Murder on the Verandah: Love and Betrayal in British Malaya Book

There were never any serious doubts about the facts--a bored colonial wife shot and killed her lover, making desultory claims that he had tried to rape her. No-one much cared for Mrs Proudfoot or her husband in the Malaya of 1911--she was partly Asian and her husband was lower-class and aggressive; the only reason why she was not hanged was a general feeling that, if white people were hanged for murder, it might damage colonial prestige. She was sentenced to death and then reprieved, and she and her husband were deported. He was promised a good job if he went quietly and was expeditiously double-crossed--they disappear into history. The case is principally remembered as the source of Somerset Maugham's story The Letter, but Lawlor uses it as a text from which he can read some fairly standard lessons about the snobbery, racism and fatuity of colonial society. The Proudfoots were outsiders and could expect nothing other than bad treatment--Lawlor's contempt for them and the snobs who surrounded them is pretty even-handed. Murder on the Verandah is a useful piece of social history--the story of a crime that was never a mystery. --Roz KaveneyRead More