CHINATOWNS QUEEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 137, 11 June 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHINATOWNS QUEEN.

WHITE WOMAN REIGNS

LIFE OF GRIM ADVENTURE. 21 YEARS IN LIMEHOUSE. For 21 years she has guided the destinies of London's Chinatown, has seen it grow from a place of grim and perilous adventure to its present era of orderliness and peace. In a small house at the bottom end of that wincl-ewe/Jt street in London's Chinatown, known as Pcnnyfields, you may find a woman with an incredibly white face, eyes which have taken, on something of Oriental 6tolidness, and lips which are accustomed to tactful silence. She is Mrs. May Flack, a Worcestershire woman who, after 21 years in Limehouse, haa become the uncrowned queen of that roman tic district.

To her door come Chinese, Lascars, Germans, Scandinavians and othiT stray nationals washed up on the dock areas by itinerant shipping from, the seven, seas. And "May" never fails them. Work in Chinese Laundry. "I came to London as a girl of twelve," she said in an interview. "My parents were working people and I had to find a job. And the first job I had was in a Chinese laundry in Barking Road. While I was in the laundry getting the job, my .sinter was outside in a panic of terror. But 1 was unafraid, and after a few weeks I began to understand the Chinese very well. And later I picked up a smattering of their language. Eventually I married and came to live here in LimchouKC. And for 21 years I have stayed on. "Things are not nearly so difficult as they used to be, but even now Limehou6e is a hot-bed of potential trouble. A little spark of racial unrest and Limehouse can become a 6cene of roof-top fighting and running battles in the narrow streets. I started a boardinghouee for coloured 6ea-

men when I was a grown woman, and I have bad many adventures. In those days opium smoking, gambling and white slave trafficking were rampant here, and I had all my work cut out to keep my house clear of the law.

"But I developed a queer faculty for handling these coloured men, and eventually I was known all over the dock area as a woman to be trusted and one who would stand no nonsense.

" I shall n'ever forget the day I first took the law into my own hands. Two rival members of the Tongs were standing facing each other with drawn knives in a dark alley near my house. A Chinese came running to me with the news, and I went out to them. They were manoeuvring for position when I dashed in and

fetched one of them a hearty smack across the face. For a moment they both looked ready to elnsh me to,ribbons —but 1 laced them out. They came to my room and I settled their squabble. From then on the seamen have always brought their troubles to me. " There was an occasion when, after a game of fan-tan in a nearby gambling den men of two rival clubs engaged in a real battle. Some were scrambling over roofs, and firing revolvers from behind _ the chimneys, others were engaged in a running knifing fight in the street. I was called out, and by sheer brazenness pacified them and made them come in and talk the matter of the squabble over. "Little white mothers, quite young English girls married to Chinese sailormen, brought their troubles to me—they still do. The greatest agony to these poor dears used to be in the opium smoking days soon after the Opium Laws of 1914.

Fathers Deported

" Chinese seamen were deported by the dozen, leaving behind white wives, some with two or three children. What could they do? Of course, they went down into the mire that only Chinatown knows. And I have seen sights in Chinatown that would make the hardest heart soften in pity. Once a deportee begged me to take care of his white wife and little ones, and promised to send money whenever he could.

" I agreed, and to uoften the blow of departure I got permission from the police to see him off on his boat. I came back home after the ship had cast off and I had waved him a farewell from the dock. Ten minutes later he was at my door.

" ' Me velly muchee likee cuppee tea,' he said. He was dripping wet. He had jumped over the ship's side and swum back. Re died as I tried to revive him and rub some warmth into limbs more used to sun than our cold English winds. I must have bailed hundreds of coloured sailormen out of gaol during my time, and only once has a man let me down and seen my bail estreated.

" Wlion this became known to Chinatown, nil nationalities went looking for him. They found him, and an angry mob brought him back'to my house. I had the greatest difficult? in stopping them from tearing him limb from limb. I appeased them, but they marched him back to the police station, where he was found guilty of an offence and deported.

" Some years ago a terrible fight broke out between German seamen at the German Seamen's Boardinghouse and one of the Chinese Tongs. Pennyfields was barricaded, and 60 was the lower end of the Causeway.

" With a detective I walked the length of the street to get to the leader of the Tong. I told him off for an ingrate, as I had got him out of one scrape. He kowtowed —the full nine bows of the mandarin—and the word "was given to cease hostilities. It is incidents like this that have earned for me the title ' Uncrowned Queen of Limehouse.' "

Mrs. Flack says opium smoking and heavy gambling have more or less been stamped out in Chinatown. " The law has got a hold on Chinatown at last." she declares, " and life here is almost as orderly as in any other quarter of London. Of course, there are spasmodic outbreaks, but then I am always on the spot to stop the thing becoming serious. My word goes here now, and it would be too bad for a man to defy me. I have all Chinatown behind me, and woe betide any man I put my finger on! "