After a birthday celebration in Birkenhead in 1925, the Tam family’s life of respectability and success suddenly unravelled in a violent tragedy. This episode explores the life of Lock Ah Tam, his role as a respected figure in Liverpool’s Chinese community, and the fateful events that led to one of the most shocking family murders of the era, set against the backdrop of Liverpool’s Chinatown and surrounded by the eerie coincidences that haunted the case long afterwards.

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Music:
"Long Note Three", "Long Note Two" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Sources:
Ancestry.co.uk
National Library of Wales
Liverpool Echo – Wednesday 02 December 1925
Lancashire Evening Post – Wednesday 02 December 1925
Evening Express – Thursday 03 December 1925
Northampton Chronicle and Echo – Friday 22 January 1926
Liverpool Evening Express – Wednesday 27 January 1926
Liverpool Echo – Friday 05 February 1926
Westminster Gazette – Saturday 06 February 1926
Leeds Mercury – Saturday 06 February 1926
Daily Express – Monday 08 February 1926 Shields Daily Gazette - Wednesday 13 August 1924 Daily Express – Monday 08 February 1926 (duplicate entry)
Widnes & Runcorn Chronicle – Saturday 27 March 1926
Sunday Sun – Sunday 28 March 1926 Illustrated Police News - Thursday 10 December 1925 Witness History – “The Scandal of Liverpool’s Missing Chinese Sailors”, 2020
LiverpoolEcho.co.uk – January 2022 Liverpool Daily Post - Thursday 11 February 1926 Daily Express - Wednesday 24 March 1926 Pontypridd and Llantrisant Observer Sat, Nov 25 The Curious Disappearance of Mr Foo (Podcast), 2023
Murder Casebook 86 Friends of Flaybrick Memorial Gardens https://flaybrick.org/catherine-cecelia-and-doris-tam-1926/ Seal, L. & Neale, A., (2019) “Race, Racialisation and ‘Colonial Common Sense’ in Capital Cases of Men of Colour in England and Wales, 1919–1957”, Open Library of Humanities 5(1), 64. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.471

90 | Murder in Birkenhead: Lock Ah Tam and the Chinatown Tragedy