Full information concerning the names, ages, sexes, relatives, birth-Places and other such relevant matter pertaining to Shanghai residents is now being provided to Shanghai; house-wives by their kindly compradores, the "North-China Daily News' discovered yesterday. This information is being sent gratis along with the orders for jam, tinned soup, tomato sauce and other commodities, and the compradores have official authority for the authenticity of the data they are distributing so freely over Shanghai.
This fact came to light when a house-wife took the trouble to examine the white paper in which a small consignment of goods had arrived from the compradore that morning. She was startled to discover before her almost the entire secrets of two lives, one of a now deceased but formerly well-known British merchant, the other of a missionary and his wife, son and three daughters, Like all good house wives, she immediately got into touch with the "North-China Daily News," sending along the paper for examination. The goods she had ordered it was found, had actually been wrapped up in two of the "Alien Passport Examination" forms formerly issued to all incoming passengers by the Passport Office of the City Government of Greater Shanghai. These two pieces of paper were pasted together, to form a becomingly white wrapper containing much more than it looked. Both were over 90 per cent. legible.
Enquiries were promptly made at the compradore shop concerned. The compradore, startled to hear what he was doing, collected up all his waste paper and discovered that he had several more of the filled-out forms still in stock.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.