Tokyo Escorts: All quiet on the Western front
Yokohama, the port city attached to Tokyo, has just ended what was supposed to be a bumper year for visitors. Instead its officials were left echoing (no doubt in politely nuanced Japanese) the infamous Australian marketing slogan: Where the bloody hell were they?
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Carew, a popular sportsman and convivial manager of the United Club, died of arsenic poisoning. An inquest conducted by the British consul, who then had legal jurisdiction over British subjects in the treaty port, found that Edith had been buying arsenic from pharmacies around town. Love letters from a young bank clerk were retrieved from her wastepaper basket and pieced together by the governess. Edith was sent to trial in a consular court, with judge, lawyers and jury drawn from the British membership of the United Club circle. They duly convicted Edith and she was sentenced to death. The British ambassador in Tokyo, horrified at the prospect of a hanging on such dubious process, and with extraterritoriality due to end in 1899, commu …
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