William Fairbairn, a British police officer in Shanghai, transformed urban law enforcement in the 1920s and 1930s, introducing innovations that ranged from the bulletproof vest to a system of close-quarters combat he called “gutter fighting,” as well as a commando knife that still bears his name. Fairbairn, a former Royal Marine, joined the Shanghai Municipal Police in 1907 and patrolled some of the most dangerous areas of the International Settlement, regularly engaging in fistfights, knife fights, and gun battles with local criminals. Before World War II, Shanghai was not a single city but three distinct territories: the International Settlement, governed by a council dominated by British and American business interests; the French Concession, administered as a French colonial possession; and the Chinese municipality, which often fell under the control of regional warlords. The foreign enclaves became havens for gangsters, drug peddlers, gun runners, kidnappers, and spies, with the Shanghai Municipal Police struggling to maintain order amid escalating Japanese-Chinese conflict in the 1930s.
After World War I, Sergeant Major Fairbairn was asked to integrate his combat skills into police training more broadly. He had spent 12 and a half years analyzing gunfights, having been involved in roughly 200 himself and studying about 2,000 from police records. The statistics were stark. In those documented gunfights, police had killed 260 criminals and wounded 193, but lost 43 officers killed and another 100 wounded.
Fairbairn was given the opportunity to purchase new weapons and completely retrain officers for the unique conditions they faced on Shanghai’s streets. He decided to standardize the force from a miscellany of pistols and revolvers onto just three firearms, one for each major group of officers. European and American officers were issued the Colt 1911 in . 45 caliber.
Chinese officers, generally smaller in stature, found the 1911 too large and unwieldy, so Fairbairn selected the smaller Colt 1908 Hammerless in . 380 ACP instead. Sikh officers, mostly recruited from the British Indian Army and deliberately chosen for their imposing presence, received the Webley Mark VI . 455 service revolver they already knew well from military service.
Fairbairn’s primary concern was increasing his officers’ lethality and giving them a better chance of surviving encounters with criminals, almost all of whom were armed. China was awash with weapons left over from World War I, including the Mauser C96 pistol and locally made copies, thousands of which were in criminal hands. Fairbairn emphasized that officers should shoot first and ask questions later, as the few seconds between unholstering a sidearm and bringing it into action often meant the difference between life and death. One surviving example of a Fairbairn-approved pistol is a Colt 1911 made in 1930, one of 4,185 Colts imported from the United States via Colt’s Shanghai representative Eric Sykes, a close friend of Fairbairn.
The pistol is marked “Shanghai Municipal Police” with property number 1361, and it features several modifications Fairbairn introduced. A shaped leaf spring was fitted to put pressure on the barrel during recoil and prevent jamming, a potentially fatal malfunction on Shanghai’s streets. The safety was blocked with a screw because officers often forgot to disengage it during gunfights, getting themselves killed in the process. Fairbairn trained European and Chinese officers to carry their pistols loaded but with the chamber empty, learning a quick cocking action as they drew.
Lanyard lugs were welded to the pistols so weapons could not be easily stolen from holsters or lost if dropped. Magazines were also altered to combat corruption. Some officers had been selling ammunition on the black market to criminals, so Fairbairn had holes drilled in the front of each magazine to show that complete rounds were loaded, and a series of holes at the rear to reveal the live primers of cartridges, preventing officers from loading half-empty magazines with spent casings. Ammunition was tightly regulated.
Magazines were inspected when issued and when returned to the armory after each shift to ensure shots fired were reported correctly and to prevent theft. Each officer received two full magazines at the start of a shift. Fairbairn trained his officers for gunfights that typically occurred at five yards or less, often indoors or in crowded streets, firing two rounds each time. Officers learned hip shooting, two-handed shooting—rare for the period—and the use of cover.
Fairbairn explained the philosophy in simple terms: in combat firing, a two-shot burst gives a dispersion of six to eight inches on the target, assuring at least one hit. He trained men to fire instinctively from a standing position, pointing the gun as if it were a finger, and to pivot quickly to change direction of fire. The French Concession police faced similar problems but had no William Fairbairn. Their standard pistol was the Browning 1922, marked with the initials of the French colonial police.
After 1943, when the French Concession returned to Chinese control, these pistols received new markings for the Shanghai Public Security Bureau. The Shanghai Municipal Police’s work came to an abrupt end in December 1941, when Japanese forces invaded and occupied the International Settlement. Although the police continued functioning under Japanese oversight into 1942, most European officers were later imprisoned by the Japanese. Fairbairn was not among them.
He had retired from the police in 1940 and returned to England with Eric Sykes. Back in Britain, both men were commissioned as second lieutenants in the British Army, tasked with training British and Dutch commandos, US Rangers, and later personnel of the American Office of Strategic Services. Fairbairn’s ungentlemanly warfare skills were captured in his own words: “Get tough. Get down in the gutter.
Win at all costs. I teach what is called gutter fighting. There’s no fair play, no rule except one. Kill or be killed.
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He and Sykes also created the commando fighting knife that carries their name. At war’s end, Fairbairn was a lieutenant colonel and was personally awarded the US Legion of Merit at the specific request of OSS founder William Donovan. William Fairbairn died in 1960 at the age of 75.