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“You Are From Canton, Why Should I Give You Money?” – What Old Bailey Records Tell Us About Britain’s Early Chinese Communities

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London's Chinatown, April 1911:  Topical Press Agency/Getty Images ( https://flashbak.com/wonderful-pictures-londons-old-chinatown-limehouse-59348/ ) When eight men arrived at the lodgings of Wang Noo and her husband Tuck Quy, one Sunday in 1855, the mood was tense. Quy claimed one of the men, Apoi, asked him for £200 to return to China. Quy said he could offer them £10 or £20, and no more. Wang Noo, according to her own testimony, was less equivocal. “You are natives of Canton, and I am of Nankin”, she said, “why should I give you any money?” The men produced knives and set upon Quy and Noo, severely wounding both. In August 1855, the case came to trial. Four assailants were found guilty, and each sentenced to four years of penal servitude. When cross examined, Noo said she knew the men, but had not “been eating or drinking with them” because “they were persons of an inferior province”. A Perceived “Transnational Community” The case both supports and refutes some of the long-stand...
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Who Put Bella Down the Wych Elm? The Wartime Mystery that Still Puzzles the English West Midlands

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Graffiti on the Hagley Obelisk, with a different spelling and word choice to the original. Image by David Buttery, via Wikimedia, public domain. Thomas Willets was not feeling good. What should have been a pleasant day spent with friends, hunting for birds’ eggs in the tangle of trees around Hagley Wood had taken a sinister turn. Shaken by what they had seen, Willets and his friends Robert Hart, Ben Farmer, and Fred Payne headed for home, making a solemn pact to tell no one about their adventures that day. They’d been trespassing on the grounds of Hagley Hall, and breathing a word of any of this would mean trouble – big trouble. But as the night wore on, the secret weighed heavily on young Thomas. Unable to keep his peace any longer, the young lad approached his parents. In the hollow of an old elm tree on the Hagley Estate, a sheepish Thomas Willets told his father that evening, he and his friends had found a human skull. Europe was no stranger to death and destruction in April 1943....
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