Hasty post, showing I'm still here

[heliopausa]

I'm struggling a bit to get back on top of things, so this is not a very long or learned or real post... but then, what is a Real Post?  Oh well - very quickly then,in the department of things I've only just found out:

With reference to the song 'Being for the benefit of Mr Kite' (video, about two and a half minutes) - there really was a Pablo Fanque, running a circus in Britain over several decades in the nineteenth century. 
His birth name was William Darby, he was black, and very successful - which is all pretty interesting - but even more interesting is the story of how his circus employed an Irish contortionist (I think - the source says "posture master")  disguised as a Chinese man, (to be excitingly foreign and mysterious? - which I suppose is the reason for Darby's own name change) which provoked two other genuine Chinese men to investigate, fearing - after the circus refused to let them speak with the disguised man - that a countryman of theirs was being held in forced labour conditions - and they brought, successfully, a suit of habeas corpus against the circus. 
I find this wonderful and fascinating - the awareness of possible forced labour (and implicit possible human trafficking) at the time, and the brilliance of the habeas corpus law being used to fight against it. 

I love the gumption of the two Chinese men going in to bat for a possibly kidnapped and enslaved countryman.  I really want to hear of other such cases, where a real trafficked person was freed this way.

Comments

[sovay]

which provoked two other genuine Chinese men to investigate, fearing - after the circus refused to let them speak with the disguised man - that a countryman of theirs was being held in forced labour conditions - and they brought, successfully, a suit of habeas corpus against the circus.

That's incredibly cool.

[moon_custafer]

I knew about Pablo Fanque (he's on my list of historical figures who need to show up on Dr. Who) but the habeus corpus case missed me.

[heliopausa]

:D Doctor Who does nineteenth century circus! Yes, you're right; it'd make for a great episode. Or he could have been written into the Ice Fair one recently - bother! an opportunity missed.

[heliopausa]

Yes, isn't it? The Wikipedia entry on Pablo Fanque just mentions it as an "amusing anecdote" but it's full of so much more - compassion, determination... their names should be honoured.
And for all I know, are, in some other place - the Chinese community in the UK might have - or workers against human trafficking?
I'd expect, too, that some historian has written about it seriously, drawing on the court records, as part of a consideration of larger questions.

[sovay]

And for all I know, are, in some other place - the Chinese community in the UK might have - or workers against human trafficking?

Their names must be in the court records—I would definitely see what's been written academically about the case.

[asakiyume]

Good for those two Chinese men! When you say they brought a suit of habeas corpus successfully, does it mean that the circus was required to produce the Irish contortionist? How did you come across the story?

[heliopausa]

Yes, they did - and the story was just there, in the Wikipedia link about Pablo Fanque - though they presented it as an "amusing anecdote", whereas I saw it as... what you see. :) The court records would be a better source - it'd have their names, for one thing.

Yes, the circus had to produce the man in court, and so the truth came out. Cheers for habeas corpus, and for two men negotiating a foreign legal system successfully in the drive for justice.

I wrote the entry in a hurry; I should have put the date (1859). Also, I was wrong about his being a contortionist - further research seems to suggest that a "posture master" performed on the slack wire. (Or is maybe a balancing act as well?)

[marmota_b]

Hasty comment, showing I'm still here: I feel like at some point, I fleetingly knew some of this (and promptly forgot), but definitely not at all all of this. It's rather great, somewhere in the area of discovering there was a Chinese volunteer in the Czechoslovak army during the armaments of 1938, someone along the lines of an exchange student who, in the alarm, decided to stay and help. I have, very unfortunately, forgotten both his name and the name of the Facebook page I came across the info on.
... that was a bit more than a hasty comment; but it's hasty in the sense that I rather give it only the surface of my thinking mind at this time of the day (night).

[heliopausa]

That's very pleasant, that you're still here! :)
The story of the exchange student (or similar) who decided to throw in his lot with his threatened host country sounds very moving.

[marmota_b]

I suppose a more proper term is "again"...

He was a military student, so maybe a bit less surprising, but still. It's a bit more of a bright memory of the First Republic, too, in a way; it's this Golden Age of 20th century Czech history, and of course now you mostly hear how it wasn't such a Golden Age after all because that's probably the nature of things; but then reading a tidbit of a story like that, one can be justified to go and think, there really was something worth staying and fighting for there.
I came across it several years ago now, I think; I have since occasionally wondered what happened to him after Munich. Did he go home? Did he join the fight elsewhere?

In other news, I've got the book about Božena Laglerová, the aviatress! *happy dance* Found it in a secondhand bookshop; those are priceless. Haven't started reading it yet, actually; I've been on a very strong Sayers kick lately... found a Sayers in a secondhand bookshop, too.

[heliopausa]

Oh, great! about the Božena Laglerová book - and major thankfulness that secondhand bookshops exist. (The word I'm more familiar with for her role is "aviatrix", by the way - but then, as you know, my language sometimes skews old-fashioned. :) )

I don't know enough about the Golden Age of 20th century Czech history - I enjoy the scraps of information I'm gradually piecing together.

[marmota_b]

And my language skews towards "completely eclectic", so I guess neither has the upper hand. :D

I don't think it's ever officially called that, you know - that was just my description. It's widely known as the First Republic, period. Between October 28 1918 and September 30 1938. It didn't even get to be twenty years old before circumstances and world powers intervened. It's a sort of Golden Age both because of the general gilded nature of the interwar era, and because it was the first time in centuries when Czechs were independent (with Slovaks and Ruthenians and lots of minorities, of course).

After Munich, things got, in reaction, less nice in ways I'm not entirely sure of myself at the moment (I think some discriminatory laws were passed, and public discourse definitely got ugly), and that's known as the Second Republic. That didn't last long.