Bertram Lenox Simpson was a British author who wrote about China under the pen name "B. L. Putnam Weale". Lenox-Simpson was the son of Clare Lenox-Simpson, who had been in the Chinese Maritime Customs Service

Chinese Maritime Customs Service

The Chinese Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese governmental tax collection agency and information service from its founding in 1854 until its bifurcation in 1949 into services operating in the Republic of China on Taiwan, and in the People's Republic of China...

 since 1861; he had a brother, Evelyn, a mining engineer who worked in China, and a sister, Esme. His education was at Brighton College

Brighton College

Brighton College is an institution divided between a Senior School known simply as Brighton College, the Prep School and the Pre-Prep School. All of these schools are co-educational independent schools in Brighton, England, sited immediately next to each another. The Senior School caters for...

, after which he too joined the Service. He was in China during the Boxer Rebellion

Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising by some historians or the Righteous Harmony Society Movement in northern China, was a proto-nationalist movement by the "Righteous Harmony Society" , or "Righteous Fists of Harmony" or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" , in China between...

 and during the siege of the legations. After this, he became Brigade Interpreter for the British Expeditionary Force (he spoke 5 languages).

Lenox-Simpson left the Chinese Maritime Customs Service,in 1901, perhaps connected with zealous looting after the siege of the Legations in 1900. One historian calls him “the consumate treaty port jobbing hack, writing commentaries, begging for newspaper work, penning novels... and serving as Daily Telegraph correspondent in Beijing from 1911 to 1914.” He remained in China, and began a prolific career writing about China and the Far East. His 1914 novel, The Eternal Princess has the earliest reference as yet located to the apocryphal sign in Shanghai's Huangpu Park

Huangpu Park

Huangpu Park is the name of the triangular stretch of green at the northern end of the Bund in Shanghai, the oldest and smallest park of the city...

, "No Dogs or Chinese." As of 1916 he was working for the political section of the office of the President of China. One researcher reports that "During the period of September 1916 to June of 1917, he had written at least thirty-eight reports on foreign affairs for the Chinese government. Many of them were ... read by President Li Yuanhong

Li Yuanhong

Li Yuanhong was a Chinese general and political figure during the Qing dynasty and the republican era. He was twice president of the Republic of China.- Early history :...

." His journalistic career in China included periods as editor of the Peking Leader and as chairman of the Far Eastern Times syndicate.

By 1930 Lenox-Simpson had become thoroughly embroiled in Chinese internal politics and thus took control of customs in Tianjin

Tianjin

' is a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. It is governed as a direct-controlled municipality, one of four such designations, and is, thus, under direct administration of the central government...

 on behalf of Yan Xishan

Yan Xishan

Yan Xishan, was a Chinese warlord who served in the government of the Republic of China. Yan effectively controlled the province of Shanxi from the 1911 Xinhai Revolution to the 1949 Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War...

. He was killed in what some believed to have been an assassination. This was difficult to conclusively prove, because the killers were never caught or identified.

Works

His work Indiscreet Letters from Peking is widely cited as an eyewitness account of the events during the siege of the Legations in 1900, but several scholars have cast doubt on its reliability.

A number of his books have recently been republished in facsimile, usually under his pen-name "Putnam Weale". There are free downloads of The Fight for the Republic in China, his best-known work. The Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

 cities his Why China Sees Red as an early example of use of the word term war-lord

Warlord

A warlord is a person with power who has both military and civil control over a subnational area due to armed forces loyal to the warlord and not to a central authority. The term can also mean one who espouses the ideal that war is necessary, and has the means and authority to engage in war...

, though the New York Times had used it earlier.

• Manchu and Muscovite (1904)
• The Re-Shaping of the far east (1905)
• Indiscreet Letters from Peking: Being the Notes of an Eye-Witness, Which Set Forth in Some Detail, from Day to Day, the Real Story of the Siege and Sack of a Distressed Capital in 1900--the Year of Great Tribulation. London: G. Bell, 1906.
• The truce in the East and its aftermath (1907)
• The coming struggle in eastern Asia (1909)
• The conflict of color; being a detailed examination of racial ... (1910)
• The Unknown God (1911)
• The fight for the republic in China (1917)
• The truth about China and Japan (1919)
• An indiscreet chronicle from the Pacific (1922)
• Why China Sees Red (1926)
• China's crucifixion (1928)
• The Port of Fragrance (1930)[novel]

External links

• • The Fight for the Republic of China - Free download at Guttenburg
• List of books by Bertram Lenox Simpson