The House That Jack Built : Shanghai Temperance Efforts in 1879
$250
In stock
Description
The House That Jack Built : A Temperance Advocate’s Account of 19th-Century Shanghai
Ridgway, Charles. The House That Jack Built (A Modern Version) A Remarkable Temperance Story of Shanghai. Fukuin Printing Co. Yokohama, [Japan]. 1917.
Rare first edition of the unusual memoir by Charles Ridgway, Temperance advocate and member of the International Order of Good Templars, who owned and operated a dry sailor’s rest in Shanghai starting in 1879.
Ridgway’s establishment “The House That Jack Built”, from which the book takes its title, offered patrons a safe, sober place to stay or relax with a large English language library, tea nights, and not-so-subtle attempts at conversion. Catering mostly to foreign sailors and members of the American, British, and French navies, Ridgway records his experiences as a bystander in the Sino-French War of 1884 and his interactions with the officers of various ships including members of the Yangtze Patrol, the US overseas naval operation which protected American missionaries and traders along Chinese rivers. Published in Yokohama, Japan by the English Language Fukuin Publishing Company, the work stems from an unusual period in Shanghai’s history following the increased Japanese presence there after the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War.
3 copies found on OCLC as of March 2021.
16mo, 129pp, tan printed wraps, minor wear to front wrap edges with folds from a former vertical and diagonal crease, back wrap top fore corner dog-eared, lower fore corner missing. Pages toned but clean. Good condition.
If you liked this book, you might like the memoir The Sunny Life of An Invalid written and signed by disabled women’s rights advocate C. Howard Young.
