46. Lynch to Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan, March 26, 1888, file C-19, microfilm roll 12, and “A Short History of the Spiritual Work Done for Italians in the Roman Catholic Church of the Transfiguration,” undated MS in the handwriting of Rev. Thomas F. Lynch, Transfiguration parish history file, series D, Papers of the Archdiocese of New York; Mary Elizabeth Brown, Churches, Communities, and Children: Italian Immigrants in the Archdiocese of New York, 1880–1945 (New York, 1995), 51; Lynch, “The Italians in New York,” 71.
47. DiGiovanni, Archbishop Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants, 60, 241; Lynch, “The Italians in New York,” 72.
48. Father Francesco Zaboglio to Giovanni Scalabrini, June 28, 1888, in Silvano M. Tomasi, Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1880–1930 (New York, 1975), 79; Marcellino Moroni to Cardinal Giovanni Simeoni, May 16, 1888, in DiGiovanni, Archbishop Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants, 99–101.
49. DiGiovanni, Archbishop Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants, 63–65; Times, January 3, 1889, p. 5. See also Grace Abbott, “Leo XIII and the Italian Catholics in the United States,” American Ecclesiastical Review 1 (February 1889): 41–45, and Henry J. Browne, “The ‘Italian Problem’ in the Catholic Church of the United States, 1880–1900,” United States Catholic Historical Society, Historical Records and Studies 35 (1946): 46–72.
50. Lynch to Corrigan, March 26, 1888, file C-19, microfilm roll 12, Papers of the Archdiocese of New York.
51. DiGiovanni, Archbishop Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants, 98–99, 129, 135–36, 143, 145, 241.
52. Tomasi, Piety and Power, 143; Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 (New Haven, 1985), 55–59.
53. Jacob A. Riis, “Feast-Days in Little Italy,” Century Magazine 58 (August 1899): 496–98.
54. Ibid., 495.
55. Tribune, August 17, 1901; Denise M. DiCarlo, “The History of the Italian Festa in New York City: 1880’s to the Present” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1990), 85–94; Il Progresso, August 16–19, 1890.
56. Il Progresso, August 16, 1891. Although press reports tended to focus on the part of the festa that took place on upper Mott Street outside the Five Points district, the head of the festa in 1890 was Gabriele Isola, probably the same man listed in the city directory as living at 14 Baxter Street near the Five Points intersection—Il Progresso, August 19, 1890; Trow’s New York City Directory for the Year Ending May 1, 1893, 692.
57. Il Progresso, August 17, 1890, August 16, 1891, August 16, 1892.
58. Bernardino Ciambelli, I Misteri di Mulberry Street (New York, 1893), translated in Mario Maffi, Gateway to the Promised Land: Ethnic Cultures on New York’s Lower East Side (New York, 1995), 113–14.
59. Il Progresso, August 16, 1891, August 18, 1896 (“rivers of beer”); Tribune, August 17, 1902, part II, p. 5.
60. Lynch to Corrigan, August 10, 1892 (photocopy), Transfiguration folder, Box 1, Italian-Americans and Religion Collection, Center for Migration Studies.
61. Riis, “Feast-Days in Little Italy,” 493.
62. For more on Italian religious feste, see Tribune, July 18, 1904, p. 5; Times, July 12, 1903.
63. DiGiovanni, Archbishop Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants, 129, 135–36, 143, 145; Most Precious Blood parish history file, series D; Lynch to Corrigan, January 23 (“slaves of the Irish”), February 3 (“no privileges”), 1894, file G-5, roll 15, Papers of the Archdiocese of New York.
64. DiGiovanni, Archbishop Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants, 144–48, 165–70; Souvenir History of Transfiguration Parish—Mott Street (New York, 1897), 44, quoted in Tomasi, Piety and Power, 77; McLoughlin, Father Tom, 80; [Corrigan] to Rev. T. J. Campbell, November 2, 1893, file G-6, roll 16, and McLoughlin to Corrigan, November 10, 1898, August 28, 1901, February 28, 1902, Transfiguration parish history file, series D, Papers of the Archdiocese of New York.
65. Transfiguration Church: A Church of Immigrants, 1827–1977 (New York, [1977]), 16–17.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1. John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776–1882 (Baltimore, 1999), 90, 284–85.
2. Ibid., 91; Times, October 22, 1876, p. 2. The various accounts of Appo’s early life differ in many of the particulars. When in doubt I have relied upon information provided by Professor Timothy Gilfoyle of Loyola University of Chicago, who thoroughly studied the life of Quimbo Appo for “A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Autobiography of George Appo,” Missouri Review 16 (1993): 34–77, as well as for his forthcoming book on the history of crime in New York.
3. Times, December 26, 1856, June 20, 1859; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1855–56 (New York, 1855), 37; Trow’s New York City Directory for 1857–58 (New York, 1857), 36. Tchen identifies a Bowery tea clerk mentioned in an 1854 magazine article as Appo, but there is no evidence that the immigrant described in the passage is actually him. It appears likely that Appo did not yet live in New York in 1854. E. W. Syle to the Editor, Spirit of the Missions 19 (August 1854): 325; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 91.
4. Times, March 9, 10, April 12, 1859; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 159–62.
5. Times, March 10, April 12, 13, 1859.
6. Times, March 9, 10, April 12, 13, November 10, 1859, October 22, 1876; Herald, October 18, 25, 1859; Tribune, November 2, 1859; Brother Jonathan, May 19, 1860 (sentence commuted); Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 160–61. Tchen mistakes the appeals process for a “second trial.” The clerks in the Old Records Division, New York County Clerk’s Office, can no longer locate the writ that details the appeals case.
7. Times, October 22, 23, 1876; “Autobiography of George Appo,” typescript, pp. 1–3, Society for the Prevention of Crime Papers, Columbia University. Much of this memoir is reprinted in Gilfoyle, “A Pickpocket’s Tale.” The available sources provide contradictory evidence as to Appo’s release date. According to Gilfoyle, Sing Sing’s records indicate that he was still there in April 1869. I suspect that he was paroled sometime later that year.
8. “Autobiography of George Appo,” pp. 1–3; Daily Graphic, March 18, 1873 (quotations); Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (March 16, 1872): 5, (July 5, 1873): 271.
9. “Autobiography of George Appo,” pp. 1–3; Gilfoyle, “A Pickpocket’s Tale,” 42–45. Newspaper articles, all written years later, provide contradictory information concerning Quimbo’s second arrest. Neither Gilfoyle nor I could find any information concerning it in the District Attorney’s Papers.
10. “Autobiography of George Appo,” pp. 1–3; Gilfoyle, “A Pickpocket’s Tale,” 42–45; People v. Appo, December 13, 1871, District Attorney’s Papers, and arrests of September 20, 1875 and January 31, 1876 (“Charles Gimbo”), First District Police Court Docket Books, both at New York Municipal Archives; Times, September 30 (“notorious”), December 15 (p. 6), 16 (p. 6), 19 (p. 2), 1871, October 21–23, 1876; Herald, August 10, 1871, January 5 (p. 11), 6 (p. 11), 1872. My dating of Appo’s release from prison for his various crimes is based on prison records uncovered by Gilfoyle that I have not examined.
11. Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 285–88.
12. Times, October 21 (p. 1), 22 (p. 2), 25 (p. 10), December 21 (p. 6), 22 (p. 6), 1876; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 285–88.
13. Gilfoyle, “A Pickpocket’s Tale,” 37–38; Times, August 6 (p. 2), 7 (p. 8), 8 (p. 12), 28 (p. 8), September 4 (p. 8), 1880, June 17 (p. 3), July 11 (p. 9), 12 (p. 17), 1896, June 15, 1899 (p. 3). Information on George Appo’s last years was provided to me by Gilfoyle.
14. Louis Beck, New York’s Chinatown (New York, 1898), 250, 259–60, quoted in Gilfoyle, “A Pickpocket’s Tale,” 37.
15. Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 284.
16. Times, December 26, 1856, June 20, 1859; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 74–86.
17. Tribune, January 4, 1869; Daily Graphic, March 18, 1873; Harper’s Weekly 18 (March 7, 1874): 222; Tchen, New York Before China
town, 236; Sixth Ward, 1870 United States manuscript census, National Archives.
18. Daily Graphic, March 18, 1873; Times, December 26, 1873, February 16, 1874.
19. Times, December 26, 1873, March 22, 1880; Sun, February 16, 1874; World, January 30, 1877; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 225, 232–33, 236–37.
20. Arthur Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither? The Chinese in New York, 1800–1950 (Cranbury, NJ, 1997), 41–42; John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 24 vols. (New York, 1999), 12: 421–22.
21. Herald, March 3, 1880; Tribune, March 4, 1880, p. 8.
22. Times, March 4, 6, 1880, both p. 8; Herald, March 6 (p. 3), 7 (p. 8), 1880; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (March 27, 1880): 55; Sixth Ward, 1880 United States manuscript census.
23. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (March 27, 1880): 55, (June 30, 1888): 324; districts 18–27, Sixth Ward, 1890 Police Census, New York Municipal Archives.
24. David M. Katzman and William M. Tuttle, Jr., eds., Plain Folk: The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans (Urbana, 1982), 168–69. For the regional origin of the New York Chinese, see Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 67.
25. Harper’s Weekly 12 (September 19, 1868): 604; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 233–34.
26. Junius H. Browne, The Great Metropolis: A Mirror of New-York (Hartford, 1869), 97–98; Tribune, January 4, 1869, June 21, 1885, p. 9; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 227–28.
27. Tribune, June 21, 1885, p. 9; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (January 28, 1888): 398; Times, March 6, 1880; Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 67; Tchen, New York Before Chinatown, 227–28.
28. The best descriptions of the laundryman’s working conditions are Renqui Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (Philadelphia, 1992), 8–30, and Paul C. P. Siu, The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation (New York, 1987).
29. Wong Ching Foo, “The Chinese in New York,” Cosmopolitan 5 (October 1888): 298.
30. Ibid., 298–300.
31. Ibid., 301; Mary Lui, “Groceries, Letters, and Community: The Local Store in Chinatown’s ’Bachelor Society,’” Bu Gao Ban [New York Chinatown History Museum] 8 (Winter 1991): 1–4.
32. Sun, March 7, 1880.
33. Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 71; Herald, August 2 (quotation, p. 9), November 7, 1894.
34. The Tribune asserted that New York’s Chinese population in 1885 consisted of 4,500 laundrymen, 300 cigarmakers, 200 sailors, 200 gamblers, 300 unemployed looking for places to start laundries, and 100 merchants. It is difficult to verify the Tribune’s figures with the census because Chinatown was just beginning to expand rapidly as the 1880 census was conducted, and the Chinese were just beginning to turn to laundrywork in large numbers. The 1890 census returns were destroyed in a fire. A sample of the 1880 census reveals the following occupational breakdown among Five Points Chinese Americans: 38% cigarmakers, 24% merchants and professionals, 14% laundrymen, 10% cooks, 5% sailors, and the remainder in miscellaneous or difficult to classify occupations. Tribune, June 21, 1885, p. 9; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (June 30, 1888): 324; Sixth Ward, 1880 United States manuscript census.
35. Herald, March 3, 5, 1880; Times, March 6, 1880, p. 8; Sun, March 7, 1880 (not quoted).
36. Times, May 6, 1880, p. 8; Evening Post, May 10, 1880.
37. Times, May 7, 1880, p. 4; Evening Post, May 10, 1880; Thomas F. Lynch to Archbishop Corrigan, May 4, 1889, Transfiguration parish history file, series D, Papers of the Archdiocese of New York.
38. Herald, March 5, 1880, p. 8; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (March 27, 1880): 55; Sun, March 7, 1880; Times, April 7, 1883, p. 8.
39. Times, April 7, 1883, p. 8, April 12, 1883, p. 8. Although the Times reported that Lee bought 18 Mott, city real estate records indicate that he actually purchased 16 Mott. But he did lease 4 and 18 Mott in their entirety. See lots 3, 9, and 10, block 162, “Block and Lot Folders,” New York Municipal Archives.
40. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (June 30, 1888): 324; Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 304.
41. Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 304; George Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (New York, 1887), 430–31; Rev. Thomas P. McLoughlin, “In Darkest Chinatown,” Donahue’s Magazine (November 1897), in Peter P. McLoughlin, Father Tom: The Life and Lectures of Rev. Thomas P. McLoughlin (New York, 1919), 100–101 (on Chinese vegetables).
42. Frank Leslie’s and the Tribune quoted in Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 97, 105; E. Idell Zeisloft, ed., The New Metropolis (New York, 1899), 271.
43. Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, 423; Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 305.
44. Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 306; Steward Culin, “The Gambling Games of the Chinese in America,” University of Pennsylvania Series in Philology, Literature and Archaeology 1, no. 4 (1891): 1–5; Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 62–64; Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, 426; Frank Moss, The American Metropolis, 3 vols. (New York, 1897), 2: 427–29.
45. Moss, American Metropolis, 2: 427–29; Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 306; Culin, “Gambling Games of the Chinese,” 6–11; Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 66; Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, 423–25. A block away on Mulberry Street, Italian Five Pointers gambled as well. They had their own numbers game, called lotto, while Italian newsboys were especially fond of craps. George E. Pozzetta, “The Mulberry District of New York City: The Years Before World War One,” in Robert F. Harney and J. Vincenza Scarpaci, eds., Little Italies in North America (Toronto, 1981), 25–26; Forty-eighth Annual Report of the Children’s Aid Society (1900): 67.
46. Herald, December 26, 1869; Times, March 22, 1880; Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, 418–22; Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 308–11.
47. Daily Graphic, March 18, 1873; Harper’s Weekly 18 (March 7, 1874): 222; Times, August 11, 1878, p. 5; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 12, 1883): 181, 190; (May 19, 1883): 204, 206.
48. Tribune, September 28, 1904, p. 3, January 11, 1918, p. 13; Herald, January 11, 1918; Times, April 2, 1882, p. 2.
49. Herald, August 11, 1878, February 5, 1879, April 25, 1883, p. 10.
50. Daily Graphic, March 26, 1879.
51. Bruce Edward Hall, Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown (New York, 1998), 59; Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 42–45, 61–62; Times, April 25, 1883, p. 8.
52. Times, April 28, 1880, p. 1; Tribune, October 18, 1885, p. 9; Herald, April 25, 1883, p. 10; Sun, January 31, 1881.
53. Times, April 25, 1883, p. 8; Herald, April 25, 1883, p. 10.
54. Times, April 25 (p. 8), 26 (p. 8), May 3 (p. 3), 1883. The affidavits can be found in People v. Tom Lee, et al., folders 1098 and 1101, Box 103, Court of General Sessions Indictment Papers, New York Municipal Archives.
55. Times, April 24 (p. 8), 26 (p. 8), May 17 (pp. 2 and 4), 1883; Herald, April 25, 1883, p. 10.
56. Herald, May 11 (p. 3, “little girls”), 12 (p. 9, “girl trap”), 1883; Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 12, 1883): 190 (“can’t do without it”).
57. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 19, 1883): 206; Herald, May 11, 1883, p. 3; Sun, May 11, 1883; Tribune, May 11, 13, 1883; arrests of May 10, 11, 12, pp. 257, 260, 262, First District Police Court Docket Books, New York Municipal Archives; Augustine E. Costello, Our Police Protectors: The History of the New York Police from the Earliest Period to the Present Time ([New York], 1885), 517 (full text of 1882 opium law).
58. Herald, May 11 (p. 3, “buncombe”), 12 (p. 9), 14 (p. 8, “not general”).
59. Herald, May 11 (p. 3), 13 (p. 11), 1883; Tribune, May 13, 1883 (p. 5).
60. Tribune, May 12, 1883; Herald, May 11, 1883, p. 3. In internal archdiocese correspondence, Lynch complained that the Young Men’s Association organized its own “promiscuous balls” and that the group continu
ed to tell the press that it was associated with Transfiguration even though “they have been cut off from the church for the past two years”—Lynch to Archbishop Corrigan, May 16, 1886, file C-9, reel 9, Papers of the Archdiocese of New York. Chinese Americans sometimes complained to the police about the opium dens. See Capt. John McCullagh to Police Superintendent William Murray, June 30, 1887, Box 87-HAS-30, Abram S. Hewitt Mayoral Papers, New York Municipal Archives.
61. Tribune, May 12, 1883; Herald, May 12, 1883, p. 9; Times, May 17, 1883, pp. 2 and 4; Ah Chung affidavit in People v. Ah Chung, May 15, 1883, folder 1091, Box 102, People v. Tom Lee et al., May 1, 1883, folders 1098 and 1101, Box 103, Court of General Sessions Indictment Papers. Ah Chung was tried and acquitted. The Times’s statement that charges against Lee were dropped on May 16 is contradicted by the indictment records. It is unclear whether the Ah Chung who implicated Lee after his arrest in the opium raids is the same person as the “Ar Chun” who filed an affidavit in the gambling case, or the “Ah Chum” who was the only witness called at Lee’s hearing. The Herald and Frank Leslie’s named Wo Kee (sometimes referred to by this point as “Sam Kee”) as the leader of the Chinatown forces opposing Lee. See Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (May 12, 1883): 190.
62. Allen S. Williams, The Demon of the Orient and His Satellite Fiends of the Joints: Our Opium Smokers as They Are in Tartar Hells and American Paradises (New York, 1883), 12, 32 (“magnate”).
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