Image: China Press Sunday, 1926
Five years later, in February 1931, Kathleen's parents are throwing her a lush coming-of-age party, for sixty guests, and her portrait appears in the society pages of local newspapers:
In August the same year, the Irish bachelorette is taking a part in Shanghai's first full-scale beauty pageant and becoming a finalist (she is the second from the left in the photo):
Image: Le journal de Shanghai, 1931
What did Kathleen's parents think of her participation in the bathing suit catwalk event in a midnight cabaret? They spirited her to Hong Kong right after the finals and kept her there for two months, in spite of the anti-Japanese demonstrations disrupting the life of the city. But in the end, the beauty pageant did not ruin Kathleen Willder's reputation (and possibly boosted it, if such thing is possible). In June 1936, she married Eric Granville Jordan, of the Bakerite company, in "one of the loveliest weddings Shanghai ever witnessed:"
Image: NCDN, 1936
And here they are, in 1940, feasting at the Farren's (the couple on the left):
Image: China Press, 1940
The RAS Journal with my article about the Miss Shanghai beauty pageants is coming out in January 2020.
