[
    {
        "id": 209494,
        "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": 151,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "129\n\nfor dinner and Miao dined alone. A Miss Crossley, the owner of the Borrowdale Gates Private Hotel, where they stayed, told Miao that a bus from Keswick was due at 9 p.m., and offered to meet it for him, since he claimed he had a cold and had been told by his wife to stay indoors. Miao told Miss Crossley his wife would not come by bus but by hired car, since she disliked buses. At 10:30 p.m. he asked the hotel maid whether he should inform the local police that his wife had not returned from her shopping expedition to Keswick. Apparently, he did not do so: he went to bed.\n\nAlready her body had been found. At 7:30 p.m. a farmer had seen her lying in a lakeland wood, apparently asleep. She was on her back, her legs apart, an open umbrella shading her head. The farmer mentioned what he had seen to a detective-constable on leave, who, his suspicions aroused, went back to the spot and found Mrs. Miao dead. She had been strangled by three cords wound tightly around her neck. Her skirt was above her thighs, and her knickers torn. It was later argued that the murderer had attempted to simulate a rape or sexual assault. In fact, there was no medical evidence of any form of sexual violence.\n\nIt is not easy for a murderer to rape a woman unless the inspiration for his crime is sexual. A husband, who hates his wife enough to murder her, is not likely to achieve sufficient tumescence prior to, or just after, his crime. It was also not likely that a wandering necrophiliac, a Cumberland shepherd, let us say, had stumbled upon the corpse and violated it.32 One must assume the body was so arranged as to suggest sexual assault. If that were so, what was the motive?\n\nAt 11 p.m. Inspector Graham of the local police, informed of what the vacationing Southport detective had found, went to the hotel and discovered Miao in bed. He cautioned Miao, then arrested him. It is alleged that Miao asked the curious question: 'Had she knickers on?' Later, he claimed what he really said was 'Had she necklace on?' (There was no translator present at the trial, for Miao was inordinately proud of his legal knowledge and voluble half-command of English, although his ungrammatical discourse at times presented problems both for",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209498,
        "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": 155,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "133\n\nstrangled by three pieces of string or cord. Travers Humphreys asserts: 'The method is peculiarly Oriental, and indicated that she had been sitting on the ground when someone, with the string held in both hands, had suddenly drawn it tightly round her throat and knotted it behind'.42 Strangulation by this method — a ligature — is not, surely, 'peculiarly Oriental'? It was adopted, for example, by the murderer in the celebrated Yarmouth case of 1900, where the victim was strangled by a mohair bootlace.4 Another source of perplexity, to repeat, was language: people who do not speak your language are apt to be regarded as dense or odd. Miao often declared he had been misunderstood. Thus at first he believed his wife's body had been found by Miss Crossley, and he is alleged to have asked 'Did she go to the place where they bathe?' (indicating that he knew where she had been murdered). Later, Miao's counsel urged that what he really said was, 'Had she gone to look for his wife at the place where people take the bus'.\n\nThe three pieces of paper, with the cabbalistic or arcane questions on them, also worried Travers Humphreys. One of the statements made by Miao, he relates, 'to the Appeal Court was that he was in the habit of asking God which of two or more courses he should take, when he would put the alternatives on separate pieces of paper, would then pray for guidance and decide by drawing a lot. Does not that statement indicate a confusion of mind sufficient to account for almost any action?'44 But the art of divination — the drawing of lots — has a long history in China; so, too, has fortune-telling, once a normal custom when a marriage was projected between families. The mysterious I Ching has also been widely used by Chinese for centuries as a means of grasping the future. One should also refer to a widely-held belief in the efficacy of feng-shui, certainly in the 1920s. The rational Travers Humphreys, in the quotation given above, was suggesting, of course, that Miao was suffering from religious mania or acute superstition; but, if so, why should this provide a motive for the crime unless he believed his wife was the Antichrist?\n\nOn balance, it seems obvious that Miao's crime was a murder for profit. He had little money in his possession when he married; the planned two-months vacation appears to have been financed",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    }
]