Nobody's Child Books

Nobody’s Child … Young Giles Jackson’s parents die and he is brought up by an adoptive family who send him to boarding school where he gets expelled for fighting. Instead of returning home, he heads for Poole Harbour, and after saving the life of a sea captain, he voyages to the East Indies by way of the South American colonies and beyond. The ship is a privateer turning pirate in peacetime. Liking his new life, he is determined to exploit all that foreign realms have to offer. Published by The Electronic Book Company

Giles Jackson, the orphan alone in the world, continues his autobiography as viewed from his old age and a selective memory. This second instalment details and comments upon his experience in the opium trade between India and Canton - his highly profitable dealings in Foreign Mud and his involvement with the Triads, country merchants and John Company. He explains how he came to leave China and then was forced into the service of His Britannic Majesty’s government in Gibraltar and Morocco. He also casts light onto the circumstances leading to his long and generally happy marriage. It may be noted that British firms were engaged in the opium trade from India into China until 1939, though publicising their activities less as time went by. Opium - and all its derivatives - was unlawful in China from 1780 but did not become a prohibited and controlled substance in the UK until the early 1950s. (Of interest to the historian is that heroin abuse in the UK only increased after the substance was made unlawful. It is estimated that only 300 addicts were known in Britain in 1953.)

Giles Jackson has come home, knighted and virtuous, and very rapidly bored. Even his new bride is not quite sufficient to keep him in England. A little persuasion by the agents of government – and an amount of blackmail, judiciously applied – is sufficient to send him overseas again, serving his country and filling his own pockets. As ever, his autobiography contains his own views and knowledge of the events and personalities of his day, giving a lesser-known twist to the authorised perception of history.