Death of a Young Shanghailander: The Thorburn Case and the Defence of the British Treaty Ports in China in 1931

Abstract

On June 4th 1931 the North China Daily News—the principal British owned English-language newspaper in Shanghai published a small report on page 12 headed ‘Alleged crime by foreigner: Shooting affair on the Nanking railway: Held by military authorities’ This went on to state a Russian had been arrested for the murder of two Chinese gendarmes on the 1st of June at 10pm. He had been challenged as a prelude to a search but had fired on them and escaped having fatally wounded two men. The following morning a ‘suspicious looking foreigner’ had been arrested in the vicinity and was still being held in custody. The source of this story was the previous day's Shenbao, the leading Shanghai Chinese newspaper which had picked up the story from the Suzhou press. The Russian's name was given as Xi si ke tuo qu luo—which might be transliterated as ‘Sea Scout’, for reasons which will become clear.