ABSTRACT
Analysis of the Fahmy case the 'most remarkable of modern trials' is important for the light it sheds both on Orientalism in operation during this period and on the contemporary fears of miscegenation. The extent of Ali Fahmy's 'sexual perversity' was expanded upon on day two, which saw the cross-examination of the doctor who had attended Mme Fahmy while she was at the Savoy. Marshall Hall's cross-examination of Mme Fahmy concentrated on the ways in which she had been brutalised and her civil liberties denied. The Fahmy trial and its re-presentation in the press stand as a microcosm of certain dominant discourses in the 1920s concerning the Orient, miscegenation and 'abnormal' sexual practices. In the aftermath of the trial, it was not only Marshall Hall who spoke against miscegenation; the Daily Mirror was keen to reinforce the message, its editorial proclaiming that 'the moral of the case' is 'the undesirability of the marriages which unite Oriental husbands to European wives'.
