Many RIC men also served in Shanghai. The images one took are to be auctioned.
After the first World War, Shanghai was one of the most exciting and dynamic cities in the world, the “Whore of the Orient”, with its opium dens, nightclubs and casinos, and a cast of characters that included White Russians fleeing the Bolsheviks, Jews from central Europe, American adventurers and a fair smattering of Irish policemen.
A collection of photographs from that time, brought back to Ireland by a Dublin police officer in the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP), are a reminder of the role the Irish played in those heady days in the International Settlement.
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Boxer uprising
The photographs, which go under the hammer on Sunday at Adam’s in Dublin, document street life, but also reflect some of the news events of the time.
They show the executions of those involved in the Boxer Uprising, the anti-western campaign that took place 11 years before the collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing.
The policeman’s family wants his name kept secret but he was in the force between 1905 and 1930, so he would have kept tabs on the gangsters, communists and nationalists, the warlords and Japanese spies who made up the city’s underworld. During the 1930s, it had 6,000 active officers.
The former Central Police Station of the Shanghai Municipal Police is an elegant sight at the heart of the old International Settlement. Today it is the headquarters of the Shanghai National Security Agency. It’s notable how much of the legacy of that era remains in the concessions in Shanghai.
Shanghai’s International Settlement was set up under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the first opium war in 1842.
The SMP was set up in 1854 to ensure the security of the million or so people in the largely British settlement, something it did until 1943.
“There were a lot more Irish than you would expect,” said Robert Bickers, author of The Scramble for China, about foreigners in China during the Qing dynasty, and Empire Made Me, a fascinating account of one Shanghai policeman after the first World War.
“The Irish mostly came pre-World War One,” said Prof Bickers. “The SMP decided to initiate a cadet scheme to improve the cadre of their officers.They hired Pierre Pattison from the Royal Irish Constabulary, and cadets were sent to the RIC for several months’ training, or a couple of dozen were recruited directly from the RIC and Dublin Municipal Police.
“Some stayed for a matter of weeks or a term, but a lot stayed for six or 10 or even 30 years.”
He has details on about 40 former RIC men who joined the SMP, including eight who came out together in 1900, six in 1904 and 10 who joined in 1905.
Black & Tan myth
There is a story that many of the Irish officers were former Black & Tans, but Prof Bickers says this is one of the “great myths” about the force.
“Three of these 40 rose to assistant commissioner rank, another peaked at superintendent, another there at chief inspector,” he said.“There was a lively St Patrick’s Society in Shanghai, and a busy Masonic lodge, Lodge Erin. The biggest shock for many was living in a city – most were country men.”
