Who Killed Pamela?

New clues in the Pamela Werner murder case

On January 8 1937 the body of a young foreign girl was found brutally mutilated at the foot of Beijing’s city wall. The murder was never solved and all but forgotten till Paul French opened a box of archival material at the Kew archives in England. 

Undertaking a police investigation is also a kind of historical research. Suddenly a sharp light is directed against small details, habits and routines, providing you with information that is often difficult to obtain from other historical archives. The Pamela Werner murder case is no exception. 

Examining a murder investigation is an amazing driver for exploring the past. It captivates people and gives the narrative a clear direction, whilst also revealing much about the world in which the crime took place. You could say that Beijing Postcards cares less about who actually killed Pamela Werner than exploring the society she lived in. 

Pamela Werner died at a time when most Westerners in China had lost their extraterritoriality. The bubble where, in the words of Edgar Snow, Americans and Europeans had their own little “Never Never Land” in Beijing was about to burst. The Japanese were coming ever closer, and the capital had been moved to Nanjing. Pamela Werner’s death exposed the workings of this very fragile society. 

Our project has from the get go sought to bring Chinese sources into the research into the murder. Alongside the English language materials that are used in Paul French’s international bestseller Midnight In Peking and the newly published A Death in Peking by Graeme Sheppard, we have been able to dig up Chinese written police reports and articles to provide new insights into this notable incident.

New Findings Related to the Pamela Werner Murder Case

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The End of White Privilege in Beijing
The End of White Privilege in Beijing

White Russian refugees in Beijing

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The End of the Foreign Community of Beijing - Foreign Murder Suspects Detained Together in Shandong
The End of the Foreign Community of Beijing - Foreign Murder Suspects Detained Together in Shandong

In 1943 most of the foreign community of Beijing was expelled from the city by the Japanese occupiers. It was the end of an era where westerners had been treated as outside the jurisdiction of Chinese law.

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What Were “The Badlands”?
What Were “The Badlands”?

In Paul French’s book Midnight in Peking, about the unsolved 1937 murder of Pamela Werner, a place called “the badlands” is often referred to. In fact it, was probably here that Pamela was last seen alive. But what was this place of such ill repute? What survives of it today?

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The Werner Letters
The Werner Letters

In an unlabelled box at the Kew archives in London you can find the Werner Letters. A seemingly ever-flowing cascade of words typed onto hundreds of now yellowed pages, these writings are the main source material used by Paul French for his book “Midnight in Peking”.

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Fox Spirits and Wall Building Ghosts
Fox Spirits and Wall Building Ghosts

Recently, we have discovered Robert Swallow’s Sidelights on Peking Life, a peculiar insider’s guide to Beijing from the year 1927. He dedicates 10 pages to describing the ghosts that haunt the streets of the city, and some of them are quite amazing.

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The Nightlife of Old Peking (1937)
The Nightlife of Old Peking (1937)

PEIPING, May 4 - Ex-Shanghai dancing girls are striking a rich harvest nowadays in the cabarets of Peiping and Tientsin. Driven North by the necessity tor finding work, both Chinese and Korean hostesses are finding that they can make as much money in one month in Peiping as they were able to make in two months in Shanghai.

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What Was The Last Thing Pamela Saw Before She Died?
What Was The Last Thing Pamela Saw Before She Died?

A hundred years ago optography a "technique" that could allegedly extract the last image a deceased person had seen before death, was used in murder cases across the world. The infamous Pamela Werner case in Beijing was no exception.

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The Mysterious Mr Prentice 
The Mysterious Mr Prentice 

Pamela Werner, daughter of the former British consul in Fuzhou E.T.C. Werner who now lives at No.1 Mapichang Hutong, was murdered on January 8th. The police now have several suspects including a dentist named Wentworth Prentice who is living at Dongjiaominxiang.

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Where was Pamela Werner’s body found?
Where was Pamela Werner’s body found?

On January 8 1937 Pamela Werner was brutally murdered, but where? Paul French and Graeme Sheppard have different ideas on where Pamela’s body was found, one says at the foot of the infamous fox tower, the other inside the old inner city close to the German cemetery.

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Reproductions Maps and prints related to Midnight in Peking

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