In 1930s Hong Kong, as news reports on the Japanese threat and the prosecution of Chinese crime continued, cases involving the “habitually slighted” Macanese sometimes captured the collective imagination, especially when incidents involved race, sex, and violence. Perhaps it was because such cases provided a diversion from the turmoil in China, or that these occurrences were so unexpected. The prevailing assumption in Hong Kong was that most “Portuguese”, as they were known, 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 emphasized time honored modes of social behavior, especially for women. When 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, an English tram inspector, by Jesuina Maria Xavier, the Macanese owner of a Wan Chi boarding house, in December 1930.
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