The Fraudulent Baronet

The China Expert

Born into wealth and privilege and with an inherited title, Sir Edmund Backhouse landed in China in 1899 to escape the inquiries of debt collectors and nosy police who wanted to know about his homosexual escapades.

He turned himself into a highly respected Sinologist with inside information about the secrets of the court of Empress Dowager Cixi. Much of the intelligence in which he traded was fiction from his own creative mind.

Edmund Backhouse's Early Life

Born in 1875, Backhouse (pronounced BACK-us) had every advantage in life, including an inherited baronetcy. His banking father smoothed his path into one of England's best schools, Winchester, and then Oxford University.

His academic career was undistinguished, completed entirely to his own satisfaction. That is to say, he never finished his degree and left that august seat of learning with gambling debts of more than £900,000 in today's value.

The bank of dad bailed him out but that wasn't the end of the raids on the parental wallet. Before long, Backhouse was in trouble over dealing in jewellery, art, and antiques that were bogus.

Backhouse Snr. grew tired of his son's attacks on his financial security and sent him off to China to become a remittance man.

This was the standard tactic for dealing with the wayward offspring of the rich; a monthly stipend would be forwarded on condition the recipient stay in some far off corner of the world where his profligate behaviour would not embarrass the family.

Backhouse Goes to China

Apart from having a larcenous nature, Edmund Backhouse possessed an extraordinary gift for languages. Before he was a teenager, he spoke Latin and Greek fluently. He added Japanese, Russian, French, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Mongolian, Tibetan, and three dialects of Chinese to his linguistic portfolio.

It was the latter that turned into endless not-so-savoury money-making ventures. He was one of a tiny number of Westerners to speak Manchu, the language of the Imperial Court inside the Forbidden City in Beijing. While most Westerners were completely baffled by the Chinese culture, Backhouse seemed able to unravel it.

In his 1999 book, Fakes, Frauds, and Flimflammery, Andreas Schroeder writes that Backhouse “seemed able to unpuzzle the complex relations between the court's hundreds of courtiers and concubines with astonishing ease. He was soon rumoured to be on a first-name basis with many of the palace's most powerful eunuchs and officials. It was even said that he'd been granted a secret interview with the Empress Dowager.”

Such inside knowledge was golden and diplomats, journalists, and business people flocked to hire him as a translator and facilitator. Backhouse lived well on the proceeds.

The information he dispensed was central in forming Western policies towards China. But, writing for The Beijinger, Jeremiah Jenne notes that Backhouse was trading mostly in “hearsay, fantasy, and gossip filtered through a highly active imagination.”

Inside the Imperial Chinese Court

Between 1899 and 1901, there was an uprising among the Chinese people aimed a kicking Westerners out of the country.

In June 1900, the so-called Boxers sacked Beijing and Backhouse seized an opportunity for profit. During the chaos, he came into the possession of (perhaps stole) a diary of one Ching-shan, a very high official in the imperial court.

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A few years later, the journalist John Bland approached Backhouse with a proposal to collaborate on a book about the Empress Cixi who had just died. Backhouse agreed and produced the treasure trove of stories contained in Ching-shan's diary.

The result was the very successful 1910 book China Under the Empress Dowager. This was followed in 1912 by Annals and Memoirs of the Court of Peking. Here were the guidebooks to understanding China and the volumes became must-read items for anyone hoping to interact with the country's leaders.

Sixty years later, a mysterious package was delivered to the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. It was the manuscript of an autobiography written by Sir Edmund Backhouse a couple of years before he had died in 1944.

Trevor-Roper decided it was pornographic and libellous, describing gay trysts with men known not to be homosexual, but he used the material to fashion his 1976 book Hermit in Peking, which centres on Backhouse's life.

In reviewing the book for The New York Review of Books, historian and China expert John K. Fairbank comments that:

“Sir Edmund turns out to have been a confidence man with few equals, who repeatedly floated great financial schemes in high quarters and with the utmost secrecy, only to have them collapse each time as pure fantasies. Forgery was only one means by which he cleverly launched his dreams upon the world as facts.”

And, one of his forgeries was Ching-shan's diary.

Backhouse's Commercial Swindles

With his reputation established as the man who could get things done in China, Backhouse had no difficulty signing up business enterprises seeking contracts in Beijing.

The John Brown shipbuilding company engaged his services to negotiate a contract to supply six vessels to the Chinese navy. Sir Edmund explained to his employers the need for what was called “gate money,” otherwise rather crudely known as bribes.

The money was duly passed through Backhouse but the purchase order never appeared while the facilitator went to ground and became incommunicado. The American Banknote Company suffered a similar reversal of fortune as it sought to get a contract to print Chinese currency.

Large corporations do not like to admit they have been duped, so Backhouse's chicanery was kept secret. This left him free to keep pulling off scams.

The Surplus Weapons

Backhouse's big score came in 1915 when he was contacted by the British secret service. With World War I using up bullets and shells at a phenomenal rate, the soldiers at the front were running out of ammunition.

There were stories floating about concerning a massive cache of weaponry left over from China's recent war with Russia.

“Could you locate the ammunition and arrange for its purchase?” the British government inquired.

“With all due alacrity and dispatch,” Backhouse probably replied. “You do understand, of course, there will be a need for gate money. Probably, quite a lot of it.”

Citing information from his well-placed sources, Sir Edmund, announced he had found a huge stockpile of war materiel. The British ambassador to China, Sir John Jordan, was instructed to provide Backhouse with virtually unlimited funds to purchase the stash.

He organized a flotilla of junks to carry the weaponry down the Yangtze River to Shanghai and thence to Hong Kong, still a British colony.

Along the way, the boats were brought to a halt as local officials discovered inappropriate paperwork and permits. More gate money was needed to release the shipments.

As the delays and snags mounted, Sir John started to get suspicious. He was right to do so.

It emerged that the whole affair was an elaborate fiction concocted by Backhouse to relieve His Majesty's treasury of cash. Again, embarrassment at being duped ensured the whole affair was swept under the rug.

Reclusive Backhouse

According to the historical record that appears to be the last of Backhouse's shenanigans. He seems to have retreated into the back streets of Beijing and to have “gone native.”

He trimmed his beard into the traditional Chinese spade shape and also grew a pigtail, typical of local customs.

He became reclusive, venturing out to visit the all-male brothels in the city. These were also frequented by many government officials so Backhouse continued to pick up gossip from indiscreet pillow talk among his sexual partners that he, no doubt, sold.

He appears to have curtailed his swindles, although it's entirely possible he was carrying on business as usual and his victims chose to remain silent to avoid embarrassment.

In his last years he busied himself writing his memoirs, Décadence Mandchoue: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, the book that Hugh Trevor-Roper thought was too salacious to publish.

However, sorting out truth from fiction is a daunting task. Backhouse, a gay man, claims to have had an ongoing sexual relationship with the Empress Cixi. As one reviewer noted, it would be as if a Chinese man went to England and claimed to have bedded Queen Victoria. Credibility was not Backhouse's strong suit.

He finished writing his manuscript shortly before he died in 1944 at the age of 70.

Bonus Factoids

• Between 1913 and 1923, Oxford University's Bodleian Library received an extraordinary gift from Backhouse; it was his huge collection of Chinese manuscripts and books. The archivists were ecstatic over the donation, which numbered more than 17,000 items that Backhouse said had been “purchased cheaply from the Imperial Library.” Perhaps, “stolen” would have been a more accurate verb and some of the documents were forgeries. Backhouse hoped his generosity would prompt the university to grant him a professorship. But, it was not to be. Probably, there were faculty members who recalled Sir Edmund's unruly and profligate behaviour while a student.
• Backhouse was a frequent visitor to the inappropriately named House of Chaste Pleasure in Beijing. It was a brothel where high-ranking officials and princes went to enjoy the sexual services of young men.

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Sources

• “The Original Hutong Hipster: The Life and Times of Edmund Trelawney Backhouse.” Jeremiah Jenne, The Beijinger, September 13, 2016.
• “The Confidence Man.” John K. Fairbank, New York Review of Books, April 14, 1977.
• “Memoir (or Is It?) of Sex and Opium.” Joyce Lau, New York Times, March 30, 2011,
• “Fakes, Frauds, and Flimflammery.” Andreas Schroeder, McLelland and Stewart, 1999.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2023 Rupert Taylor