Murder in Tai O: how police officer was gunned down in cold blood by one of his own men in 1918
In 1918, at a remote police station on Lantau, a cold-blooded killing by a Sikh constable left a baby without a father and a young mother a widow. With a new boutique hotel still bearing scars from the crime, Kate Whitehead delves into the death of Sergeant Thomas Glendinning
Australian Sandra Trimble didn't discover the truth about her grandmother's glass eye until she visited Hong Kong in 1978, and her father spilled the beans on a family secret, a tragedy that had taken the life of his own father, in Tai O, in 1918.
David Glendinning was barely a year old and couldn't have remembered much of that terrifying day. Now 97, Glendinning gets easily confused, but his daughter, Trimble - a retired librarian living in Canberra - has taken a keen interest in this slice of family history.
"In those days, people didn't talk about things like that. Not only was it a tragedy, it was a scandal, so it wasn't discussed," says Trimble, 72.
The story begins in 1916, when her grandfather, Thomas Glendinning, returned from a six-month break in Australia with his new wife, Daisy, to resume his job with the Hong Kong Police. Two of his brothers - Walter and Percy - were also in Hong Kong; they'd accompanied horses from Sydney to Hong Kong and then on to Shanghai before getting jobs with Hong Kong Tramways. Another brother, Robert, was working on the Shanghai-Nanjing railway. Glendinning had joined the Hong Kong force in 1904.
Tai O village, on the west coast of Lantau Island, is remote and the police station, a 15-minute walk from the village, was even more isolated. But this rocky headland was an ideal vantage point from which to keep a look out for the pirates that roamed the South China coast. And there were plenty in those days - enough to warrant several cannon on the cliff below the station and the barbed wire surrounding it. Fishermen carried arms for protection.