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These romanticized tales of Burke ’ s early life were often accepted by the literary critics of the day and went largely unchallenged by his contemporaries.

Although Burke ’ s later writing, including the book Son of London more accurately describes his youth in the suburbs, the majority of his autobiogaphies attest to his supposedly intimate knowledge of lower-class life.

These fabricated autobiographies enabled Burke to establish his authority as an expert on the Chinese in London, allowing him to create a persona that he used to market his fictional works on Limehouse.

As Witchard notes, Burke, through his writing, positioned himself as a “ seer ” in an “ occult process ” of representing London ’ s sub-cultural ‘ Others .’