Local woman beat to death by British soldiers: 23 December 1952
The day before Christmas Eve in 1952, the body of a young local woman—later identified as 33-year-old Ho Sze-mui—was found in a ditch at the side of a remote military road. She had five cuts on her forehead and three deep head wounds that reached the bone. A postmortem also revealed evidence of a possible sexual assault.
On Christmas Day, taxi cyclist Liu To-leung confirmed that a few days before the victim was found dead, he had transported her from Dodwell’s Ridge camp to Shek Kong camp, where she was employed in the canteen. Liu later testified at the trial that their journey had been interrupted by two soldiers in uniform coming from the opposite direction. They kicked his bicycle, and as he pedalled away in the darkness, Liu saw one of the soldiers try to drag Ho to her feet as she resisted.
Police investigations led to the prosecution of lance corporal George Robert Douthwaite (aged 24) and trooper Douglas Derrick Dalton (aged 19). Although it is unclear what motivated the two young men to drag Ho from her bicycle taxi then attack her, there was enough evidence at the time to convince the jury that the pair were guilty of murder. The two soldiers were sentenced to death, but their death sentences were later commuted to 20 years of hard labour for Douthwaite, and 12 years for Dalton, who protested his innocence the entire time he was in prison.
As the events happened in the midst of the Korean war, the Cold War, and while communist China was growing in confidence, the British government feared that the murder of a local woman by British military personnel might stir resentment in colonial Hong Kong. Not only did the governor of Hong Kong take a direct interest in the case, but public records also revealed that the secretary of state in London was requesting information as well. As such, some suspect political expediency could have rushed the proceedings of the case. To this day, many still have doubts about whether or not the two, or both, soldiers were actually guilty. Read the entire story here and decide for yourself.