Old Shanghai Tips: It Pays to Help Out a Beachcomber Now & Then…1928

Posted: October 15th, 2021 | No Comments »

I admit the story I posted a while back of Pal Moran and his fall from boxing glory to a vagrancy charge and attempted suicide in Shanghai was a bit depressing. So, as a corollory, how about the 1928 tale of Tommy Dixon, a hotel bar manager who got a very lucky break.

Tommy, from Boston, Mass., was serving a customer, a ‘Beachcomber’ drifting through the town, back in the summer of 1928 who gave him a hard luck story. A barman of the old school (then just ‘the school’ I guess) heard him out and gave him $5 (Chinese). Of course the itinerant Beachcomber promptly spent $4 on booze, but then put the final dollar on a horse at the races. The nag came i first and, being generally considered by most punters to have three legs and an udder, did not have great odds and so consequently paid out $4,300 on the buck bet. Then, would you credit it, the Beachcomber came back to the hotel bar and gave Tommy half his winnings, $2,150. Sweet!

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