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Shanghai Municipal Police
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The Shanghai Municipal Police (?????????) was the police force of the Shanghai Municipal Council which governed the Shanghai International Settlement between 1854 and 1943, when the settlement was retroceded to Chinese control.
The force, initially composed of Europeans, mainly Britons, and after 1864 including Chinese, was over the next 90 years expanded to include a Sikh Branch (established 1884), a Japanese contingent (from 1916), and a volunteer part-time Special police (from 1918).
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Encyclopedia
The Shanghai Municipal Police (?????????) was the police force of the Shanghai Municipal Council which governed the Shanghai International Settlement between 1854 and 1943, when the settlement was retroceded to Chinese control.
The force, initially composed of Europeans, mainly Britons, and after 1864 including Chinese, was over the next 90 years expanded to include a Sikh Branch (established 1884), a Japanese contingent (from 1916), and a volunteer part-time Special police (from 1918). In 1941 it acquired a Russian Auxiliary Detachment (formerly the Russian Regiment of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps).
Origins
The first detachment of men was recruited from Hong Kong. At later points groups of men were recruited from the Royal Irish Constabulary, London's Metropolitan Police, and from the British military presence in Shanghai. Eventually a structure for recruitment of Britons through the Council's London agents, John Pook & Co., was formalised, and a steady stream of young Britons was recruited to serve in Shanghai.
In 1936, the last year of near-normal peacetime policing, the force totalled 4,739 men with 3,466 in the Chinese Branch, 457 in the Foreign Branch (mostly British), 558 in the Sikh Branch, and 258 in the Japanese Branch.
The force was mostly occupied in the routine business of urban policing, keeping the streets safe and the traffic moving, but it was also always seen as the Settlement's first line of defence against Chinese nationalist activity. After the failure of the 1913 Second Revolution in China against the autocratic presidency of Yuan Shikai, the settlement was increasingly troubled by armed crime. In the aftermath of the 1926-27 Nationalist Revolution, the force also struggled to contain a wave of armed robberies and politically-motivated kidnappings. Throughout the 1930s the force also faced challenges to its right to operate and the range of its activities from the Nationalist Government and the police force of the (Nationalist Chinese) City Government of Shanghai.
From August 1937 to 8 December 1941, and the Japanese occupation of the International Settlement after Pearl Harbor, the force struggled to contain terror campaigns launched against the Japanese and their collaborators by underground Chinese Nationalist units, and the violent reprisals of the Japanese forces. Under Japanese control thereafter, although a large number of British officers were arrested as 'political prisoners' and interned in Shanghai's Haiphong Road camp, most had no option but to stay in their posts until their eventual dismissal and internment in February/March 1943.
Legacy
The SMP's legacy has been threefold. In response to the rise in armed crime, serving officers such as William E. Fairbairn, Eric A. Sykes, and Dermot 'Pat' O'Neil pioneered innovative combat pistol shooting, hand to hand combat, and knife fight training, as well as SWAT techniques that were eventually adopted by other forces internationally, and for clandestine warfare use in the Second World War. As a result of the catastrophic policing failure on 30 May 1925, when Sikh and Chinese men of the SMP were ordered to open fire on Chinese demonstrators on Nanjing road, killing or fatally wounding a dozen young men, thereby precipitating the nationwide anti-imperialist (and anti-British) May Thirtieth Movement, the force developed new riot control measures. Fairbairn was again the central figure here, leading what was termed the Reserve Unit, and he later took these innovations with him into British late-colonial policing in Cyprus and Singapore.
The Special Branch
The force established a political policing unit, the Special Branch, in 1925. Its greatest coup was the arrest of Jakob Rudnik (a.k.a. Hilaire Noulens) and his wife Tatiana Moissenko on 15 June 1931. The arrest, the result of close co-ordination with the Special Branches in Singapore, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (M.I.6), and French colonial intelligence, broke up the Comintern's secret International Liaison Department in the city. It failed to realise, however, that Richard Sorge, resident in the city from 1930-33 was a GRU agent. It worked closely also after 1928 with Guomindang agencies, and helped destroy the urban base of the Chinese Communist Party by 1932. The Special Branch's archive was acquired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1949, and was eventually opened to researchers in the 1980s, although the files had clearly been weeded to remove material that might compromise some figures who had had a Shanghai past.
Force Commanders
- Samuel Clifton (Superintendent, Superintendent 1854 – 1860), resigned after charges of embezzlement were ‘not proved’ in court (North China Herald, 24 November 1860).
- William Ramsbottom (Superintendent, in charge as Inspector by February 1862, possibly since Clifton resigned; Superintendent by 19 April 1861). Late Sergt-Major, 2nd Queen’s.
- Charles E. Penfold (Superintendent, 19 April 1864-1885).
- James Painter McEuen (Captain Superintendent, 6 March 1885 to 25 July 1896), invalided, died on way home, Yokohama.
- Donald Mackenzie (Deputy Superintendent, also acting Captain Superintendent 16 September 1896, to 1898).
- Pierre B. Pattison (Captain Superintendent, 12 Feb 1898?1897?- 30 September 1900), on secondment from Royal Irish Constabulary, but also denied extension.
- G. Howard (Chief Inspector, Acting i/c 1 October 1900 to 8 March 1901).
- Alan Maxwell Boisragon (Captain Superintendent, 8 March 1901 to 20 September 1906), forced to resign.
- Kenneth John McEuen (acting i/c Sept 1906-August 1907).
- Colonel C.D. Bruce (Captain Superintendent, 7 August 1907-1913), forced to resign after failure to seize Chapei (Zhabei) during the Second Revolution.
- Alan Hilton-Johnson (acting Captain Superintendent 1914), resigned to join up.
- Kenneth John McEuen (Captain Superintendent, 1913-25), forced to retire after May 30th incident (son of J. P. McEuen).
- Edward Ivo Medhurst Barrett (Commissioner of Police, 1925-29), forced to resign.
- Reginald Meyrick Jullion Martin (Extra Commissioner, 1929-31, until F.W. Gerrard appointed permanently to post).
- Frederick Wernham Gerrard (Commissioner of Police, 7 October 1929 to 1938), retired.
- Kenneth Morison Bourne (Commissioner of Police, 29-5-38 to February 1942), terminated due to Japanese occupation.
- Henry Malcom Smyth (Deputy Commissioner of Police, 1938-42; acting Commissioner, August 1941-February 42). Resigned due to Japanese Occupation; Advisor to (Japanese) Commissioner of Police Watari 21 February 1942 to 10 August 1942.
- M. Watari (Commissioner of Police from 19 February 1942)
Memoirs
E.W. Peters, Shanghai Policeman (London: Rich & Cowan, 1937). Peters was dismissed from the force after being found not guilty (with a colleague) of the killing of an indigent Chinese man. The volume is part policing memoir, part apologia.
Ted Quigley, A Spirit of Adventure: The Memoirs of Ted Quigley (Lewes: The Book Guild Ltd, 1994). Quigley served in the SMP from 1938-42.
John Sanbrook, In my Father's time: A Biography (New York: Vantage press, 2008). A memoir of John (Jack) Sanbrook, who served in the force 1930-42, and then after internment in War Crimes investigation.
Maurice Springfield, Hunting opium and other scents (Halesworth: Norfolk and Suffolk Publicity, 1966). Springfield was a senior officer in the force, and led its anti-opium squad. Most of the book is concerned with hunting.
External links
- Wallace Kinloch obituary http://sc.info.gov.hk/gb/www.police.gov.hk/offbeat/630/letter.html
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