Seven-times married ex-Hong Kong hangman on acting with Jackie Chan and Pierce Brosnan
John Fleming left the British navy to be a Hong Kong prison officer, and recalls his nerves at his first execution. He enjoyed some bit-part film roles, and, now 85 and single father to a rebellious teenager, says he won’t marry again
A naughty boy I was a naughty boy. My stepbrother and I ran away from home in Portsmouth (England) after I fell out with my stepmother and broke into a factory and stole some money. The police caught us easily enough and the magistrate suggested the best place for me was sea cadet training school.
He sent me to the National Nautical School at Portishead, near Bristol, in 1946, at the age of 13. Most of the lads there had been in trouble of one sort or another. It was tough there, being locked in at night at 9pm and awake at 6.30am. When I was 15, I joined the Royal Navy.
An able seaman I arrived in Hong Kong on the troopship Empire Halladale, as an able seaman, in the spring of 1952, on a 2½-year posting – and I’m still here. The Korean war was on and the ship was bringing British troops to fight in Korea. When we landed we lived in tents pitched on Stonecutters Island .
I remember thinking Hong Kong was a quiet city – not many people and not much traffic, apart from thousands of rickshaws. The weather was beautiful and we were all very excited to have left miserable, cold, post-war England, where there was no money and everything was so expensive. We lived in steel Nissen huts at HMS Tamar (the Royal Navy’s base in Hong Kong).
