Gerrard Street, London, opposite the Forty Three Club, Mrs. Kate Meyrick's notorious night-club.27 Chang was a member, and supplied the club's rich clientele with narcotics, especially cocaine, until April 1924, when he was sentenced to fourteen months imprisonment, followed by deportation.28 Although the great majority of Britain's Chinese population were hard-working, intent on bettering their lot by economic enterprise, a constant process of stereotyping caricatured Chinese as inscrutable and complex, unknowable and different, sly and dangerous, separated by a vast cultural chasm from Englishmen. This, I believe, is suggested by Marshall Hall's comments in the Lock Ah Tam case and, as we shall see, by Sir Travers Humphreys' animadversions on Miao Chung-yi, whose case will now be examined.
Dr. Miao Chun-yi: a murder for profit?
Miss Siu Wai-sheung married Miao Chung-yi, a doctor of law or jurisprudence, in New York on May 12, 1928.20 Born in 1899, she was the eldest daughter of Siu Ying-chau, a rich Macau merchant with business interests also in Hong Kong. Her mother was Siu's primary wife (tsai), but there were other children born to Siu's concubines (tsip). As a girl she was clever and able, and when her mother died in 1910 she helped run her father's household. She was educated at St. Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong, which she left in 1917 to further her education at Emerson College, Boston, U.S.A., and graduated in 1922. Then she returned home. In 1924 her father died. She was named sole executrice in his will; he left over a million dollars — an unusual event in those days when unmarried Chinese women had few, if any, testamentary rights. Moreover, she inherited much of his wealth, although she had a younger brother, and several half-brothers and half-sisters. Soon after
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Part of this, at a later date, was due to the influence of the popular novelist Sax Rohmer who invented the sinister but suave Dr. Fu Manchu, perennially at war with the tight-lipped, establish- ment Nayland Smith (Ian Fleming's Dr. No revives this stale mythology).2 The British public came to believe, as a result of press reports, that the insidious Doctor had become incarnate in the person of 'Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurateur and 'dope-king', whose premises were located in Gerrard Street, London, opposite the Forty Three Club, Mrs. Kate Meyrick's notorious night-club.27 Chang was a member, and supplied the club's rich clientele with narcotics, especially cocaine, until April 1924, when he was sentenced to fourteen months imprisonment, followed by deportation.28 Although the great majority of Britain's Chinese population were hard-working, intent on bettering their lot by economic enterprise, a constant process of stereotyping caricatured Chinese as inscrutable and complex, unknowable and different, sly and dangerous, separated by a vast cultural chasm from Englishmen. This, I believe, is suggested by Marshall Hall's comments in the Lock Ah Tam case and, as we shall see, by Sir Travers Humphreys' animad- versions on Miao Chung-yi, whose case will now be examined.
Dr. Miao Chun-yi: a murder for profit?
Miss Siu Wai-sheung married Miao Chung-yi, a doctor of law or jurisprudence, in New York on May 12, 1928.20 Bom in 1899, she was the eldest daughter of Siu Ying-chau, a rich Macau merchant with business interests also in Hong Kong. Her mother was Siu's primary wife (tsai), but there were other children born to Siu's concubines (tsip). As a girl she was clever and able, and when her mother died in 1910 she helped run her father's household. She was educated at St. Stephen's Girls' College, Hong Kong, which she left in 1917 to further her education at Emerson College, Boston, U.S.A., and graduated in 1922. Then she returned home. In 1924 her father died. She was named sole executrice in his will he left over a million dollars an unusual event in those days when unmarried Chinese women had few, if any, testamentary rights. Moreover, she inherited much of his wealth, although she had a younger brother, and several half-brothers and half-sisters. Soon after
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