[
    {
        "id": 209484,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 141,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "119\n\nit should be remembered, travellers to England needed no passport or travel document, so that Lock had no problems about residence or work. Liverpool, as a great port, had a long-established Chinese colony — a small 'China-town' as it would now be termed — so one infers the young Lock did not feel too cut off from his homeland.\n\nBecause of his maritime experience, he became the European representative of the Chinese Seamen's Mutual Benefit Society, formed in 1914 among Chinese seamen on ocean-going vessels.* This society was registered in Hong Kong under the name of the 'Seamen's Philanthropic Society'. It was more than a mutual-aid society; it had political aims. Lock was also a member of the T'ung-meng-hui (Sworn League), the secret revolutionary party organised by Sun Yat-sen and others in 1905, which later became the Kuo-min-tang. Sun used seamen as couriers in his revolutionary activities and, it is claimed, Lock worked for Sun as a secret service agent in England. Lock also founded the Chinese Republic Progress Club (a significant designation) in Liverpool in 1918 and became the leading figure in the Liverpool Chinese community. At his trial it became known he had convened a secret court to punish a Chinese for beating his English wife (but we do not know what punishment, if any, was meted out to the callous husband). Lock was thus highly respected in both the English and Chinese communities and was a spokesman for his compatriots. He became that well-known figure: a Chinese community leader. He was also a British subject: a naturalised Englishman.\n\nEdward Marjoribanks affirms that ‘... he was not the sinister \"King of Chinatown\" of detective romance; a kindly, gentle person, he distributed much in charity and hospitality, giving Christmas treats to the poor children of Birkenhead and Liverpool, and renting a shoot where he entertained his English friends'.5 All his affairs prospered until 1923 when he launched out on a large commercial undertaking and lost most of his investment. As a consequence, he was forced to file his own petition in bankruptcy, although he continued to live with his wife and children in some style. Friends said that after these events he became moody and his behaviour erratic, flying into sudden rages and weeping uncontrollably. He also began to drink heavily,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209486,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 143,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "121\n\nemotional man, he was the darling of the public but less popular with Judges and members of the English Bar.\n\nIt was not easy, given the facts outlined above, for Marshall Hall to establish a sound defence, one that would save the unfortunate man from the gallows. The three murders — that of his Welsh wife (born Catherine Morgan) and of his two daughters, Doris (20) and Cecilia (18) — appeared to be unmotivated. Since Marshall Hall could not understand why Lock went berserk, he concluded he must have been insane when he committed the crimes. In 1925 a plea of insanity had to satisfy the M'Naghten Rules. These rules declared:\n\n'to establish a defence on the ground of insanity it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong'.8\n\nBut when Lock phoned the Liverpool police and reported the murders, it was clear he knew what he had done and that it was wrong, and that he expected to be punished.\n\nIf the case were tried today, it seems likely his counsel would plead 'diminished responsibility'.10 In 1925, needless to say, such a plea was not available to the defence, so Marshall Hall fell back on a rather dubious argument, supported by questionable medical and psychiatric evidence, that Lock acted as he did in a state of 'unconscious automatism', brought on by an epileptic fit.11\n\nIn 1918 some drunken Russian sailors had attempted to enter the Chinese Republic Progress Club, run by Lock; a fight had broken out when he attempted to eject them and he had been stunned by a billiard cue. Witnesses for the defence averred that his behaviour started to change afterwards, that he began to drink heavily at times, but more so when, in 1923, he lost much of his fortune — £10,000 — in an unsuccessful shipping venture. As Marshall Hall argued: \"Some minute happening in the brain caused a change for which none of us can account, turned a man — a mild, lovable, peaceable man — into a raving madman. Absolutely and entirely motiveless, he killed those",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    }
]