Sex, lies and bribery: 1941 scandal that rocked Hong Kong on eve of Japanese invasion
War was raging in Europe and edging closer to Hong Kong, but it was a corruption inquiry which exposed a British wing commander's affair with an attractive young secretary, and caused an army captain's suicide, that hogged headlines in late 1941
There were a number of public scandals in the months leading up to the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, 75 years ago this month, but none enthralled the colony more than the so-called Mimi Lau Affair.
The official title was much less racy. Nevertheless, the Commission Enquiring into Certain Matters Connected with the Architectural Branch of the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Department, which was held between September and November 1941, contained all the ingredients of a classic public corruption scandal. Not only the routine misappropriation of public funds, bribes and accusations of graft but a suicide, exotic female characters and marital infidelity by a man in high office.
Tension had been building for weeks by October 21, 1941, when those attending a public hearing held their collective breath as the chairman solemnly addressed the 55-year-old director of ARP (DARP), recognisable to all by his firm jawline and faultless military bearing.
“I would like to say at the outset that some of the questions I have to ask you are as distasteful to me, to have to ask them, as they probably will be to you, to have to listen to them,” said Supreme Court Judge Paul Cressall. He then undertook a slow and deliberate character assassination of Alfred Horace Steele-Perkins, OBE, based on the married wing commander’s illicit relationship with an attractive young secretary, Mimi Lau.
“He was a well-known society figure and it was a very salacious case,” says local history enthusiast Philip Cracknell.
