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Chinatown Reversed: The Shanghai International Settlement

 

Almost every city on earth has a Chinatown: London. Melbourne. Sydney. San Francisco. New York. Los Angeles. Chicago. Some place where people of Asian, but mostly Chinese background, go to get a taste of their own culture, food, customs and homeland.

But have you ever considered that halfway around the world, in the very heart of Asia, there was once a similar place for Westerners? Not a colony set up by a European power, but an area of land, a part of a city, that was once home to thousands of Europeans and Americans, who could live there in their own slice of home in the middle of the Far East?

From 1843 to 1943, such a place existed. And this is its story.

The End of the Opium War

From 1839 until 1842, China was embroiled in warfare. The First Opium War. Fought primarily between the British Empire and the last of the Chinese Imperial Dynasties, the Qing Dynasty, the Opium War got its name because of the British import of the opium drug into Imperial China. In the 1800s, opium was used in a number of medications (such as the painkiller, laudanum). But it was also highly addictive. The Qing Government had outlawed the use and presence of opium in China and the British importing this drug into China was in direct conflict with Chinese laws. On top of this, trade between the Chinese and British Empires was highly restricted, something that the British wanted to change.

With the ending of the Opium War in 1842, the British and the Chinese signed the Treaty of Nanking. One of the principal issues in the treaty was that of foreign relations, specifically, foreign trade. Under the terms of the Treaty, the Chinese had to open up various cities to Western trade. These ‘treaty ports’ as they were called, lined the Chinese coast. The most famous one was the ancient walled city of Shanghai.

Shanghai liteerally translates as “On the Waterfront” in English. And because of its access to the enormous Huangpu River, it was a city perfectly situated to do trade with the West. But for trade with the West to be successful, the British had to make sure that their business-interests were handled properly in China. To deal with this concern, the British struck a deal with the Chinese to concede land outside of the city walls, immediately north of Old Shanghai, to establish a trading-post.

The Birth of the Shanghai International Settlement

Established in 1843, the Shanghai International Settlement grew rapidly. It started with the British Concession in 1843, followed by the American Concession in 1844, then the French Concession in 1848. In 1863, the American and British Concessions officially joined together, creating the Shanghai International Settlement.

Within the boundaries of the Settlement and the French Concession (which expanded over the next one hundred years), could be found a slice of America and Europe, within the center of Asia. There was a mixture of Western and Eastern architectual styles. There was a British-style police-force (the Shanghai Municipal Police) established in 1854, there was even a separate governing-body for the Settlement, the Shanghai Municipal Council. Despite the Second Opium War of the 1850s, the fall of the Qing Dynasty in the 1910s and the rise of the Republic of China, the Shanghai International Settlement remained. Westerners flocked to Shanghai to get a taste of the Orient from the comfort of their own little slice of home.

The Nature of the Settlement

One thing that you have to understand about the Shanghai International Settlement is that it was not, in any way, at any time in its history, ever a colony. It was not land claimed in China in the name of, and for the use by a foreign power. The land on which the Settlement was situated, outside (and later on, within) the growing city of Shanghai, belonged to the Chinese Government. It was conceded to the foreign powers for use as a trading-post, and was not considered foreign soil, similar to the land on which foreign embassies and consulates are built. Regardless of this, the Shanghai International Settlement existed and operated as an entity that was almost completely separate from Chinese Shanghai. In fact, it was said that to drive through all of Shanghai, you actually required three drivers’ licenses! One for the French Concession, one for the International Settlement and one for Chinese Shanghai.

The Settlement Begins to Grow

As the map below clearly shows, the Shanghai International Settlement grew rapidly during its existence, taking up both sides of Suzhou Creek and the north bank of the Huangpu River in central Shanghai.

The map shows the growth of the Settlement from 1846 to 1943. The grey area is the French Concession. The circular white area next to it is Old Shanghai. Immediately north of the French Concession is the British Concession, which expanded westwards and northwards to the south bank of the Suzhou Creek (the wiggly line between the medium brown and yellow parts of the map). North of the creek (and expanding eastwards) is the American Concession. As time went by, other countries staked their claims in the larger American Concession which was subdivided into German, Italian, Russian and Japanese sectors.

Life in the Settlement

The Shanghai International Settlement was famous for many things. One of them was the standard of living. Especially in the French Concession, you could find lavish homes owned by wealthy socialites and businessmen. The Settlement was famous for its hotels (some of which still stand today), its nightclubs, it’s casinos and department stores. The Settlement even had its own racetrack, sporting-centers, several public parks and gardens and two shooting-ranges (one in the British Concession, and other in the French Concession). Tourism was big business in Shanghai. Getting around the Settlement could be done through automobile, buses, rickshaws or by using the local streetcar system (established in 1908).

Shopping in the International Settlement was big. Nanking Road and Bubbling Well Road (today, East and West Nanjing Roads, respectively) were lined with restaurants, department stores and hotels. They were also serviced by their own streetcar line, which made moving up and down what was (and still is) Shanghai’s main shopping boulevard, very easy.


The flag of the Shanghai International Settlement

Law-enforcement in the Settlement was provided, not by the Chinese Shanghai Police, but rather by the Settlement’s own force, the aforementioned Shanghai Municipal Police. Modelled after the Metropolitan Police Service (“Scotland Yard”) in London, the force was established in 1854. Chinese officers were admitted to the ranks of the SMP starting in 1864. Together with the police, the Settlement had its own military force, made up of soldiers from the various armies and military-organisations of the countries represented within the Settlement. The SMP had a total of fourteen stations scattered throughout the Settlement. It’s headquarters was located on Foochow Road (Fuzhou Road today).

The Shanghai Nightlife

In the Roaring Twenties and the 1930s, the International Settlement gained a reputation for its vibrant nightlife. Hotel ballrooms, dance-halls and other places of entertainment were packed on a regular basis. Nightclubs such as Ciro’s, the Paramount, Casanova’s and the Canidrome Ballroom were popular nightspots where people could go and listen to American, British and European jazz-bands.

Constructed between 1931-1933, the Paramount is one of Shanghai’s most famous nightspots. This three-storey art-deco nightclub was lucky to survive bombardment during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Second World War and the Chinese Civil War. It was abandonded during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, but was restored to its art deco charm in the 2000s and remains operational to this day.

Along with nightclubs and hotel ballrooms, Shanghai also had the Canidrome. It housed not only the famous Canidrome Ballroom, but also a greyhound racing-track (the name ‘canidrome’ comes from ‘canine’ – dog, and ‘drome’ – racetrack). There was also the Great World Entertainment Center located in the French Concession, a popular late-night hangout. Great World still stands today, but the Canidrome (constructed in 1928) was demolished in 2005.

The Bund

The Bund is the main waterfront road that runs along the east border of the former British Concession of the International Settlement. It’s famous for its row of iconic colonial-era buildings, which included banks, hotels, clubhouses and office-buildings. The Shanghai Club, the Cathay Hotel, the Palace Hotel, the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (“HSBC”) and the offices of the North-China Daily News (one of the Settlement’s several English-language newspapers) were all located here and the buildings still stand to this day.

Above is a photo of the Bund in 1929. The building on the extreme right (with the pyramidal roof) is the Cathay Hotel. Directly to its left is the Palace Hotel (between them runs Nanking Road; East Nanjing Road today). Two doors down is the North-China Daily News Building. A little further along is the Customs House (with the clocktower) and the HSBC Building (with the dome). The Bund and its buildings are one of modern Shanghai’s biggest tourist attractions.

The Second Sino-Japanese War

Shanghai played a very interesting role in the Second Sino-Japanese War. And it’s difficult to understand how this all works out if you don’t factor in the existence of the International Settlement.

In July of 1937, China and Japan went to war.

No they didn’t.

In actuality, China and Japan had been fighting on-and-off for years. It started in 1931 and it never really stopped since then. There was just no formal declaration of war. That didn’t happen until Japan formally declared war on China and launched an invasion in 1937. Chinese forces were pushed back and after defeat after defeat, the Japanese had the important port city of Shanghai surrounded.

The Japanese invaded Shanghai in August of 1937 in a battle that lasted three months. The city didn’t finally fall until November. But even then, only part of the city fell.

In a strange case of diplomatic immunity and Japanese squeamishness, the Japanese army only attacked Chinese Shanghai. They left the International Settlement in the middle of town…largely untouched. I say ‘largely’ because it was still hit by a stray bullet or two, but the Japanese never intended to invade the Settlement.

Why?

Because, while the rest of Shanghai was controlled by the Chinese, the Settlement was effectively under foreign control. And if the Japanese attacked the British, French or American concessions of the Settlement and killed foreigners living there, they were terrified that all the other countries in the world would come running after them. So they left the Settlement alone. Because of this, despite the conflict going on all around them, the people living in the International Settlement continued life…more or less as they had always done. Sure, now there were Japanese soldiers poking their noses into everything…but that needn’t disrupt the black tie soiree going on at the ballroom of the Majestic Hotel down the road.

Because the Settlement existed as a separate entity from the rest of Shanghai, at the commencement of hostilities, it actually declared its neutrality from the war. Because the Japanese wouldn’t bomb the Settlement, thousands of Shanghainese poured into the Settlement, seeking shelter from the enemy. Between 1937-1941, the Shanghai International Settlement continued as it had always done.

The Second Sino-Japanese War did something else to Shanghai. In a strange, round-about way, the invasion of Shanghai was actually beneficial to some people. Specifically: European Jews.

In the mid and late 1930s, with Nazism on the rise in Europe, Jews were desperate to escape rabid antisemitism. Unable to go to New York or London or Melbourne or San Francisco or any other major port city in any but the very smallest numbers due to international immigration quotas, between 20,000-30,000 Jews, mostly German, but also Polish Jews, fled to the Shanghai International Settlement between 1933-1941. The disruption caused by the Japanese occupation of Chinese Shanghai meant that travel-restrictions in China were virtually nonexistent. This made the International Settlement the perfect place for opportunistic and desperate Jews to hide out for the duration of the Second World War.

The Nationalist Chinese Government (the Koumintang or ‘KMT’) was desperate for foreign intervention and support in their war against the Japanese, but, badly shaken after the Great War of 1914, nobody wanted to involve themselves in another conflict. In a show of determination and strength, 423 soldiers and officers of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army barricaded and fortified a warehouse in Chinese Shanghai called Sihang Warehouse. From their position, they engaged in fierce battles with the Japanese Imperial Army, to keep them from attacking the main retreating force of the Chinese Army. But keeping the Japanese occupied was only part of the purpose of the Defense of Sihang Warehouse. The warehouse was chosen specifically as the spot from which the Chinese could engage the Japanese, for another reason…It’s right across the river between the International Settlement and Chinese Shanghai. Western foreigners couldn’t ignore and couldn’t have not seen a battle that was happening almost literally next door.

Even though the Chinese managed to kill over two hundred enemy soldiers, the defiant last act of a desperate and retreating army did nothing to move foreign governments and China was largely on its own for the majority of the war.

The End of the Settlement

The beginning of the end of the Shanghai International Settlement came in December, 1941. On the 7th of that month, the Japanese attacked the American naval base of Pearl Harbor. But it also attacked almost every other country in Asia. The East Indies, Malaya, Hong Kong, Wake Island…and of course…the International Settlement.

Terrified expatriates and foreign nationals fled the Settlement in droves, piling onto whatever ships were available to get them out of Shanghai. The vastly superior Japanese Army quickly overwhelmed any defences that the Settlement could muster and soon, all of Shanghai was under Japanese occupation.

The true end of the Settlement didn’t come until 1943, however. Anyone unlucky enough not to take advantage of the confusion and panic caused by the Japanese Invasion were arrested and rounded up. They were taken off to P.O.W. camps or were housed in the “Area for Stateless Refugees”, a ghetto in the Hongkew District of what was once the International Settlement. The Jews that fled to Shanghai in the years previous (see above), were also herded into this ghetto, although, because the Japanese had no policy towards Jews specifically, they were thankfully spared the horrors of the German ghetto-system.

Realising that they couldn’t hold onto the Settlement any longer, the British ceded the land of their Concession back to the Chinese in 1943, followed soon after by the American, French and other foreign governments. Because of the Settlement’s occupation, however, the handover wasn’t really official until 1945.

In 1949, the Communist China defeated Capitalist China and in the ensuing decades, with protests and revolutions, the Settlement was lost to history. The American Consulate in the International Settlement (which moved FOUR TIMES between 1933-1950), was shut down in 1950. There wasn’t another American Consulate in Shanghai until 1980, exactly 30 years (right down the to month, and nearly to the day) after the last one closed.

Today, the International Settlement is something you read about in history-books, that you see in movies like ‘Shanghai’, ‘The Painted Veil’ or ‘Empire of the Sun’. It was the Shanghai of a swinging nightlife, neon, bright lights, drugs, sex, big-band jazz, decadance and wealth. It was a Shanghai of corruption and crime and greed. The Shanghai of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was something unique and special…and gone.

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Say Cheese: The Leica Freedom Train

 

The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s caused untold horrors and hardships throughout Germany and afterwards, throughout Europe. They say that we should never forget our history lest we be doomed to repeat it. And it is all too easy to remember all the bad things that happened under Nazism from 1933 to 1945. But what of all the good things? How many of those could you name?

Do you, for example, know of the story of the Leica Freedom Train? It was one of the most famous anti-Nazi efforts in pre-war Nazi Germany which is probably largely forgotten today. This is the story…

Germany, 1933

The Reichstag Building in Berlin catches fire, the result of an arson-attack. Adolf Hitler takes the opportunity of public panic and confusion to seize the reins of power and rise up as the dictator of the new Third Reich of Nazi Germany. In the space of eleven years, the Nazi Party grew from insignificance to being the most powerful force to be reckoned with, within the boundaries of Germany.

With his authority secure and his power absolute, Hitler was able at last, to carry out widespread and public persecution of Germany’s Jewish population. Starting in 1935, the ‘Nuremberg Laws’, increasingly restricted Jewish freedoms and antisemitism swept across Germany. Fearful for their lives, German Jews packed their bags and fled to England, America, Australia and China to escape the rising tyranny. But international immigration-quotas and Nazi Germany’s own highly restrictive travel-regulations made escape for Jews very tricky. Each year, only a few thousand could hope to board ships to the Far East, or across the Channel, or to the New World. Increasingly ostricised from their communities, Jews were desperate to escape the growing persecution before everything reached its inevitable and unimagined climax when the Second World War started in 1939.

Enter…this man:

His name is Ernst Leitz. He ran the famous German manufactury of film-cameras known as Ernst Leitz GmbH, which today, is known as Leica. The efforts of Herr Leitz and his daughter, Elsie Keuhn-Leitz, are one of the forgotten stories of the Holocaust.

As antisemitism in Germany increased month after month after the rise of the Nazi Party, Germany’s Jews became more and more nervous. Fearing for their lives, they tried to flee this oppression, only to find the way barred, either by the German government, or by foreign powers who did not grasp the urgency of the situation in pre-war Germany. In desperation, Jewish employees of the Leica Camera Company approached the Big Cheese himself. Ernst Leitz. As the head of a prominent German aryan company, Leitz was a wealthy, powerful man, well above the suspicions of the Nazis, and as a Christian, was unaffected by the restrictions placed on German Jews.

Touched by their plight and moved by their panic, Leitz and his family set into motion what became known as the ‘Lecia Freedom Train’.

What Was the Leica Freedom Train?

Okay, first thing’s first. Just like the ‘Underground Railroad’ in the United States, the Lecia Freedom Train is not actually a locomotive. I apologise to everyone who’s read this far with mental images of smoke-belching steam-trains chugging out of stations to freedom and liberation in a far-off land. That’s not what this is.

The Lecia Freedom Train was a concerted effort by Ernst Leitz and his daughter to rescue and relocate as many Jews as was possible, before the German border slammed shut permanently (which it did with the start of the Second World War). Leitz wanted to try and get as many Jews out of Germany as fast as possible and as far away as possible. And again, being a prominent businessman, he had the resources to do so. Ernst Leitz GmbH was a big company. It had branches in London, New York City and Paris. It was here that Leitz would relocate his Jews.

Like Oskar Schindler, Leitz used his power, money, status and influence to do good deeds in a time of darkness, but unlike Schindler, Leitz’s story is nowhere near as famous.

To help his Jewish workers, Leitz conveniently made them “Lecia Company representatives”. Their work-profiles were changed and suddenly, all his Jews, Leitz told the German government, had to leave the country, because they had been ‘assigned’ as ‘sales representatives’ of his foreign offices in London, New York, Paris and even as far away as Hong Kong, where those filthy, grubby Nazis couldn’t get their hands on them.

But Leitz went one step further. He didn’t just move his Jewish employees out of Germany, he moved almost everyone else. If Leitz had a Jewish employee named Jacob, he would give him the necessary travel-permits and documentation to go and live in New York City. But if Jacob had a wife and three kids, suddenly, his papers were modified to say that he would be there for ‘long-term work’ and that his family HAD to go with him. But perhaps Jacob had some close friends who also happened to be Jewish? No problem. His friends suddenly changed jobs. Instead of being schoolteachers or librarians or authors, they suddenly worked for the Leitz Company. And all their papers and profiles and employment-histories were forged and written up. They too, were given employment and travel-papers by the Leitz family for them to go to London or Hong Kong as salespeople for this prominent, aryan, Made-In-Germany photographic-equipment company. As far as the Nazis were concerned, Leitz was just doing regular business. As far as the Jews were concerned, the Leitz Company was a saviour.

Boarding the ‘Lecia Freedom Train’

So how did this all work? Well, once all the papers, passports, Visas, permits, forms, applications and other synonyms for bureaucratic boodle had been worked out, the Jewish workers packed their bags, hugged their wives, gathered their kids from school and hopped on the first train going to the German coastline (yes, check a map. Germany has a coastline).

Once the Leitz Jews had reached the shipping-offices, they would purchase liner-tickets for London or New York or Hong Kong. Or if they weren’t going overseas, they would take the train to Paris in France. Either way, once the Jews had reached their destinations, the next stage of the plan went into action. They swarmed onto the ships that would eventually take them to freedom.

Once in New York or London or Paris or Hong Kong, the Jews were supported by the Lecia Company’s branches in those cities. The Jews who disembarked from the liners in Southampton or New York or in Hong Kong Harbour immediately sought out the Leitz Company headquarters in that particular city where company executives would help them settle down. They’d help them find jobs and homes in these new, probably unfamiliar countries. Money-troubles were eased by the payments of stipends until each family or person managed to settle in. Along with all the papers and passports and money and personal effects, the Jews on the Lecia Freedom Train also had something else with them. Just in case they couldn’t get any money for whatever reason (and during the 1930s, there were a lot of reasons!), every Lecia ’employee’ left Germany with, not only his forged papers and a blessing and a word of good luck from Mr. Leitz, but also…a brand new Lecia camera. Just in case the Nazis wouldn’t allow Jews to own cameras, they were called “product-samples” by the Leitz Company, designed to be display-models of this fantastic, aryan company’s latest inventions. In fact, the cameras served as an asset. If the Jewish employee in his reassigned country (where-ever that was), was unable to find work or get financial support from the Leitz Company while abroad, he would at least, be able to sell a flashy, brand-new, top-quality, German-made camera to get at least some cash to help him survive.

At first, not many Jews took advantage of the open gates that the Leitz Company provided for them. Most people thought that the antisemitic measures were nothing more than the Nazis showing off their might, now that they’d come to power. Give it a few months, a couple of years…It would all be over and life would go back to normal. Nothing to worry about.

But then in November, 1938, Kristallnacht happened. Kristallnacht is translated from German into English as the Night of Broken Glass. Jewish shops had their front windows smashed and their interiors looted and torched. They had antisemitic graffitti painted on their walls and doors. Synagogues all over Germany were torched and burnt to the ground. Realising at last that Germany was no longer safe for them, Jews packed their bags and ran for the Lecia Freedom Train. Between November, 1938 and the end of August, 1939, hundreds of Jews fled Germany through the services provided by the Leitz Family. Every couple of weeks, ships docked in New York Harbor. And with every ship from Germany came more and more Jews who had fled from the Nazis with the aid of Ernst Leitz and his daughter, Elise. On the 1st of September, 1939, the Germans attacked Poland and the German borders were closed to all travel, but in those few brief years, the Leitz family managed to save hundreds of lives.

The Leitz Family During the War

Even after the start of the Second World War and the closing of the border, the Leitz family continued to help Jews by smuggling them over the border or by mirroring the example set by Oskar Schindler and employing Jews in their optical-equipment factories to protect them from the ghettos and the death-camps, all at immense risk to their own safety. Leitz. Co. executive Alfred Turk was arrested for helping Jews and thrown in jail. He was released early because the Leitzes forked up a fat bribe to get him out of jail. Elsie Leitz, Ernst’s daughter, was arrested for helping Jews escape over the German border. She refused to crack under questioning and was later released, but the Nazis kept a close eye on the Leitz family after that. They started keeping an even closer eye on them when they noticed the Leitzs being nice to the Jewish slave-labourers who were forced to work in their factories. Roughly 800 Jewish women were employed by the Leitzes to protect them from harm.

The Leitz Family’s Efforts

If the Leitz Family did all this…how come nobody knows about it? If they rescued so many hundreds, thousands of people, why is it almost nobody knows about them today? Even though they ran one of the most famous optics companies in the entire world?

The reason? Because the Leitz family didn’t WANT anyone to know. It was only after the death of the last member of the Leitz family that permission was given to publicise the efforts of the Leitz Freedom Train, something that the Leitzes had wanted to keep secret for as long as possible…Just in case.

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Gibraltar of the East: The Fall of Singapore

 

The Second World War has several famous battles and engagements. In the early years of the war, the Axis was beating back the Allies and gaining ground at a rapid pace. One by one, Allied countries fell to the Germans and the Japanese. China. Hong Kong. Poland. France. Denmark. Greece and The Netherlands. The Axis seemed unstoppable. Between 1939 and 1942, Europe and Asia were choked by the oppression of German and Japanese military might which was determined to strangle them to death.

The British were confident, however, that they could fight off their aggressors and keep them at bay. The might of the British Empire would keep the Nazis and the Japanese at bay and would hold them off alone until reinforcements eventually arrived from America. That was what they would do and that was what they were sure they could do! But for all their planning and scheming and thoughts of colonial and imperial strength and power, the British armed forces suffered blow after blow at the hands of the Japanese, who conquered Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula. The biggest blow to British morale and to the ego of British military leaders, however, was the loss of what they saw as their greatest and most powerful, their impregnable and indestructable fortress…The island of Singapore.

The fall of Singapore is something that, when you think about it, should never have happened. It’s something that you think would never have happened. But the British army, airforce and navy, unprepared for the Japanese plan of attack, did not provide contigency plans for what might happen if their first lines of defence were breeched, or indeed, if they were bypassed altogether. With the fall of Singapore came the biggest British military disaster since the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Singapore in the 1930s

Singapore is a tiny island nation off the southern coast of the Malay peninsula, seperated from it by the Strait of Johor. Modern Singapore was established in 1819 by Sir Stamford Raffles, a British statesman who saw Singapore as a wonderful place to establish a British colony and trading-port. Over the next one hundred years, Singapore grew and prospered. Its position in the middle of the Southeast Pacific made it a convenient port for ships to stop at during long voyages between Europe and Asia. The island flourished thanks to international trade and by the early 20th century, boasted a large population of immigrant Chinese and a significant number of British expatriates. Due to its status as a free trading port where almost anything was loaded, offloaded, traded, bought and sold, Singapore became known as the ‘Crossroads of the Orient’; the port city where ships from all over the world could dock.


Singapore’s Chinatown as it appeared in the 1930s

In the 1930s, Japan was on the march. Starting in 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War between the Chinese and the Japanese threatened to sweep across Asia and crush everything. The Chinese were already weakened from political in-fighting between the Communists and the Capitalists and in its weakened state, China was steamrollered by the Japanese. The British, who had built up Singapore as a prosperous trading-post and naval base, were fearful of a Japanese invasion. Singapore had to be protected. In the years leading up to the Second World War and during the opening years of that conflict, Singapore and the Malay Peninsula were bolstered with more troops and better defences. The British thought that it would be easy to defend Malaya and Singapore because the British would outsmart their enemy. And if the Japanese came by sea, the batteries of coastal-defence cannons would blast their ships out of the sea.

British Defences

The British Empire would defend its prized colony of Singapore down to the last man. To do this, it would build up Singapore as an impregnable fortress, which gave the island the nickname the ‘Gibraltar of the East’. To defend Singapore, the Royal Navy sent two warships: The Prince of Wales and the Repulse, to guard the island and to be the Royal Navy’s first-response team to any enemy naval activity in the area. The Prince of Wales was up-to-date and modern: Built in 1939, it was brand-new, the perfect naval-response weapon to fight off the Japanese. The Repulse on the other hand, left something to be desired. A relic of the Great War of 1914, it was already over twenty years old by the time it was sent to Singapore. If the Prince of Wales was put out of action, the Repulse would become an easy target. Apart from naval preparations, Singapore and the Malay Peninsula would also be defended by the British Army and Empire troops from Australia, New Zealand and India. By 1941-1942, the British and Empire forces numbered 85,000 strong, facing off against just 35,000 Japanese, more than enough to stop the slow-moving land-based Japanese. And if they came by sea, the might of the British Navy would blast the stinking Nips right out of the water!…Or at least, that was the plan.

British Malaya; 1941

“…Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam, Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Phillipine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island and this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area…”

– Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt; radio address, December 8th, 1941

1941; a year which will live in infamy. Between December 7th and December 8th of that year, the Japanese Empire launched a surprise offensive against many countries in the South Pacific region. It wasn’t just the American naval base at Pearl Harbor that was hit, but many other places in the same region, including British holdings in Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula. Hong Kong’s defensive forces, severely outnumbered by the Japanese, surrendered in a little over three and a half weeks after the Japanese launched their assault, surrendering to them on the 25th of December…Christmas Day, 1941. Some Christmas.

In Malaya, the fighting lasted much longer. The Japanese were very interested in Malaya; it had a lot of natural resources that they wanted, like tin mines and rubber-plantations. At the time, a significant portion of the world’s rubber came from Malaya, and the Japanese wanted in. The fighting was fierce, with British, Indian and Australian troops on one side, and the forces of the Imperial Japanese Army on the other. Despite everything, the Japanese were steamrolling the Empire forces further and further back, further and further south. It seemed like every week, a town or city on the Peninsula would fall to the Japanese.

On the 8th of December, the Japanese landed on the west coast of Malaya. On the 11th of December, the city of Jitra fell. Then the garrison at Penang, which fell on the 17th of December. A few weeks later, the Malayan capital of Kuala Lumpur also fell, on the 11th of January, 1942. The Japanese were surging south and the British could do nothing to stop them.

The Japanese Sweep

How was it that the Japanese, supposedly backward, slanty-eyed, yellow, cowardly, second-class people, which the British certainly saw them as, could defeat the might, power and imperial strength and know-how of the invincible British Empire? Even in Singapore, when British forces were more than double the strength of the Japanese?

The key to the British defeat in Malaya and Singapore lay in close-mindedness, a lack of foresight and I suppose to a small extent, a belief in racial intellectual superiority. The British believed that the Japanese would invade Singapore by sea. They were so convinced of this that they even set up coastal defences and cannons to blast the Japanese Navy out of the water. The idea of the Japanese invading by land from the north was absolutely preposterous. To begin with, they’d have to get through all those jungles and dirt tracks and the rain and the flooding…impossible with trucks and heavily-loaded tanks. Although the British did concede that defence of the Peninsula should be taken into account, the defences set up were inadequate to deal with the rapid movements of the Japanese…who invaded on bicycles.

That’s right.

Bicycles.

Like the one you ride around the park.

The Japanese mobilised their troops on bicycles. Light, fast and easy to carry, bicycles could move quickly through the jungles and over flooded roads and could go places that larger, motorised vehicles could not. They exchanged their heavier tanks for lighter and more mobile tanks that could move faster and not get bogged down in the mud. The speed at which the Japanese could move meant that the British couldn’t hold their defences and despite dynamiting every bridge, road and crossing-point across every river, gorge and valley that they could find, they were unable to slow down the Japanese advance significantly enough to set up a proper defence and hold off their attackers.

The Invasion of Singapore; 1942

By early 1942, Singapore was in deep trouble. Hong Kong had fallen just a few days before and the British lines were breaking over and over again as the Japanese came charging southwards. The city of Singapore was being bombed extensively by the Japanese Air Force and the island did not have enough airplanes or anti-aircraft guns to fight off or even engage in an air-battle. Terrified civilians were being evacuated from the Port of Singapore by merchant-ships and military vessels which had been ordered to pull out. British and Empire forces set up defensive positions on the northwest side of the island where the Strait of Johor was narrowest – the likeliest spot for the Japanese amphibious landing on the island. Military engineers had destroyed the causeway bridge between Singapore and Malaya, which would delay the Japanese, but only for a little over a week. Once the Japanese got a toehold on Singaporean soil, they were unstoppable. The Japanese found weak spots in British defences and exploited them. At the same time, British offensives failed time and time again. The Japanese invaded Singapore on the 8th of February, 1942. In six days, they had pushed the British back until they controlled less than half the island.

On the 14th of February, Japanese forces committed one of their worst attacks against civilians, since the Rape of Nanjing, in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, women and children were murdered and raped by Japanese soldiers invading the Chinese city of Nanjing in December of 1937. It was on this day, the 14th of February, that the Japanese reached one of Singapore’s main medical institutions: Alexandra Hospital. Built in 1938, the hospital was one of the most advanced medical institutions in Southeast Asia at the time.


British Military Hospital, Alexandra Hospital, Singapore; 1938

The Japanese soldiers stormed the hospital that afternoon, bayonetting doctors, nurses, patients and orderlies. Anyone not bayonetted was rounded up and locked up. They were then taken out into the hospital grounds and bayonetted or decapitated. Anyone left was sent to Changi Prison. The commanding officer of Japanese forces in Singapore, General Yamashita, was appalled and infuriated by the attack on non-combatant, unarmed and surrendering medical staff and civilian and military patients at the hospital. He had as many of the soldiers responsible as could be found executed for the crime and personally apologised to surviving staff and patients.

While Hong Kong held out for nearly one month, Singapore fell in a week. Japanese forces landed in Singapore on the 8th of February and forced Australian and British troops further and further back until on the 15th of February, the Allies were defending a tiny area in the southern part of Singapore where the Civic District is today. Just a few miles behind the Allied lines was the mouth of the Singapore River and the Pacific Ocean.


The Fullerton Building at the mouth of the Singapore River. The British signed their surrender here to the Japanese in 1942 and the structure remained the Japanese HQ in Singapore throughout their occupation. Today, the same building is the Fullerton Hotel

Singapore was now being shelled relentlessly by Japanese artillery and bombed by the Japanese Air Force. Water and fuel supplies were almost non-existent; ammunition, weapons and other military hardware was either destroyed or in short supply. On the evening of the 15th of February, 1942, the British forces surrendered to the Japanese. It was, and remains, the largest surrender of British military forces in history.

The Occupation of Singapore; 1942-1945


Japanese soldiers marching through Fullerton Square in southern Singapore

For the next three and a half years, Singapore was under Japanese occupation. Basic foodstuffs and daily necessities such as rice, vegetables, meat, water and clothing became extremely rare and people struggled to make ends meet. The shelling of Singapore had damaged and destroyed buildings, knocked out powerlines and ruptured water-mains. The chronic shortages of food led many people to grow their own vegetables and fruits to survive. The Japanese continued to attack Singapore’s Chinese population, rounding men up and shooting them in the jungles.

During the occupation, the British, knowing that they could not yet hope to retake Singapore, did carry out espionage and sabotage missions against the Japanese in Singapore. Operations carried out against the Japanese included Operation Jaywick, in which a small group of Australian soldiers infiltrated the Port of Singapore. They successfully destroyed seven Japanese ships without losing any of their own men. In August 1945, the British launched another attack against the Japanese, sneaking into Singapore Harbour with midget submarines. They mined a Japanese warship, hoping to sink it. Although the mines detonated successfully and the midget submarines made successful escapes from Singapore, the target ship, the cruiser Takao, was not damaged enough for it to sink (it was eventually destroyed in 1946 as a target-ship during naval exercises).

The Allies continued to attack Singapore throughout the occupation, sometimes in more open ways than others. While the British and Empire armed forces limited their activities to sabotage and spying, the Americans attacked Singapore from the air. Between November 1944 and May 1945, the RAF and the USAAF carried out eleven air-raids on Singapore, attacking fuel-dumps, naval facilities and docks around Singapore that were essential to the Japanese war effort. Mines were also laid around Singapore to disrupt Japanese naval movements in the area.

The Liberation of Singapore; September, 1945

After the defeat of Nazi Germany in May of 1945, the Allies turned their attention fully towards Japan. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan and the Americans were planning to invade the Japanese mainland (this plan was later scrapped in favour of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). After the dropping of the bombs in August, 1945, the British made plans to recapture Singapore. They sailed for Malaya and successfully captured Penang. With their presence in Malaya established, they made for the island nation of Singapore on the 2nd of September. Although reluctant and wanting to fight to the death, the Japanese eventually surrendered peacefully when the British landed in Singapore on the 4th of September. The commanding officer of the Japanese forces in Singapore, General Seishiro Itagaki signed the terms for British reoccupation of Singapore when the cruiser HMS Sussex docked off the coast of Singapore. Eight days later, the Instrument of Surrender was signed at the Municipal Building (today Singapore’s City Hall) on the 12th of September.


City Hall, Singapore

Unable to cope with the humiliation of defeat, when General Itagaki told his officers of their surrender to the British, up to three hundred of them committed suicide using grenades, in their rooms at Singapore’s famous Raffles Hotel (which had been used as a base by the Japanese during the occupation).


Raffles Hotel, Singapore, in the 1930s. Japanese army officers committed mass suicide here in 1945 after their surrender to the British

With the successful ousting of the Japanese, even if it was three and a half years too late, the returning British forces were given a hero’s welcome by Singaporean civilians. In February, 1942, the Japanese had ordered the British to march through Singapore carrying a Union Jack flag and a white flag of surrender as a final humiliation after having lost their colonial stronghold to a superior military force. The Japanese had been told that no Union Jack flags existed on the whole of Singapore, as they had all been burned prior to the Japanese invasion, a statement that was probably a lie. A British officer held captive in Singapore’s Changi Prison retained his personal Union Jack flag and kept it hidden from the Japanese. The flag was used in the prison during the funerals of British and Empire soldiers who died as a result of Japanese brutality. When Singapore was liberated, this flag was handed to Lord Louis Mountbatten, who signed the British acceptance of the Japanese surrender, and who raised this flag over the island to signal the return of peace and stability to Singapore. A newsreel of the liberation of Singapore and the raising of the Union Jack may be viewed here.


September, 1945. Singaporeans hold a parade to celebrate the end of the Japanese occupation and the return of British forces

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Suited Up: Stuffy or Stylish?

 

A while ago, I wrote a piece on the history of the suit. If you don’t remember it, you can find it here. Recently I started thinking about suits again. I started thinking about what they are and how they’re perceived in society. What they mean. What they evoke and how the suit has changed over the course of history. It’s a fascinating, sad, scary and hopeful and unfortunate saga that plays out almost like some sort of Shakespeare thing that you had to study at school.  So, where do we begin?


Along with men like Fred Astaire, George Raft and the Duke of Windsor, Cary Grant was always impeccably dressed

The Suit Today

In the 21st Century, the suit is viciously ripped apart and herded into one of two different camps. Those who see it as being super straitlaced, uptight, rigid, formal and uncomfortable and…okay who are we kidding? There’s really only one camp. But the point of this article is to show that there needn’t be this one camp and that indeed, this camp shouldn’t exist in the first place. The original purpose and history of the suit which was, as I said in my other article, a cornerstone of style, has been distorted, changed, warped and muddled up over the past fifty-odd years and today, how the public views the average two or three-piece suit, is very different to how the suit was originally viewed, a hundred, eighty, seventy-five and sixty years ago, when suits were worn on an almost daily basis. In this article we’ll look at what the suit traditionally was, how it changed from this to what it is now, and what, in the mind of this blogger at any rate, the suit should always and should continue to be. Let’s begin with the public perception in the 21st Century, of the typical man’s suit…

Perceptions of the Suit

There are two main perceptions of the suit in the 21st Century. Perception #1: A suit is old-fashioned. It’s formal. It’s for ‘special occasions’. It’s stuffy and constricting and uncomfortable and makes you look like a banker or a lawyer, a businessman or a mobster. You wear it for work and for work only. Then, there’s also Perception #2:  A suit is suave and sophistocated, it’s classy. It looks stylish and makes a man feel good, feel interesting, feel important, intelligent, in-control, comfortable, confident…sexy? Maybe that too. So my question is. Why? Why one and why not the other?

If a suit makes you look good. Why don’t more people wear them? And why does the suit have this unfortunate reputation that it does, as outlined in ‘Perception #1’. Is it deserved? Where does it come from? Why do we still have it?

The suit has a reputation of being stuffy and old-fashioned. Overly formal and uncomfortable. You put it on for special occasions and then store it back in your closet until you need it again, like some sort of military dress-uniform that you take out for promotions, parades or special presentations and ceremonies. Like…Weddings. But why should this be so? Where does it come from?

The suit’s current reputation comes from the period after World War Two during the 1960s and 1970s. Suits became synonymous during this period with employment and working and business and jobs. People wore suits all the time and as they say ‘Familiarity breeds contempt’. The suit became associated more and more strongly with work instead of play, with stiffnes and formality instead of relaxation and enjoyment. Because people had to wear them all day at work, it’s likely that they associated them too much with a lack of freedom and therefore, cast them off the moment they weren’t working. But that was never the suit’s job in the first place. It was never designed specifically as a work-uniform, but that’s where it’s been stuck for the last thirty or forty years. Even now in a new century when, with all the mixing and matching we’re doing with clothes, the suit seems to be jammed in some sort of timewarp. Today, when most people think of suits, they imagine TV shows like The Apprentice…

…a sad, but truthful look at the suit in today’s society.

Let’s move away from Perception #1 and move onto Perception #2…

Breaking out of the mould of business and employment, let’s take a look at the social history of the suit and a look at the suit from the other perspective that we have of it: As something classy and sophistocated. You have to understand that the suit wasn’t always seen as some sort of corporate uniform, the way that it might be today. For decades, the suit was seen as a form of, for want of a better and more contemporary term, ‘smart casual’ attire. The suit was the standard set of clothes that a man wore when he was out on the town. When he went out for dinner. When he went to work. When he followed the wife to visit friends or when merely going about his business. A suit used to be a sign of style, good taste, self-respect and confidence and power, sadly replaced it seems, by other qualities that are less indicative of what the suit should respresent: Masculinity and manhood.

So if the suit isn’t formal. Is it casual? If it was worn every day, it must be. But where does it lie on the dresscode scale? Let’s have a look…

At the top we have White Tie. Worn for the most formal of events such as weddings, important state functions and opening night at the theatre. White Tie is rarely worn today by most people except when it’s specifically asked for on an invitation-card.

Below White Tie we have Black Tie. Still fairly common today, Black Tie is worn for semi-formal occasions such as dinners with friends, parties, school or university events and presentations and awards ceremonies (Academy Awards, for example). White Tie is the most formal level of dress in the Western hemisphere. Black Tie, directly below it, is traditionally seen as semiformal dress, worn for more relaxed occasions.

To borrow a term from contemporary English, below Black Tie, we have ‘Smart Casual’. This was the area which up until fairly recently, was the domain of a certain set of clothes: The Suit. The suit was seen as a badge of pride and honour back in the old days. You wore it to show you had style, class and panache. It was the gold standard of men’s attire for well over a century. A man wearing a suit was seen as a snappy dresser who took care and pride in his appearance and who was someone worth taking notice of. Over the decades, suits changed in style, but they never moved from their rung on the wardrobe ladder. Up to the 1940s, a suit almost always had a waistcoat with it, making it a three-piece suit. The reasoning behind this was because it was considered unacceptable to display the white of your shirt. Your shirt was worn under your suit. It was an undergarment like your boxer-shorts or your briefs. Most likely, you only changed your shirt once a week anyway, so there was certainly no expectation that you’d want to show it off. Also, in days before central heating, the waistcoat provided an essential layer of warmth in cold, blustery buildings. Wearing two-piece suits regularly didn’t start becoming popular until after World War Two, when strict cloth-rationing made the manufacture of three-piece suits so much more difficult than it was before the war. Three-piece suits are much harder to find these days than two-pieces, but still, the suit remains.


Pussy Galore and James Bond (Sean Connery) in ‘Goldfinger’, with Bond wearing a three-piece suit

Finally, below the suit, we have street-casual, which is what most people wear today. Slacks. Jeans. Shirts. Pullovers. T-shirts and so forth. Traditionally, clothes such as these were seen as work-clothes. T-shirts, singlets and shirts were seen as underwear that you put on to absorb sweat and perspiration. Jeans were worn when you had heavy labour to do such as gardening, woodchopping, cleaning or any other activity that would’ve been unwise to carry out in a suit.

So as you can see, the suit is far from being some sort of formal, stuffy uniform. And it was never designed to be stuffy, anyway. Suits, when properly tailored and measured, are meant to be perfectly fitting and comfortable. If a suit is uncomfortable for whatever reason, then it’s not the right one for you. But just because a suit looks nice doesn’t mean that it’s automatically formalwear.

Suits: Casual or Formal?

This is the big style and fashion combat ground in the 21st century. Imagine an enormous table with thimbles armed with needles on one side and thread-spools armed with pins on the other with a battle-line of a tailor’s measuring tape running between the two. Where does the suit lie? In formalwear or casualwear? Let’s consider the photograph below for a minute…


Here’s actor Simon Baker wearing a three-piece suit. In no way does this look even remotely formal. Sleeves are up. Jacket’s off, shirt-collar is undone, he’s tieless and his shirtfront is open. This diversity of the suit, to look either elegant or relaxed speaks to me of its lack of formality as opposed to its abundance of it.

So the answer is that the suit does lie in the casualwear camp, and it’s just as well that it should, because that is what it was designed for. That is what it was invented for. That is what it’s meant to be seen as and used as. That’s why the perception of the suit as being a stuffy and formal and rigid uniform is unfounded. Because it simply does not exist. Invitation cards will say “White Tie” or “Black Tie”. Sometimes even “Smart Casual”. They will never say “Wear a suit”. Why? Because a suit isn’t formal. That’s why. And another reason why the suit wavers from formality is because formality is just that. It’s formal. White Tie is White Tie. Black Tie is Black. But a suit isn’t. It changes and alters constantly. Only casual clothes can do that. If you don’t believe me, then look up a fellow named Edward, Duke of Windsor.

Edward, Prince of Wales. Edward VIII of England. Edward the Duke of Windsor.


Edward, Duke of Windsor, with his wife, Wallis, the Duchess of Windsor

Apart from famously abdicating in 1936 to marry an American divorcee (Oh the scandal!), King Edward VIII was famous for one other thing – Rocking the suit. Before big fashion models showed up, the Duke was one of the most photographed men in the world, for his sense of fashion and style. And yet he always wore a suit. But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t that he wore a suit, but rather what he did with it, changing, mixing, matching, mashing and churning things up. He was a style barometer that told the British people what to wear, how to wear it and if nobody else was wearing it, then he would. I can’t find the source on this, but I remember reading once that the Duke of Windsor was the guy who popularised zip-flies on trousers! Before then, trousers all had button-flies!

If you want more proof that a suit belongs in casualwear, think for a moment about a tuxedo and a suit. A tuxedo MUST be worn as a tuxedo. You can’t chop and change it. A suit is versatile. You can wear it with or without the jacket. You can put the waistcoat on if you’re cold, or you can leave it at home and wear it as a two-piece. You can use the jacket on its own as a sportsjacket or you can use the trousers seperately from the rest of the suit. You can wear the jacket and trousers with a contrasting waistcoat for a more broken up, less solid look and none of this will ever look wrong. It might look different, but never wrong. That’s not something you can say about true formal attire. Again, take a look at the photo of Simon Baker if you need any proof.

When Do You Wear a Suit?

I remember a while back, my father told me: “We should get you a suit. Something that you can wear for graduation”, by which of course, he meant my graduation from my bachelor’s degree at university. Oh boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy! A suit! A suit a suit a suit! I’d never owned a suit before. I was excited and interested and fascinated. I was getting my first suit! I was gonna be a big boy! And then…bam! There it was. My first glimpse into how the suit is seen today. As something special to be dragged out on special occasions, paraded around as something special and unique and then shoved back into a box, like hauling grandpa out of the retirement home for a family reunion to remind people he’s still around before driving him back home at the end of the day.

But why?

Right here, you see the problem. Because suits have been elevated to the level of formalwear (a pedestal it was never supposed to occupy), the suit has been shunted aside to ‘occasional wear’. When’s the right time? When’s the wrong time? There is no right or wrong time to wear a suit. There are times where it might be more or less appropriate to wear one, but as I explained, a suit is casual clothing and therefore, fluid, with no real rules that govern its use. So when do you wear a suit? The answer really is: Whenever you like, so long as it doesn’t get damaged or dirty. After all, that’s what they were invented for. Do you really want to put on a suit only when you have a special occasion? Lying down in a pine box is a special occasion. Is that the only time you want to wear something sharp and snappy? I certainly don’t. So don’t let that be your only time that you’ll be wearing one either. Wear it on nice days. Crappy days. Days when there’s something interesting going on, or on days when there’s nothing on at all. A suit isn’t like a tuxedo that you can only put on after 6:00pm, it’s something you can wear all the time, so embrace it and do it and feel good about it.

Concluding Remarks

Okay. So where am I going with all this? The point of this posting is not to try and get every Tom, Dick, Harry, George and Michael into a suit…that would take far too much fabric anyway…but rather to try and destroy some misconceptions that have sprung up over the last thirty or forty years about the suit. The point of this posting is to clearly demonstrate the position of the suit and to illustrate that its current and unfortunate reputation that it holds, is unfounded, unwarranted and above all, unnecessary. The suit is a fine and elegant set of clothes, but that doesn’t make it formal or stuffy or straitlaced. It doesn’t make it rigid or tight or anything else along those lines. A suit is meant to suggest style, comfort, sophistocation and relaxation. After all, the suit’s full name is a lounge suit. So go ahead and lounge around in it. Be relaxed and casual, as the suit was meant to be. If you have a suit, don’t lock it away in the cedar cupboard up in the attic. Yank it it out, put it on and go out for a wander. We all want to look sharp and elegant. And it’s easy to be so. It just requires the shaking off of dust and a bit of a courage to do it. In today’s world of torn jeans, logo T-shirts and baseball caps, anyone wearing a suit will stand out as a sharp and shining example of manhood, confidence, style and sensibility. Be like the man who was king and rule the suit. Leave the Levis and the Piping Hot at home; suit up and step out.

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Heads Will Roll: The Hangman & Headsman’s Trades

 

You read about it in crime-novels. You see it in movies or in historical dramas. You maybe even play-acted it in school or on the stage somewhere in a theatrical production of some kind. For centuries, hanging and decapitation have been the two main methods of capital punishment.

But have you ever wondered how it was done? Despite the old saying that “everybody dies easy”, it’s not something that might be said by the men who have the unique and rather unenviable task of actually doing it for a living. The headsman and the hangman, the two men who traditionally carried out these two most common methods of civil execution, actually had to approach each execution from a highly scientific point of view.

Execution by Beheading

Beheading someone as a form of execution is not easy to do. In ancient times, it was done with swords or axes. These weapons, though sharp, did not always do the job very well. The human neck is surprisingly strong and considerable force is required to break it. In medieval times, specially-crafted execution-axes were used, that look similar to the one pictured here:

Axes such as this did not so much ‘cut’ the head off as they simply bashed their way through the neck-bone. They were crude at the best of times and useless at the worst of times. Most medieval executioners also carried a dagger with them called a ‘slitting knife’, with which they would have to literally slice the head off, using the slitting-knife to cut away the remaining muscles and flesh so that the head would fall off the corpse and land in the basket below…all the while, the severed neck would be pumping out blood onto the scaffolding.

During the 1700s, reformers were looking for a more effective way to decapitate people. Axes and swords were inefficient. They did not always work and death was neither swift nor painless. In the early 1790s, the French came up with the answer. The Guillotine.

Named for Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician, the guillotine was first put to use in 1792. It remained the only legal method of execution in France for the next 189 years (capital punishment in France was abolished in 1981). It was designed to take the human error out of the equation of death by beheading. The angled blade of the guillotine was developed so that the head would be severed cleanly from the body in one swift, sweeping stroke, instead of being hacked off like with an axe.

So much for the guillotine. That was the easy part.

Execution by Hanging

Ah. Execution by Hanging. The favoured method in Asia and in most of the Western countries where capital punishment was (or still is) legal. Anyone can chop a man’s head off. Raise the guillotine, slot him in the hole and let go of the rope…done! But how many people can hang a man? Believe me, it’s not that easy.

The job of hangman is very unique. Not because he’s an executioner. Not because he might be depised by society (I’m sure lawyers are also despised by society), but because there’s a lot more to this job than meets the eye. Not just anybody can hang anybody, not just because of the emotional toll, but simply because not just anybody can hang any body. You see, the thing that makes the job of hangman difficult is that there is a high level of mathematical skill required in this job. You may not see it, or even believe it, but it is true and it is there.

In older times, you hanged a man thus:

You threw the rope over a tree or a hanging-post, got the condemmed man to stand on a chair, then you slipped the noose around his neck, hopped down, kicked the chair away and let him dangle around for five…ten…fifteen…twenty…thirty minutes…however long it took, until he eventually strangled to death. Yes. It could take that long.

This was unacceptable. It was unsightly and it took far too long; another way of hanging the condemned was required. The old method of hanging was called the ‘short-drop’ method. String him up, kick the bucket away and then let him choke to death after a short drop. This by the way, is where we get the phrase ‘kick the bucket’ (meaning to commit suicide). It comes from when the suicider, after looping the noose around his neck, kicks away the upturned bucket that he was standing on.


Almost synonymous with the ‘Short Drop’ hanging method is the Tyburn Tree in Tyburn, London, a famous, triangle-shaped gallows on which up to two dozen people could be executed at one time. The Tree was erected in 1571 and wasn’t taken down until 1783! A plaque stands where the Tree was once located

The new method of hanging was very different from the old, even though on the surface they look the same. And it was this new method, called the ‘long-drop’ method, that was so scientific. And this is why not anybody can hang anybody, or any body, if you get my drift.

Hanging a body using the ‘Long Drop’ method is a tricky process. In the short-drop method, the aim is to strangle the condemned until they die from suffocation. The long-drop method aims to break the victim’s neck, providing swift and painless death, specifically, to break the neck at the C2 vertebra; the second vertebrae down from the head. Achieving this is difficult because no two persons are exactly alike. Some weigh more than others. Some weigh less. Some are taller than others, some are shorter. Some might have thin, scrawny necks. Some have thick, bulldog ones. How on earth are you going to figure out how much rope to use and how long a drop you need to break a given person’s neck? Because if you don’t have the right amount of rope, things can go horribly wrong.

See? It’s not so easy now, is it?

The long-drop method was developed by an English hangman named William Marwood in 1872. In time, a table was drawn up that took all the complexity out of how to carry out a good hanging. It was called Marwood’s Table of Drops. Published in 1888, the Official Table of Drops may be found about three-quarters the way down the page provided in this link. So, how did a long-drop hanging take place?

As I’ve explained, hanging changed over time. By the late 19th century, it was a pretty scientific undertaking that required care and deliberation. A typical long-drop hanging is done in the following manner:

1. The day before the hanging, the condemned prisoner is taken out of his (or her) cell. He or she is then weighed (while clothed) and the weight is recorded.

2. The hangman consults the Table of Drops, which specifies length of drop (and therefore, length of hangman’s rope) required for that weight, such that the drop will produce a clean, quick break of the neck.

3. The rope is measured and marked at the correct length, either with a painted lne or a length of metal wire wrapped around the rope at the correct point. A noose is tied at the end and then the rope is affixed to the gallows.

4. Sandbags equal in weight to the prisoner to be hung, are tied to the noose and the trapdoor is opened. The sandbags drop, stretching out the rope. This is done a full 24 hours before hanging, to take the elasticity out of the rope to prevent recoil later on.

5. On the day, the prisoner is marched out to the gallows. The noose is put around his neck and slightly off-center so that when the rope pulls tight, it breaks the neck. A prayer is said and the prisoner is allowed last words. He may or may not choose to have a black hood placed over his head.

6. The lever is pulled. The trapdoor falls open and the prisoner falls through. If the hanging is successful, the momentum of the body draws the noose tight and the sudden deceleration causes a quick and painless break of the neck.

7. The body is then cut down and prepared for postmortem examinations. In older times, a body was left hanging on the rope for up to an hour after death. This was eventually deemed unnecessary when a physician could just check the body and announce whether death had or had not occurred.

8. The rope is removed from the gallows and stored. This is in case it might be required later by law-enforcement or prison officials.

The hanging is done.

The Hangman’s Calculation

If you do a bit of research, you’ll find out that Tables of Drops changed markedly over the years. Starting in about 1888, they changed at least twice in the next 30 years, once in the 1890s and once again in 1913, with differing weights and drops for each new table. How do you figure out how much rope is needed for any given drop?

Remember that the tables are a guide. They only give the suggested drop-length, the length calculated to be most effective. But as I explained, not everyone is the same, so there are variables that might make the Table of Drops ineffective for any number of reasons, from a person being over the maximum weight in the Table of Drops, to their neck being particularly thick or the rope being thinner or thicker than usual. So how do you figure out the drop?

You use a piece of mathematics called the Hangman’s Calculation. It’s set up in the following manner:

(1260 / W ) + 1.5 = D.

1260 foot-pounds of force (the amount considered sufficient to cause neck-breakage), divided by the prisoner’s WEIGHT (W), with an added 1.5ft (18 inches or 1’6″) of rope for the noose itself, equals the optimum drop-length for a given person.

Despite all the maths and calculations, hanging remains a bit of a trial-and-error way of execution. Even when the Tables of Drops were well-established in society, it wasn’t unknown for bungled hangings to occur, and the condemned could still strangle to death or have their heads ripped off during botched hangings. Although no longer widely practiced in the Western world, hanging is still a very common method of execution in Asia in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Bali, where there are significant drug-trafficking problems.

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Morbid Fancies: Victorian Mourning Jewellery

 

To say that the Victorians had an obsession with death is putting it mildly. They were addicted to death; fascinated by it; entranced by it! Everyone has some sort of morbid interest in death, but to the Victorians, death and the rituals surrounding it were as important to them as the rituals concerning life. This fascination with death followed the Victorians everywhere and they revelled in it as much as they were repulsed by it. It was during the Victorian era that big leaps in medical science were being made. People were now starting to live longer, happier, healthier lives. But everyone knew that death was just below the surface. And everyone from Queen Victoria downwards, was fascinated by the subject. When her husband died, Queen Victoria wore black mourning dress for the rest of her life and she would sleep with a cast of Prince Albert’s hand next to her pillow so that she could hold him as she slept! She insisted that every single day, her husband’s clothes should be laid out, that his breakfast be prepared and that hot water be brought to his room every morning so that he could shave…even though he was already dead!

The queen was also fascinated by seances, psychics, mystics and the paranormal and this craze soon caught on with her subjects. It even became popular starting in the 1850s, to have mourning portraits done! What is a mourning portrait? Have a look below…

Also called a memorial portrait or a mourning photograph, these were photographs of the deceased taken shortly after death so that living relatives would always have a pictorial reminder of their dead loved ones to keep with them all the time. If you haven’t figured it out yet…the girl in the middle of her two parents is a corpse, dressed as she was in life and photographed leaning against her father’s chest.

Mourning portraits hit their peak before the turn of the last century and gradually died out during the early 1900s. But one of the most famous examples of the Victorian obsession with death isn’t the mourning portraiture, it isn’t Queen Victoria sleeping with her husband’s hand and it isn’t laying out clothes and preparing shaving water for a ghost who never comes to use them…it’s mourning-jewellery.

What is Mourning Jewellery?

Mourning jewellery was jewellery worn by both men and women on the occasion of a friend or relative’s death. Going into mourning traditionally meant wearing black attire for a period during and after the funeral, but also meant wearing mourning-jewellery.

Of course, mourning jewellery does predate the Victorian era, it’s been around for centuries, but it was a style of jewellery that is most closely associated with the Victorians due to their constant awareness of the fragility of life and the strict protocol that they had to follow when in mourning for a loved one. Pictured below is a typical example of Victorian mourning-jewellery:

If you think this is an ordinary watch-chain…think again. This is a Victorian-era mourning chain which a man would wear with his pocketwatch on the event of a relation or a close friend dying. Want to up the creep-factor? Those braids in the watch-fob aren’t made of cotton. That’s actual human hair! It was common in Georgian and Victorian times to keep lengths of hair from loved ones and braid it into ropes, necklaces and fobs to act as remembrance-tokens of deceased relatives.

Why Did People Wear Mourning-Jewellery?

Upon a person’s death, it’s always been traditional in Western society to wear black during a funeral. It was also traditional for a period after the funeral, to continue wearing black to indicate that you were in mourning for a close friend or relative who had recently died. Victorian morals dictated that it was disrespectful to wear glitzy, flashy jewellery when you were in mourning. Stuff like diamond earrings and pearl necklaces, solid gold pockewatch-chains and sapphire rings were to be worn for celebratory purposes such as weddings and anniversaries! They were totally unacceptable accessories to wear when mourning for a dead loved one! It was to fill in this empty hole in the jewellery market that mourning-jewellery was created.


A Victorian-era mourning-ring, again incorporating a lock of the deceased’s hair

People purchased and wore mourning-jewellery so that they could continue to dress up, but in what they felt was a more sombre and respectful manner, to reflect their current status of mourning. A wide range of mourning-jewellery was manufactured for both men and women, but it was almost always black, or at least had life and death motifs in their designs, such as hearts, coffins and skulls.

Traditions of Victorian Mourning

If Victorian social etiquette was strict, then Victorian mourning etiquette or protocol was evern stricter! Upon the death of a loved one, both men and women were expected to follow strict rules on how society expected them to act, dress and conduct themselves around others. Upon the death of a husband, a widow was expected to go into a period of Full Mourning, also called First Mourning, for 366 days exactly. During this time she was only allowed to wear black and could not appear in public without it. Neither was she allowd out in public without a black mourning-veil over her face to show that she was now a widow. If the woman was poor or if she had children to support, she was allowed to look for a new husband after this period of full mourning. If, however, she had no dependents or serious need for money, she would then enter a period of Second Mourning, which lasted for nine months.

Second Mourning meant a relaxation of the rules. The veil could be removed or at least raised when out in public, but mourning etiquette dictated that black was still the only colour that was permissible for clothing. It was during this nine-month period of Second Mourning that mourning-jewellery was created, and it would be the only kind of jewellery that a widow was allowed to wear until the official ending of her mourning.

After Second Mourning came the final stage of traditional Victorian mourning: Third Mourning. Also called half-mourning, a widow’s Third Mourning lasted anywhere from three to six months. During this time she could gradually start wearing more colourful and sociable clothing again. She would put away her mourning jewellery and start wearing ordinary jewellery again. If she was an independent woman or a woman of means, now was the time that society considered it acceptable for her to start looking for a new husband. Some women never got over the deaths of their husbands, however, and they could wear mourning-dress and mourning-jewellery right up until their own deaths. Queen Victoria was an extreme example of this. Her husband died in 1861, but she remained in mourning-dress for the rest of her life, another forty years, until her own death in 1901!

Mourning traditions for men were similar to women in that they were expected to wear black and wear no jewellery, or mourning-jewellery only, but male mourning protocol was different from womens’ mourning protocol because of the man’s role in society. A widower who had lost his wife was expected to mourn for two years, however as with women with dependents, if a man had children to care for, society did allow for him to end mourning sooner and go back to conducting business or work. An unmarried man who had lost a close relation such as a mother, sister or cousin, might carry out the full three stages of mourning, same as widows did, lasting the full roughly two to two-and-a-half years. With people dying every single day, you can bet that the industry concerned with the manufacture and sale of mourning-jewellery was big business in the Victorian era.

What was Mourning Jewellery Made Of?

One of the most popular materials used for the manufacture of mourning-jewellery was a semiprecious gemstone called jet. From which we get the term “jet black”. Although it was tricky to cut and carve, jet became very popular for jewellery during the second half of the 1800s up into the 1920s. An example of jet mourning-jewellery is shown below:

This 19th century mourning-brooch is made of jet

Jet was used to make traditional mourning-jewellery such as watch-fobs, necklaces, rings, clasps and brooches, but as mentioned above, the other popular material for the manufacture of mourning-jewellery was human hair! Not always black, it was common for people to keep a lock of a loved one’s hair after their death and perserve it as a momento of their deceased relatives. Depending on the amount of hair taken from the corpse, the momento might be braided into a rope and used to make a watch-chain (such as the one above) or a necklace. Shorter snippets of hair might be placed inside mourning-lockets such as the one pictured below:

Mourning lockets such as this one (made of gold, black enamel and pearls) were another very popular piece of Victorian-era mourning-jewellery and they often had little compartments or windows in the back where a lock of the deceased’s hair could be stored as a momento. Lockets like this one would have had a chain or ribbon run through the ring at the top of the locket and then it would be tied and hung around the widow’s neck as a pendant and necklace.

The End of Mourning Jewellery

Rather fittingly, the Victorian protocol of mourning, along with Victorian mourning jewellery, ended…with Victoria. When the queen died in 1901, traditional Victorian mourning clothes, jewellery and protocol died with her. People no longer wanted to wear black and be reminded all the time, of the constant presence of death. Changing values meant that such things were taboo and shouldn’t be mentioned in polite society. Death was everywhere and there was no need to have to remind people of it all the time. As the 20th Century progressed, Victorian-era views on mourning, how one should conduct oneself when in mourning, how long mourning should last and what a person could or could not wear during mourning, rapidly began to die away. A hundred and ten years after Queen Victoria died, all that most people today would know about traditional mourning rituals and protocol is that it’s traditional to wear black. Other aspects, such as the once common fashion of wearing mourning-jewellery, has been consigned to the graveyard of history.

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Black and White – All about the Tuxedo

 

I think I should start this off by saying that this isn’t a fashion and style blog and it ain’t a menswear blog. It’s a history blog. I won’t be covering every single itty-bitty-titty-kitty detail about the do’s, the don’ts and the faux-pas of how to and how not to wear a tux. If that’s what you came here for, then you probably won’t find it.

The tuxedo is the ultimate men’s uniform. You see it at fancy parties, awards ceremonies, Christmas balls, royal gatherings, state dinners, weddings and anniversary celebrations. James Bond would never be seen without one. But it seems like these days, nobody really knows what a tuxedo is. They have a vague idea that it’s black and white and it’s mandatory daily attire for penguins…but that’s about it. What is a tuxedo, what makes up a tuxedo, when do you wear one? Why?…And why the hell is it called a ‘tuxedo’ anyway? That’s what this article is about.


All dressed up and no place to go…

The History of the Tuxedo

The tuxedo was born in the late Victorian era. By the 1870s and 1880s, people looking for a night out in snappy clothes were looking for a snappier alternative to having to wear glitzy, glamorous, over-colourful clothes that made them look like clowns. Stuff like frock-coats, cravats, buckled shoes and coloured waistcoats other articles of clothing, simply did not say “classy night on the town”. They wanted something simple, easy and sharp that would always look good. Black and white. Crisp and elegant. Enter the tuxedo.

The tuxedo was born in England in the 19th century. Elements of it had existed ever since Georgian times, but it wasn’t until the second half of the 1800s that the tuxedo really began to emerge in the form that we know it today. To understand how it came about, we need to understand when it was worn.

Victorian high society was all about social connections. Who you were depended on what you did, how you did it, who you did it with and who you knew. Connections and friendships were important. The way to meet people was at big social gatherings, events like garden parties, balls, dinner parties, luncheons, high teas and sporting-events. There was no Twitter, no FaceBook, no MySpace back then. You had to go out and find people to talk to!

Of course, part of being received in upper-class society was knowing what to wear. And you didn’t just wear anything to any occasion. There were amazingly strict wardrobe rules for every single event for every single hour of the day. There was morning dress, daytime dress and evening dress. The tuxedo fell under the umbrella of “Evening Dress”, meaning that you put it on after the sun went down. Typically, this meant changing into your tuxedo after six o’clock in the evening or at sundown (whichever came first). This is also why the black tuxedo jacket is also called a ‘dinner jacket’. The tuxedo was further broken down into “Evening Dress” and “Full Evening Dress”. Here’s where things can get complicated.

Black and White

‘Tuxedo’ is a very loose term. Like I said, people generally have a vague idea of what it is, and that’s all. But it’s rather more complicated than that. Traditional men’s evening dress is divided into two categories. Evening Dress and Full Evening Dress.

‘Evening Dress’ is the classic tuxedo. Also called ‘Black Tie’. A black dinner-jacket, a white dress-shirt with studs and a detatchable collar and french cuffs which had to be held shut with cufflinks and, as the name suggests…a black bowtie. Evening Dress was worn during semiformal social occasions between friends and professional acquaintenaces that took place after sundown, typically dinner, nights at the theatre or when providing private entertainment. Black Tie is what most people are familiar with today as being the classic tuxedo and which tends to end up as the dress-code on most formal social-event invitations.

The pieces of a traditional Black Tie tuxedo included…

Black one or two-button dinner-jacket or ‘Tuxedo’ jacket.
Black Tuxedo trousers.
Black low-cut Tuxedo waistcoat (optional. If you wear this, wear suspenders; ditch the cummerbund)
Black patent-leather shoes.
Black socks.
White dress-shirt with studs and cufflinks.
Black bowtie.
Cummerbund (that goes around the waist) or a pair of black suspenders that go over the shoulder, hidden by the jacket (which is usually kept closed).


Pierce Brosnan as James Bond wearing Black Tie

Less common today is the more formal ‘White Tie’ enssemble, which people tend to confuse. There are very few White Tie events that call for a dress-code like this, so people aren’t always aware of what to wear or what to expect.


German bandleader Max Raabe wearing classic White Tie complete with waistcoat, dress-shirt and studs, white bowtie and detatchable wing-collar

‘White Tie’ is the highest level of formality in male attire. White Tie is the kind of stuff you put on when you’re going to meet the Queen. The components of White Tie traditionally include…

Black tailcoat.
Black tuxedo trousers.
Black patent-leather shoes.
Black socks.
White, collarless dress-shirt, held shut with shirt-studs.
White detatchable wing-collar, held onto the shirt with collar-studs.
White bowtie. As the collar doesn’t fold down to hide the tie, it must be one that the wearer can tie. Not a clip-on.
White, low-cut waistcoat, usually with three or four buttons. For a time, black waistcoats of a similar cut were popular, but white is the most traditional.

In searching YouTube for those hideous “modern fashion-and-style guide” videos, I came across one that said that the only difference between Black and White Tie is that you change the jacket from black to white…WRONG! Black Tie is Black Tie, White Tie is White Tie. They are not interchangable and they are not synonymous. Show up for a White Tie event wearing a Black Tie enssemble and you’ll probably be kicked out.

Traditionally, studs and cufflinks would be white or mother-of-pearl. During funerals or wakes, especially during Victorian times, it was acceptable to wear black studs and links, as they were part of acceptable Victorian mourning-jewellery (jewellery that was jet black, in order to reflect the solemnity of the occasion). A thin and discreet dress-watch is one of the acceptable choices of timepiece for Black or White Tie. The best option is a gold chain and pocketwatch or no watch at all (wearing a watch suggests that you need to keep an eye on the time because you have somewhere else to be. And if you’re busy on the night that you’re attending a Black or White Tie event, then you really shouldn’t be there anyway!)

When to Wear Black or White?

Although both are only ever worn after six o’clock in the evening, as I said above, Black Tie and White Tie are not interchangable and one does not stand in for the other. So when do you wear what?

Black Tie is usually worn for events such as going out to dinner with friends, going to a friend’s house for a party, going to the theatre, attending a dance or a party and attending institutional functions, such as those held by schools or universities. You wear Black Tie when you go out for a classical concert or an evening at Carnegie Hall.

White Tie is worn for only the most exclusive of social functions. State dinners, meeting heads of state, attending the Opening Night of a theatre-production and attending evening weddings. White Tie is for those events where you need to know people in order to get one of those handwritten, security-watermarked invitations to get past the security guys wearing sunglasses and black T-shirts to enter the glitzy ballroom filled with celebrities.

The Tuxedo Through the Times

The modern Black and White Tie enssembles started showing up in the late Victorian-era as an alternative to the more colorful and flashy clothes that were typically worn by men of the period. Black Tie and White Tie were on the rise during the 1880s and through to the 20th century, reaching a peak around the 1920s-1950s, when it was popular to go out nightclubbing or fancy restaurants to see famous jazz-orchestras putting on a show or seeing great West End or Broadway Shows, which boomed during this interwar and immediate postwar era. Starting in the 1930s, the white dinner-jacket began to replace the traditional black or midnight blue one (as seen below) when a more comfortable alternative was needed when wearing Black Tie in a warm or tropical climate. Black absorbs heat so wearing full traditional Black Tie in a place like Florida or Singapore would be far too uncomfortable. White, which doesn’t absorb heat, was the natural and acceptable alternative.

During the 1920s, 30s and 40s, some swing-jazz big-bands would give live performances dressed in Black or White Tie. Occasionally, their version of Black or White Tie would be slightly altered so that party-guests wouldn’t mistake the musicians for other guests or staff working at the performance venue.

In the above photo, you can see Benny Goodman (front, with clarinet) and His Orchestra performing; ca. 1938. Bandmembers are wearing Black Tie, but with a more informal white jacket instead of the more traditional black, possibly to differentiate themselves from the audience. Sometimes, bandmembers would wear Black Tie while the bandleader would wear White Tie in order to make him stand out to the audience, such as in this photograph of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra taken in 1921:


Whiteman may be seen wearing White Tie (second from right, standing next to the pianist) while the other bandmembers wear Black Tie

Where did ‘Tuxedo’ Come From?

They’ve always been called ‘Black Tie’ or ‘White Tie’, differentiated by the colour of the bowtie and the presence or lack of a white waistcoat, but why do we also call them ‘Tuxedos’? Where did this term come from?

To be clear, the ‘Tuxedo’ is not the full getup. Traditionally, the ‘tuxedo’ was the black dinner-jacket. It wasn’t until later that the word ‘Tuxedo’ referred to the jacket and the black trousers as well. The word ‘Tuxedo’ comes from the town of Tuxedo Park in New York State in the United States of America.

Black Tie and White Tie Today

White Tie isn’t as common today as it used to be, unless you’re a filthy rich billionaire going to a charity fundraising dinner-party or something, at least. Black Tie still remains fairly common though, although it seems that there will always be a number of people who don’t know what it is or how to wear it…President Barack Obama for one…

…If you haven’t figured out what’s wrong here, Obama’s missing the wing-collar which goes under the bowtie and he’s missing the white waistcoat as well. Obama is supposedly famous for his high-fashion faux-pas…

Looking for more information? Then check out the Black Tie Guide, the definitive internet authority on Black and White Tie, what it is, how to wear it, where it came from and what makes it up.