[
    {
        "id": 209497,
        "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": 154,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "132 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nLondon, on November 19-20, 1928. Miao's counsel (J. C. Jackson) withdrew from the case when Miao insisted on addressing the Court himself, but was allowed, should any question of law arise, to make a statement later as amicus curiae. Miao argued his case before the Court for over four hours and called three new witnesses who deposed that other Orientals had been seen near the scene of the crime on the day it took place. The Court, remarking that special indulgence had been shown to the applicant as he was a foreigner, dismissed the appeal. Dr. Miao Chung-yi was hanged at Manchester's Strangeways Gaol on December 6, 1928. Ironically, on that day his wife's body was shipped back to Hong Kong for re-burial in the Chinese Christian Cemetery, Hong Kong. No one has seriously disputed that Miao killed his wife, but the reason why he did so has baffled Sir Travers Humphreys and a number of other commentators. \n\nSir Travers Humphreys (1867-1956) was a product of late Victorian England, the era of British Imperialism. He was sixty-one when he presided over Miao's trial and eighty-six when he wrote an account in A Book of Trials (1953), a volume of legal reminiscence. Miao's story is to be found therein under the somewhat dramatic heading \"The Chinese Murder\". Travers Humphreys declares that \"The interesting feature of Miao's case is, perhaps, the fact that, in the absence of any direct proof against him, the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming, while the suggested motive for the crime, though proved to some extent, seemed to many people absolutely inadequate\". He comments, later on, that the trial was \"quite the most puzzling I have ever come across, on the question, why did he do it?\" and concludes, \"I am satisfied that Miao murdered his wife and was rightly hanged, but I was and still am unable to answer to my own satisfaction the question, 'Why did he do it?'\" \n\n37 \n\nIt seems that Travers Humphreys' perplexity owed much to the fact that the accused was a Chinese, whose mind therefore must be extraordinarily difficult to fathom. (Even a noted sinologist like Dyer Ball had argued that Chinese do everything in reverse, or eccentrically, compared with Europeans). This is further suggested by the quatrain containing the line \"The Heathen Chinese is peculiar\", which heads Travers Humphreys' chapter on the trial. Mrs. Miao, as we already know, was",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209502,
        "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": 159,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "What these crude figures estimates 137 suggest is that They are less Chinese are a familiar sight in most British cities. exotic, less strange; as a group, more acculturated, more Westernised. They also symbolise the regeneration of a great nation, reinvigorated China, one of the world's great powers. Chinese behaviour is no longer obscurely difficult to interpret; its motivation understandable.\n\nConclusions 51 The two cases discussed above have, one would think, intrinsic interest for criminologists and criminal lawyers: each is curious, fascinating. When capital punishment was a legal penalty, a verdict of guilt resulted in a mandatory death sentence in most cases (although only some of those convicted finally met the hangman). The last executions in Britain took place on August 13, 1964, when Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen were hanged, the one at Manchester's Strangeways Gaol, the other at Liverpool's Walton Prison (both were convicted of the same crime).52 In Hong Kong, the last to hang suffered at Stanley Prison on November 16, 1966. Since that date it has become customary in Hong Kong to commute a death sentence into imprisonment for life, despite the fact that the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, 1965, has not become law in the Colony. Because murder trials have become less final, less gladiatorial, largely as a result of the amelioration of punishment, public interest in such events appears to have waned (noticeably in Britain),53\n\nThe great era of domestic murder, as public dramaturgy, is over, overwhelmed by other forms of violence, horror, brutality, of which the media provides daily a surfeit for the public.\n\nThis article focuses mostly on problems of cultural understanding and misunderstanding. A younger generation of Englishmen is less likely to be as puzzled by Chinese murder as were Marshall Hall and Travers Humphreys. The change has come about from a number of factors demographic (more Chinese in Britain, many of superior education), cultural (a better understanding of Chinese culture and society, at least among the educated or sophisticated), and political (the vastly improved",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    }
]