Hong Kong’s rapid economic development through the 1930s had the effect of creating a social and political “bubble” within the colony, one in which public acknowledgment of China’s deterioration between the world wars could be pushed to the side. Despite the presence of Japanese troops a few hundred miles from its borders in 1931, the government and the British Colonial Office in London were complicit in this denial of reality, pronouncing that Hong Kong remained safe and secure.
In spite of these illusions, a slow erosion of confidence in the government by many in Hong Kong, especially among working class Britons, Eurasians, Macanese, and Chinese, was already taking shape, often hidden from public view. As Henry Lethbridge wrote of most Europeans:
… working class Europeans (in Hong Kong) existed on the periphery of both European and Chinese communities, although their presence was essential for the smooth running of the colonial economy and society. They lived, in other words, in a terrain vague between the communities. … He did not belong to Chinese society and, it can be surmised, never wished to.
(Lethbridge 1975:110-111)
One of the rare documented examples of these relations can be drawn from the details of a public trial involving a Macanese woman accused of assault on her British lover, which caused a minor sensation at the end of 1930. The principals in this case were two people who lived on the margins of society, whose condition as social and cultural outcasts was exposed through a series of articles in the press.
A Study of Marginalization
As the political situation in Southeast Asia deteriorated, inside Hong Kong some of the most popular stories in the daily press involved crime and punishment. While most reported the prosecution of Chinese, every so often cases involving the Macanese captured the collective imagination, particularly those involving race, sex, and violence.
Perhaps it was because such cases provided a badly needed diversion from the turmoil in China, or that these instances was so unexpected. The prevailing assumption in Hong Kong was that most Macanese were law abiding subjects, family oriented, and hard-working members of a community who rarely deviated from the norms established by the Catholic Church and Macau’s old world traditions. Each avenue seemed to emphasize specific and time honored modes of social behavior, especially for women. When female members deviated from those norms, the implications (not to mention the humiliation) rated banner headlines. Such was the case in the shooting of Alfred Joseph Manton, a British tram inspector, by Jesuina Maria Xavier in December 1930.
The Arrest
According to police reports, Jesuina and Alfred had lived together as lovers for six years in a second story flat on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai, a poor district of Hong Kong occupied by Chinese and the European underclass. Alfred had apparently spoken to Jesuina over a period of months about a “parting of the ways”, and had mentioned it again on December 27th. Described by her lover as in “a highly-strung condition”, Jesuina took the Star Ferry that morning to Kowloon to visit her younger sister, Cecilia Maria Xavier, to seek advice. During the talk, Cecilia excused herself to take a bath, but Jesuina secretly took her sister’s house keys and unlocked a wardrobe where a revolver was kept, then went back to the apartment she shared with Manton in Wan Chai.
After Alfred returned just before 1pm for lunch, he noticed that Jesuina was in the kitchen with the amah (a Chinese servant) cooking. Jesuina then sat down at the table and told Alfred that she had made arrangements to stay with her brothers and sisters, and refused to accept a $50 monthly allowance that Manton had offered previously. Then she returned to the kitchen for a plate of fish, placed it on the table, and walked to a bedroom behind where Alfred was seated. Just as he reached with his fork and knife to eat, Alfred heard two shots go off behind him, and after a short pause another shot was fired. Realizing he had been hit multiple times, Manton testified:
I jumped up and turned round and saw the accused crouching away from me toward the bedroom with a revolver in her left hand. The muzzle was pointed upward. I rushed at her and took the revolver from her and then found I was bleeding from the right arm, and called the amah. She came and I told her to fetch a policeman.
Jesuina was held at the No. 2 Police Station in Hong Kong and charged with attempted murder. When asked about her motive by the arresting officer, Jesuina was at first silent and expressionless, then added that she “… would never harm him”. Alfred claimed later that he didn’t know of a reason for her behavior, but noted Jesuina’s habit of “neglecting the house by going out gambling”. He later testified that this was one reason for deciding to end their relationship. But before Manton left for the police station, he added an interesting aside. Jesuina had begged him to: “Shoot me before you go.”
And so the police were left to consider a number of questions. Among them: Was Jesuina Xavier, the jilted lover of an English trolleyman, responsible for attempting to kill him out of revenge? Did she harm him in a fit of rage, or was it an accident due to her “mental instability” ? Before answering, let us learn more about the principals.
The Principals
Who were Jesuina Xavier, Alfred Manton, and others involved in the case? And why did this particular incident attract so much press coverage? Her full name was Jesuina Maria Lourdes (do Rosario) Xavier, born in Hong Kong on October 17, 1886. When she was twenty-three, Jesuina married Jose Maria Xavier on May 29, 1909, ten years her senior and a distant cousin of the family that owned the Hongkong Printing Press. Jose worked as a Clerk for Banque de l’Indo-Chine, a well-known French banking firm from at least 1898. But Jesuina apparently left Jose without a divorce around 1924, and continued using his surname while operating a boarding house in Wan Chai. She then met and began living with Alfred Manton in 1925 until the shooting in December 1930. Jesuina was then 45 years old. There is no record of any children from either union.
We know less about her accuser and lover, Alfred Joseph Manton. Scant information indicates that Manton was a British Traffic Inspector for the Hong Kong Tramways from at least 1924. Prior to Hong Kong, Manton served during World War I in France as an enlisted man in the King’s Liverpool Regiment. Further research indicates that Manton died in Hong Kong in 1933, but it is not known whether his death was connected to wounds suffered in the shooting. No other information about Manton could be found.
British Europeans like Alfred Manton, however, belonged to a working class segment that was excluded from “acceptable” society, and rife with racial and status divisions. This exclusion may suggest why Manton and Jesuina Xavier became involved in the first place. As Lethbridge wrote:
“The European lower orders were excluded from the social world of merchant and official and forced either into isolation within the circle of their own occupational and status group or into a segment of the underdog Portuguese or Eurasian communities.” (Lethbridge, 1975:108-7) He later commented: “ (A working class British male) was more at ease with Portuguese and Eurasians; but his social contacts with them were often touchy, prickly, and patronising; for even the declasse European knew he was a member of a dominant race.” (110)
The two chief witnesses, on the other hand, were established members of the Macanese middle class. They were Jesuina’s younger sister, Cecilia Maria Felicitas do Rosario, and her husband, Reinaldo Gustavo Xavier. Ceilia was apparently a housewife and mother. Reinaldo was the Manager of the Hong Kong Printing Press and the sixth child and second son of its founder, Lisbello de Jesus Xavier and Estefinia Francisca dos Santos. Cecilia and Reinaldo had nine children at the time of the trial: a tenth child would be born in December 1931. Both witnesses were thirty-seven years old.
One of Jesuina’s defense counsels, who could be considered among the Macanese elite, was a young barrister named Leonardo (Leo) d’Almada e Castro Jr., the son of a prominent family. Leonardo Sr. was one of the first Macanese to arrive with the British Superintendent of Trade in 1842 and rose to be a prominent civil servant, land owner, and philanthropist. Leonardo Jr. is interesting because of who he became after the trial. In 1937 he succeeded Jose’ Pedro Braga as the second Portuguese “non-voting” member of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. As we shall see in the next chapter, when the threat of a Japanese invasion grew imminent in 1940, d’Almada Jr. won wide respect by criticizing the Legislative Council for devising an evacuation plan only for British citizens.
A Clash of Cultures
The popularity of this case had as much to do with culture as it was for the notoriety of the crime. Based on what we know about the Portuguese community in Hong Kong during this period, the pressures and social stigmas would seem to be much greater on a Macanese woman than on her British lover. The public narrative was that Jesuina Xavier was thirty-eight years old when she left her older husband, a respected member of the Portuguese community, to live with a “foreigner” out of wedlock for six years. She then was arrested at age forty-five for committing a violent crime, and may have considered suicide. Those circumstances alone would have meant her being ostracized from regular social circles.
Due to the prevailing ideology of maintaining “social distance” from lower classes, moreover, there were unwritten rules that dissuaded mixing between the British, Portuguese, and Chinese communities. Personal “fraternization”, even within the scope of marriage, was frowned upon. When this occurred outside of marriage, a woman from any community was often shunned, labeled as a “fallen woman”, or in Jesuina’s case, potentially tried as a criminal, similar to the prosecution of prostitutes. This was especially true if the liaison involved a member of a racially “superior” class, as was Alfred Manton, a British citizen, and a partner from a subordinate class, as was Jesuina Xavier, a Macanese. In doing so, Jesuina crossed a divide that probably brought ridicule and shame from both the Portuguese and British communities. Those factors may have been the principal reasons why the story ran for several issues in Hong Kong’s two major dailies.
The Catholic Church in Hong Kong was no less forgiving. In the case of Jesuina’s first marriage, divorce was not an option, and any attempt at a secular annulment would have been forbidden under the threat of excommunication. After separating from her husband and living out of wedlock with anyone, especially an Englishman, Jesuina was in violation of another Church tenant that had similar penalties. Both would have prevented her participation in the sacraments, including attendance at Mass, baptisms, and other religious ceremonies throughout the year. Expulsion from the Church also would prevent her burial in the few Catholic cemeteries set aside for the faithful. Thus, Jesuina’s religious separation had multiple repercussions on her social and family life, essentially removing her from accepted society in this world and the next.
The weight of these millstones was especially burdensome on extended relatives. Related by marriage through her sister to a well-to-do family, Jesuina Xavier no doubt was thought to bring shame to her in-law’s household, and by extension affect their standing in social and business networks. Given the insularity of the Portuguese community, we can only imagine the knowing glances that Reinaldo and Cecilia Xavier endured when attending church each Sunday. We may also picture Reinaldo’s encounters at the Club Lusitano, the most prominent Portuguese organization in Hong Kong, in which Xavier males were members since 1903, and his painful attempts to avoid references to his outlawed relative.
We might also visualize the embarrassment of Cecilia’s children at school as the trial was followed in the press by the parish priests and nuns, and the whispers of mothers and amahs behind Cecilia’s back as they gossiped about her beloved sister. All of this ridicule and innuendo was to be endured in silence, as reflected in Jesuina’s demeanor during her interrogation. What must have been going through her mind during this ordeal? How much could she be expected to endure?
The Trial
As Alfred Manton recovered from his wounds, Jesuina Xavier remained in prison until her trial began on February 2, 1931. When the trial resumed, Hong Kong’s Public Prosecutor, H. Somerset Fitzroy, surprised the defense by reducing the charge from the “attempted murder” to “malicious intent to maim, disfigure or disable”. The new charge, however, still carried a life sentence.
The trial led to some important revelations that determined how the defense would proceed. Defense co-counsel P.W. Hodgson first called to the stand Sub-Inspector Michael Murphy, the first policeman to arrive at the Wan Chai flat following the shooting. During his questioning, Murphy noted that Jesuina was distraught and was reluctant to speak. But reading from his notes he recalled the following quote from the defendant: “I don’t think I have anything to say.” she stated, “My conscience is quite clear of any guilty act, especially against Manton. I would never have harmed him.” Murphy then was asked if he had found any other evidence in Jesuina’s Xavier’s flat following the shooting. Incredibly, Murphy stated that he had not looked before returning to the police station. He had only collected some spent shells on the floor near where Manton was shot. No other part of the room seemed to be out of order, Murphy replied.
Hodson then called Jesuina’s sister, Cecilia Xavier, to testify. Ceilia said she had talked to her sister on December 27th when she visited her house in Kowloon, but then excused herself to take a bath. When she returned, Jesuina was gone. Three hours later a note was delivered by a servant from Jesuina telling her that she had taken the gun from the locked wardrobe and intended to commit suicide. The letter was then produced and submitted as evidence.
Cecilia also said that a second letter from Jesuina addressed to Manton that had been found in a bedroom drawer by Ceilia’s brother-in-law after the incident, which the police had not discovered. The letter apologized to Manton and stated that she wanted to end her life because he was leaving. Hodgson produced the letter for the court, but it was dismissed because its origins could not be confirmed. The appearance of the second letter again suggested that police inspectors had failed to fully investigate the incident.
Assault or an Accident ?
The most important revelations, however, came from a review of the shooting. Alfred Manton had testified earlier that he knew of no reason why Jesuina would harm him, but also noted that she was distraught and upset over his plans to leave her, and repeated Jesuina’s request to “Shoot me” as she lay on the floor of the dining room. Now it was clear that the defense team must put Jesuina’s statement into context in order to prove her innocence to the charge of intentional wounding. The strategy involved shedding light on the nature of Manton’s wounds.
Leo D’Almada, Jesuina’s co-defense counsel, called Dr. I. Newton, a specialist from the Government Civil Hospital. Newton testified that the accuser received three wounds: two to his upper back near the shoulder blades and one that pierced and exited the fleshy part of the right arm. None were considered serious because the bullets were old and deteriorated. Newton also noted that the shots were fired from about three feet away with “considerable variation of aim”, which suggested that Jesuina pointed the gun wildly and did not appear to be concentrating on any one part of Manton’s body.
D’Almada then recalled Alfred Manton to the stand. He asked Manton what he would say about a person who had never fired a revolver such as the gun in question. Manton stated: “… in the case of a person who has never handled (a revolver) before, anything could happen. … Anyone who had not received instructions … is liable to cause an accident.” D’Almada then asked Manton again about the gun immediately after the shooting. Manton said that the revolver was in Jesuina’s left hand and the muzzle was pointed upward with Jesuina’s back to him, three feet away. He also testified that Jesuina Xavier was right handed.
An Alternative View
Given this testimony, Jesuina’s defense counsels began to reconstruct an alternative explanation of the incident. The probable cause was Alfred Manton’s decision to end a six year relationship. There seemed to be no evidence, as suggested in his early statements, that Jesuina kept an “untidy household” or had a gambling habit. Instead, Jesuina may have had a mental breakdown, perhaps feeling ostracized once she realized that her British lover was leaving, and she saw only one solution: Suicide.
Her actions supported this theory. Writing two suicide notes, Jesuina traveled to her sister’s house in Kowloon to retrieve a gun. Jesuina left the first note with the servant with instructions to deliver it to Cecilia and Reinaldo Xavier later that afternoon. Jesuina then returned to her flat in Hong Kong and placed the second note in a place where Alfred would find it, in a drawer of their bedroom. Then she went to kitchen to help her servant prepare lunch.
Upon Alfred Manton’s arrival, Jesuina went into the bedroom to retrieve the gun from the same drawer where the second suicide note was kept. She then returned to the kitchen and placed a plate for fish in front of Manton. Just as he picked up a fork and knife to eat, three shots rang out behind him. Manton turned to see Jesuina “facing away” from him toward the bedroom, with the gun in her left hand and the muzzle pointing upward. He then took the gun from her hand and threw her to the floor.
Because Jesuina fired “facing away” from Manton toward the bedroom, a shot to his back and right arm would only have been possible if Jesuina had been pointing the gun in her left hand facing backwards, without seeing her alleged target. The fact that there was, in Dr. Newton’s words, “considerable variation” in her aim, suggests that the shots were wild, and consistent with someone who was highly distraught.
The most plausible explanation, P.W. Hodgson concluded, was that Jesuina waved the revolver erratically, firing a gun she had never used, hitting Manton three times as she missed her actual target, her own head. The magistrate then asked Hodgson to clarify for the record. His answer, paraphrased by a reporter, summed up Jesuina Xavier’s defense: “…The shooting was an accident. Mrs. Xavier did not want to fire at Mr. Manton. … she wanted to shoot herself in front of him.”
The Verdict
The evidence seemed to point to an acquittal, but there is no record of the final verdict. News accounts following the trial have been lost, possibly in the turmoil that was about to engulf Hong Kong and the rest of Asia during World War II. But from what can be determined from the accounts we have, Jesuina Xavier was not convicted of the charges, and probably disappeared from the pages of history after spending a few months in a psychiatric ward. However disappointing it is not knowing her ultimate fate, the limited research available suggests that Jesuina Xavier and other women and men in Hong Kong’s Macanese community often endured immense scrutiny according to prevailing standards of conduct, often set by racial and class boundaries, religious doctrine, family history, and traditional cultures, all of which were magnified in cases like this by the local press.
Such pressures were of course present during periods of economic growth and political vitality, as during late 19th and early 20th centuries. But those expectations created added weight for people like Jesuina Xavier and Alfred Manton who lived in violation of social norms and on the margins of society, especially when Hong Kong society on the whole was threatened by the disintegration of China and the rise of Imperial Japan through the 1930s. As we shall see later, those anxieties seemed to reach a climax in the summer of 1940 during a period of heightened fear.
Sources
- Henry Lethbridge, 19th Century Working Class Hong Kong, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 15, 1975
- The China Mail, Dec. 29, 1930, “Mrs. Xavier Charged with Attempted Murder”
- The Hongkong Telegraph, December 29, 1930, “Portuguese Woman Before Court. Charge of Attempted Murder”
- The China Mail, Feb. 2, 1931, “Manton Shooting Affair”
- The Hongkong Telegraph, Feb. 2, 1931, “Wanchai Shooting Incident.
- The China Mail, Feb. 3, 1931, “Mrs. Xavier Committed to Trial”
- The Hongkong Telegraph, February 3, 1931, “Manton Shooting Affair”
- The China Mail, Feb. 18, 1931, “Mrs. Xavier to Appear”
- The China Mail, Feb. 24, 1931, “Wanchai Shooting Affair”
More Stories
Studies of China’s GBA: U.S. – Chinese Interdependence after the Pandemic
Colonial Journalism in 19th Century Macau and Hong Kong
Women and Cultural Boundaries in Macau