The archetypal baddie
“opportunistic bigotry”. He certainly didn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Fu Manchu’s haunt is Limehouse Docks, a squalid place turned into a poppy-impregnated organised crime capital by the Chinese. In reality, crime noticeably reduced when the immigrants arrived.
Rohmer later claimed that the Chinese connection had its root in the occult. In 1909, during a Ouija Board session, he asked the spirits the best way to make a fortune. The upturned tumbler spelled out “CHINAMAN”. So Fu Manchu was born. The evil doctor, one of fiction’s most infamous villains, may not be politically correct, but he has certainly endured. Stars who have graced the silver screen as the character include Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Peter Ustinov and even Nicholas Cage.
From all accounts, Rohmer, born at 28 Rann Street in 1883, was a strange child from a dysfunctional family. His mother was an alcoholic; his father, a clerk, was a workaholic. Troubled Rohmer – one historian described him as a “strangely neglected child” – was a chronic sleepwalker and once tried to strangle his dad while in the trance-like state. He frequently attempted to jump out of bedroom windows.
As an adult, Rohmer earned a crust by writing songs and sketches for music hall entertainers. He also penned the autobiography of 4ft 6in comedian Little Titch. But it was during his time as a reporter for a London newspaper in 1911 that Rohmer dreamed up evil Fu Manchu.
A contact had tipped him off about a shadowy underworld figure known only as “Mr King”, a man who controlled vice, drugs and gambling in the East End docklands.