Patricia O’Sullivan - Blacksmith Books

Patricia O’Sullivan is a writer and researcher on the lesser-known aspects of Hong Kong’s history prior to 1941. Stumbling upon an article concerning the death of her great-uncle in 1918 when he was an inspector in the Hong Kong Police, she quickly became immersed in the social history of colonial Hong Kong. Her research led to her first book, Policing Hong Kong: An Irish History.

As a specialist recorder teacher, in a career spanning three decades and more, she has had the joy both of introducing thousands of children to music and developing the skills and musicianship of senior students to diploma level and beyond. Now she has scaled down this side of her life to give more time to writing – and to spend more time in Hong Kong doing the research.

Her latest book is about some of the criminal women of early 20th-century Hong Kong: smugglers, arsonists, murderers and one ‘neighbour from hell’. Patricia’s website is at www.socialhistoryhk.com.

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Women, Crime and the Courts: Hong Kong 1841-1941

HK$148.00
USD: US$18.95
CNY: CN¥137.20
GBP: £14.84
EUR: €17.44
AUD: AU$28.48
CAD: CA$25.85
JPY: ¥2,977
Kwan Lai-chun was sick of being made to feel second-class by her husband’s concubine; sick of her mother-in-law’s endless carping about the money she spent; sick of the whole family. Late one sticky, humid night, something snapped in her – and she grabbed the meat chopper. Within minutes, three people were dead: the concubine with over 70 gashes, many of them to the bone.

Kwan was found guilty and became the second and last woman in Hong Kong to suffer the death penalty. But behind her story, and those of the city’s other female murderers, lie complex webs of relationships and jealousies, poverty and despair.

Taking the first 100 years of Hong Kong’s colonial history, this book unravels the lives of women – Chinese and Westerners alike – who found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Hong Kong’s female prison population was a tiny fraction of that in Britain or America, but there are still plenty of tales from its women kidnappers, smugglers, bomb-makers, thieves and cruel mistresses.

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Introduction

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Policing Hong Kong – An Irish History

HK$158.00
USD: US$20.23
CNY: CN¥146.47
GBP: £15.84
EUR: €18.62
AUD: AU$30.40
CAD: CA$27.59
JPY: ¥3,178
Part of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Studies Series

Hong Kong, 1918. A tranquil place compared to war-torn Europe. But on the morning of the 22nd January, a running battle through the streets of Wanchai ended in “The Siege of Gresson Street”. Five policemen lay dead, so shocking Hong Kong that over half the population turned out to watch their funeral procession.

One of the dead, Inspector Mortimor O’Sullivan, came from Newmarket: a small town nestled deep in rural Ireland. He, along with a dozen and more relatives, had sailed out to Hong Kong to join the Police Force.

Using family records and memories alongside extensive research in Hong Kong, Ireland and London, Patricia O’Sullivan tells the story of these policemen and the criminals they dealt with. This book also gives a rare glimpse into the day-to-day life of working-class Europeans at the time, as it follows the Newmarket men, their wives and families, from their first arrival in 1864 through to 1941 and beyond.

“This groundbreaking book is a story of life, death, and crime in colonial Hong Kong. It is also an account of an important part of Hong Kong’s population that has eluded most historians: the European working class. With an arsenal of previously untapped materials in Ireland, Britain and Hong Kong, Patricia O’Sullivan tells the remarkable tales of the families who built their own ‘little Ireland’ in Hong Kong.” – John M. Carroll, Dept. of History, University of Hong Kong

Look inside this book
Click on the following link to read pages from Policing Hong Kong – An Irish History. You will need a pdf reader to view this excerpt.

Introduction

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Women, Crime and the Courts: Hong Kong 1841-1941

Policing Hong Kong – An Irish History

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