Empire of Crime Read online

  Praise for Empire of Crime

  “Snappy as Spillane, this book is packed with girls, guns and guts. The violent milieu explored by Newark is not South Side Chicago but the British Empire.”

  —Independent

  “Probing areas which historians have usually tactfully avoided, Newark has lifted the curtain on a hidden era of the British Empire.”

  —The Herald

  “As fascinating and exciting as any crime novel, a truly gripping exposé.”

  —Ian Knight, author of Zulu Rising

  “History as it’s meant to be: clear, unpretentious, exciting, authoritative and enthusiastic…. Unquestionably one of my books of the year.”

  —City AM

  “Tim Newark’s vivid account of the exploits of law enforcement agents during the British Empire is captivating. He brings to life these talented international policemen—the drug-busting cops of the day—superbly. Agatha Christie meets The Godfather!”

  —Andrew Roberts, author of The Storm of War

  Tim Newark is the author of the critically acclaimed Lucky Luciano: Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent and The Mafia at War. For 17 years editor of Military Illustrated, he is also the author of numerous military history volumes, including Highlander. He has worked as a TV scriptwriter and historical consultant, resulting in seven TV documentary series for BBC Worldwide and the History Channel, including the thirteen-part TV series Hitler’s Bodyguard. He contributes political comment pieces to the Daily Express, Telegraph, and Sunday Times.

  First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2018

  Copyright © 2011 by Tim Newark

  First published in Great Britain by Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Rain Saukas

  Cover photo credits: iStock

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-2346-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2347-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  To all the colonial police officers who put their lives on the line, doing the right thing

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOR THEIR HELP IN THE research of this book, I would like to thank the following individuals and institutions: the staff of the British National Archives, Kew; the British Library, King’s Cross, India Office Library & Records, and Newspaper Library, Colindale; Liddel Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London; School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London; Federal Bureau of Investigation Records Management Division; James P. Quignel, Harry J. Anslinger Papers, Penn State University; Cliff Le Quelenec, HMS Belfast Association; National Malaya & Borneo Veterans Association UK; Mrs Hilary Drummond; Jim Prisk and Keith Lomas, Royal Hong Kong Police Association; Dr K.Y. Lam, curator of the Hong Kong Police Museum; D.S.P. Halal Ismail, curator of the Royal Malaysia Police Museum, Kuala Lumpur; Roderic Knowles, for memories of gold smuggling; Peter Newark, for his extensive crime and police photographic archive; historians Andrew Roberts, Ian Knight and James Morton, for their kind words and suggestions; special thanks to Chris Newark, for his good advice and extensive colonial history library.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1 The Unfortunate Mr Hartley

  2 The Impressive Lt-Col Roos-Keppel

  3 The Tragic Miss Carleton

  4 The Formidable Russell Pasha

  5 The Fearless Mr Anslinger

  6 The Daring Sir Cecil

  7 The Deadly Inspector Fairbairn

  8 The Mutilated Inspector Hutton

  9 The Pretty Orphan Gangoo

  10 The Lucky Mr Lai

  11 The Smart Commissioner Young

  12 The Wrong-Headed Mr Anslinger

  13 The Implacable Mr Stern

  14 The Bestial Mr Uku

  15 The Blacked-Up Inspector Drummond

  16 The Obliging Mr Lou

  17 The Whistle-Blowing Inspector Wallace

  18 The Gold-Fingered Mr Knowles

  Notes on Sources

  Bibliography

  Index

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘It is not the man who eats the opium, but the opium that eats the man.’

  – Chinese Mandarin maxim

  SOMETIMES THE BEST INTENTIONS CAN lead to the worst results. When Great Britain took the moral high ground and agreed to end its lucrative export of opium from Imperial India to China in 1908, it unleashed a century of criminality. Just as America’s misguided Prohibition of alcohol made illicit fortunes for the Mafia, so organised crime within the British Empire grew rich on its trade in illegal narcotics in the twentieth century.

  Victorian Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone had predicted this would happen when he argued in Parliament against the abolition of the imperial trade in opium. ‘An enormous contraband trade will grow,’ he told well-meaning Liberal politicians. ‘Does not my honourable Friend see that, supposing he could stop the growth of opium in the whole Indian peninsula, his measure would immensely stimulate the growth of it in China?’

  This book is the first to reveal the full extent and variety of organised crime within the British Empire and how gangsters exploited its global trade routes to establish a new age of criminal networks that spanned the world. They even took the liberty of using the very weapons of imperial power – Her Majesty’s Royal Navy – to smuggle drugs from continent to continent. HMS Belfast – now an iconic museum ship moored in the River Thames – was once packed with Triad narcotics from Hong Kong intended for distribution in America.

  Illicit guns were smuggled along ancient trade routes made safe by the British Empire – through the Middle East, across the Persian Gulf, to Afghanistan and India. Most of these weapons were supplied by European arms manufacturers, greedy for profit, who did not care where the guns ended up. Some of the guns were even bought with money given by the Imperial Indian government to border tribes to ensure their loyalty. ‘So that we not only supplied the tribesmen with arms of British manufacture,’ concluded one cynical veteran of the North-West Frontier, ‘but we gave them the money to buy them!’

  The imperial prohibition of opium trading caused great tension between the government in London and its colonial governors, who had to deal with the messy outcome of these good intentions. Chinese refugees fleeing civil war in the mainland presented a major problem to Sir Cecil Clementi, Governor of Hong Kong in the 1920s. Faced with a shortfall of opium to meet the needs of thousands of new addicts, he knew that something dramatic had to be done. Rather than seeing the opium trade fall into the hands of criminal smugglers who had no incentive to control the consumption of opium, Sir Cecil took the unconventional initiative of becoming a major dealer himself.

  In defiance of the British government’s own anti-drugs stance, Sir Cecil organised the purchase of large quantities of opium directly from Persia to dump on his home market and put the smugglers out of busine
ss. He even entered into negotiations with other colonies to supply them with much-needed opium, too. It was an extraordinary experiment and Sir Cecil noted with delight the dramatic fall in opiumrelated crime in his own colony; but the Whitehall bureaucrats couldn’t put up with this for long and demanded he cease dealing in the drug.

  If Britain had handed a great gift to organised crime, it also took on the burden of pursuing the purveyors of this new evil. Principal among these innovative drugs-busting investigators was Russell Pasha, Commandant of the Cairo Police and founder of the Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau. Seeing the damage caused by a new wave of opium-derived drugs, especially heroin, on the streets of the Egyptian capital, he set about pulling together evidence of a vast international network, linking East with West. His agents exposed the opium fields guarded by narcotics warlords and tracked down the corrupt pharmaceutical companies in Western Europe who were happy to sell thousands of kilos to ruthless master criminals.

  With the coming of the Second World War and its aftermath, political pressures further complicated the world of organised crime within the British Empire. Japan funded its invading armies with profits from criminal enterprises, while anti-colonial movements blurred the line between terrorism, freedom fighting and racketeering. Gangsters aligned themselves with whichever party protected their crooked assets. Sometimes colonial policemen were drawn into the underworld and had doubts about whether they were really on the right side.

  ‘I began to wonder if I was getting a kick out of my business,’ said 22-year-old Inspector Drummond of his undercover battle against the Kenyan Mau Mau Rebels. ‘I used to tell myself it was a nasty job that had to be done, that after all I was only doing my duty, and that the important thing was I should do it well. But did all of them have to die?’

  In Hong Kong, Inspector Wallace agonised over the everyday corruption around him. ‘I sometimes feel that it is all rather a bad dream,’ he said. ‘Even if I leave this colony penniless and in disgrace, at least I shall take my principles with me – and these are more precious to me than anything else.’

  The story told in this book for the first time is one of high principles challenged by evil conspiracies, of moral crusaders tested by mobster realities. At the heart of it is an extraordinary global empire seeking a mission for good but derailed by criminal gangs and monstrous illegal profits. Empire of Crime is the dark underbelly of our colonial history.

  1

  THE UNFORTUNATE MR HARTLEY

  IT IS NOT A GOOD idea to take on the British Empire, especially when it has chosen to pursue the righteous path and correct past errors. John Hartley – Englishman, Freemason, Conservative, drug dealer – found himself in just this precarious situation on 6 April 1878.

  Standing up in a court in Yokohama, Japan, Mr Hartley faced both Her Britannic Majesty and Motono Morimichi, Superintendent of Japanese Customs. They accused him of smuggling opium into Japan in contravention of the treaty between their two great countries. Hartley argued that the opium was purely for medicinal purposes, but the judge was unimpressed.

  ‘I find that no opium can properly be called medicinal opium unless it contains at least six per cent morphia [morphine]. The evidence shows that the proportion of morphia in it falls far short of the standard.’

  The judge admitted that there was some discrepancy between the tests on the sample opium by two different experts, but he felt that was beside the point.

  ‘Not only do I find that the opium in question is not medical opium, I find that it is smoking opium,’ he explained. ‘The opium used in China for smoking is mostly Indian opium. The flavour of Indian opium, which renders it less palatable a medicine, renders it all the more palatable for smoking, and the absence of morphia, which makes ordinary Indian opium useless as a medicine, is no disadvantage of smoking, if it is not a distinct advantage.’

  Hartley was found guilty of smuggling Indian-produced smoking opium into Japan, had his drugs confiscated and was fined $165. But Mr Hartley would not let it rest there. He was aggrieved at being publicly humiliated and losing what he considered his lawful business, thanks to a Japanese boycott of his goods. He demanded an appeal of the judgement. He was a legitimate trader of medical drugs, he insisted, but the judge refused to grant a rehearing of the case.

  The following year, Hartley fell ill and blamed the stress caused by the Japanese government continuing to ban his drugs importation business for his poor health. He was losing money and credit and was advised to return home to England. In London, he had sealed samples of his Indian opium tested by the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain to prove they were of medical quality. They agreed that the samples contained more than the required amount of morphine.

  Triumphantly, with this evidence in his luggage, Hartley took a succession of trains to the Italian port of Brindisi, where he caught a steamer to Alexandria in Egypt and then on to Bombay. Along the way, he continued his correspondence with various experts, building up his body of proof that his opium was high-grade medical Indian opium and not at all destined for some grubby smoking den. After four and a half months’ travelling, he arrived back in Yokohama in March 1880.

  Tragically for Mr Hartley, Her Majesty’s chargé d’affaires was unimpressed by Hartley’s tests and the testimonials from several experts. He would not help him contest the Japanese government’s decision to boycott his business and claim back some recompense for his lost income. His health now took a further turn for the worse and he feared he was being poisoned by the Japanese government.

  After just a week in Japan, he was sent back on the steamer Malacca on a voyage that took just under two months. He arrived home to more bad news. His father-in-law and brother-in-law refused to allow him access to his wife and children. His lack of money was the principal barrier, they said, and told him that the process of contesting the court judgement in Japan had unhinged him mentally. But Hartley’s sense of injustice went beyond the loss of his family and sanity, and he continued to press on to clear his name.

  In 1885, as Hartley was on the way to the Privy Council Office in London for public funds to pursue his case, he was arrested by a court bailiff. He was confined to Surrey County Prison in Wandsworth for two weeks for debt accrued by not paying a food bill for his wife.

  In the meantime, Hartley’s case had been seized upon by the Anti-Opium Society and an MP stood up in the House of Commons to denounce Hartley as a drugs smuggler. Pamphlets quoting him as an example of the evil of the opium trade were distributed throughout London from the Egyptian Hall in Mansion House. If that wasn’t bad enough for his reputation, stories critical of Hartley were carried across the Atlantic and appeared in US journals.

  Further bad news for Mr Hartley came on 24 June 1886. He had asked for the British government to intervene on his behalf but, in response to a question asked in Parliament, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs said: ‘The case of Mr Hartley is well known to Her Majesty’s Government … and my predecessor stated that successive Secretaries of State had arrived at the conclusion that Mr Hartley’s case was not such as to justify diplomatic interference.’

  In 1888, a full ten years after he had first appeared in court in Yokohama, Hartley was morosely wandering around the Bethnal Green Museum in London’s East End when he saw a display of Indian medical opium. The samples contained less than the percentage of morphine required by the judge in Japan. Aha, he thought, I was right all along!

  In 1890, he was back in Japan, making claims against the Japanese government for illegal acts. He accused them of singling him out for prosecution when German and Dutch merchants were allowed to import similar powdered opium. He claimed that the expert chosen by the Japanese to analyse his opium was in their pay. Above all, he accused the British government of doing nothing to help him in order to please both the Japanese and the Anti-Opium Society.

  From Yokohama, he wrote: ‘I again beg that the patriotic members of the Community will help me to get out of this country that I
may through a member of the Parliamentary Opposition thrash the present government into something like fair play to me and my wife and family, who are robbed.’

  But still no one would listen to him and still Hartley would not give up his fight. In July 1897, nearly 20 years after the original case and now living alone in a suburban road in Croydon, he fired off an angry letter to the Prime Minister, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury.

  ‘My Lord,’ he wrote, ‘I submit that it is time that our boasted civilisation as a powerful nation should possess the dignity and honour of protecting Englishmen against a Government [of Japan] that is mean enough to boycott him in their Departments of State and Law Courts.’

  As an afterthought, he added, ‘Sir W. Grantham when QC, MP, wrote me “Why don’t you bribe them, Mr Hartley?”’

  Well, indeed, it was a very good point. It would have saved him an awful lot of money, not to mention the loss of his family and his sanity – but then again, it wouldn’t have been very British …

  The British Empire made a vast sum of money from the exportation of opium from India to China – and it wasn’t for medical use, but intended to feed the habits of millions of addicts. In today’s terms, it was as though Colombia was part of an American Empire and New York traders were raking in fortunes from selling cocaine to Europe.

  Opium was a popular recreational drug in China in the early nineteenth century. Much of it was obtained from India, where it was swallowed as tablets or drunk as opium-infused water. The Chinese refined its consumption by smoking it, making the high even more intense. When the British East India Company took over trade in India, its members were keen to find a commodity that the Chinese wanted as much as the British wanted their tea. The imbalance in trade between Britain and China because of tea had bothered British merchants for many years, draining English coffers of the silver needed to pay for it. And so they started to trade in small consignments of Bengali-farmed opium sold to Chinese coastal merchants.