Title: Hunting opium and other scents
First published: 1966
Description: From a review on Amazon by "Shanghai Old Times" dated 11 October 2011

"With 95 pages this must be one of the shortest of China memoirs, written by a Shanghai policeman so 'Shanghailander' in outlook that he mentions going to Peking only once, and who, when he went to Nanking, took a pack of hounds and huntsman's uniform with him, to do some fox hunting inside the city walls, the hounds having been brought out from England. And his luck was so good that not only did he retire from 28 years' service without a scratch, but he also retired in 1933, avoiding the experience of internment and Japanese occupation, to which many of his colleagues would have been exposed.

There is possibly too much for 95 pages on Springfield's birth and childhood in Ireland, and he interlaces nearly every chapter with hunting anecdotes, so that the Shanghai memoir you might be hoping for contains a lot more fox- and other hunting than you needed. But we get the outline of his career in the Shanghai Municipal Police from 1905 to 1933, after schooling at Uppingham, where, yes, he did lots of hunting, and Indian Police cadetship exams at Woolwich. He arrives at Shanghai in the middle of a riot, commenting that riots were commonplace in Shanghai during his 28 years. He also becomes a volunteer fireman for five years, and describes numerous injuries and illnesses, all of them serious, which were cured by a stiff drink after conventional medicines had failed.

There are sometimes a dozen armed crimes a day, and Springfield describes two or three narcotics raids, but is posted to some administrative positions: Governor of the Gaols; Registrar of the Mixed Court; Anti-Narcotics Squad; Assistant Commissioner of Traffic; Deputy Commissioner Uniform Branch; and finally Acting Commissioner. He receives a long leave every six or seven years, and goes back to Ireland or Norfolk, to do some hunting. He is Master of the Shanghai Hounds 1910-15 and 1921-32, remarking 'we hunted anything with four legs that carried a scent', and you might well feel sorry for the animals. We learn the times and types of hunts, the scents used (stag and porcupine) and ways of laying them, and that the bag might include any of golden weasel, civet, otter, hare, badger, grey fox, wild cat, red fox, wolf, barking deer, hog deer, even tiger, and then all the wildfowl. Springfield comments that the shooting was good up to 1921, and then an influx of foreign weapons and all the political upheaval spoiled the field. There is also houseboating, the Canidrome, the Paper Hunt Club, and horse racing in the Shanghai Derby and at Hankow.

Springfield even set bloodhounds to hunt criminals, and he gives an account of killing a man. Of hunting narcotics he tells us his usual modus operandi: an informant would give the address and hopefully wherein the drugs were stashed; Springfield and squad would raid, Springfield sitting in a chair in the main room while the squad searched; a drugs find would give the squad cause to rip up the floorboards and break up the furniture. His most successful raid was in 1924, he says, and he admits that many raids were fruitless; the quality of the informant was important. He says that drug dealers and purveyors were usually cowards - it was the smugglers who were dangerous. The cheapness of human, not just animal, life is noticeable: in a city of migrants, where most Chinese still 'belonged' to their native villages, their lives weren't worth much once they became involved in serious crime.

For his successful 1924 raid Springfield receives a commendation from Stirling Fessenden, Chairman of the Municipal Council. Springfield's confidence and luck radiate throughout, a man of his time with the personality and the outlook to survive in a unique, non-empire, metropolis. His brother George is Empire through-and-through: coxed the Trinity Hall boat at Cambridge; then indigo-planting in Behar Province in India; military service with Lumsden's Horse in South Africa during the Boer War; then a commission in the Bays; and killed in World War I.

For Shanghai police connoisseurs, Springfield tells us that he din't want the Specials to accompany the Narcotics Squad on raids: they tended to start shooting too quickly, ruining the raid and killing potentially useful informers. If he had to take Specials, to give them operational work during quiet periods, Springfield would post them at the exits, not wanting them inside the premises. We don't learn much of his life post-Shanghai, though he writes cheerfully, as though he never missed it. We learn that he retired to Framlingham in Suffolk and that by 1943 he was acting as District Officer on the local War Agriculture Committee. After all the excitement of hunting and killing in China, only someone with Springfield's sunny disposition could stand that.
Subjects: Shanghai Municipal Police
Places: Shanghai (China)
Time periods: 1905-1933