Lucky Jack Riley Arrives in San Francisco, April 1941

Posted: September 2nd, 2025 | No Comments »

My thanks to the great China ephemera collector Roy Delbyck for sending me this great photo of “Lucky” Jack Riley, the Slots King of Shanghai arriving in San Francisco for transfer to McNeil Island Penitentiary – if you’ve read my book City of Devils you’ll know all about Jack, what he got up to in Shanghai, and how come he ended up being transported back to the USA to jail – if you haven’t, then you should!

Anyway, as well as Jack looking dapper as ever there are a few other points of interest about the photo…

With him is Shanghai Municipal Police Sergeant George Athelstan Day – who accompanied him across the Pacific in a first class cabin and may have been selected for the job as he was going on leave to his native Canada anyway. Probably a good gig as Riley was legendarily fun and interesting company. This long leave meant Day was outside China on Pearl Harbor and so escaped internment in Shanghai. However, he returned to Asia to serve with Special Operations Executive (SOE) in India in World War Two. (my thanks to Professor Robert Bickers of Bristol Uni for the info on Sergeant Day).

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