Then, on May 12: “Rooting Out the Evil,” NYH, May 12, 1883; “City and Suburban News,” NYT, May 15, 1883; Court of General Sessions of the Peace of the City and County of New York in the case of the People v. Ah Chung, Municipal Archives of the City of New York, box 73, folder 820, Aug. 18, 1882.
Meyers angrily brandished: “Tom Lee Discharged,” NYT, May 17, 1883.
“Tom has lost his badge”: “The Chinese Jay Gould,” BH, April 30, 1883.
The attack on Tom Lee: “Banqueting the Chinese Consul,” SFB, June 7, 1883.
“Au Yang Ming . . . came to New York”: “The New Chinese Consul,” NYH, June 18, 1883.
Not all of Lee’s Loon Yee Tong: “The ‘Big Flat’ Raided,” NYT, Dec. 8, 1884.
Those remunerations came: “The Mongolians in New York,” Daily Alta California, July 29, 1884; “A Chinese Quarrel,” NYT, Jan. 28, 1886; “‘Big Flat’ Raided”; “Opium Smokers Arrested,” NYT, Dec. 9, 1884.
He even raised eyebrows: “Tom Lee a Guest of Tommy Maher,” NYS, July 21, 1886.
“Of the 9,000 Chinamen”: “New York Chinatown,” SFB, July 19, 1887.
By early 1884: “New York Chinese,” SFB, March 10, 1884.
Apart from prostitutes: Chao Longqi [], “Weixian de yuyue: Zaoqi Meiguo huaqiao dubo wenti yanjiu, 1850–1943” [: , 1850–1943 ], Overseas Chinese History Studies [], no. 2 (June 2010): 41–42.
In what little leisure time: Wong, “Chinese in New York,” 306.
Pi gow, once dubbed: “Chinatown as It Really Is,” BA, May 28, 1905.
It was a compulsion: George W. Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (New York: Caxton Book Concerns, 1887), 422; “The Game of Fan Tan,” Jackson Citizen Patriot, May 13, 1887.
The promise of profits: Beck, New York’s Chinatown, 97.
By 1886, Tom Lee had organized: “Chinese Gamblers,” Cincinnati Tribune, July 19, 1887; NYW, July 19, 1887; “Chinese Gamblers’ Union,” Sacramento Daily Union, Aug. 21, 1887; “Hard to Deal with Chinese Gamblers,” NYH, July 19, 1887; “Lured by the Highbinders,” NYW, July 26, 1887.
“Dr. Thoms is now in the custody”: “Highbinders After Thoms,” NYS, July 18, 1887.
The court proceedings bordered: “Want to Swear Their Own Way,” NYH, July 22, 1887.
Thoms pleaded not guilty: “Thoms and the Highbinders,” NYS, July 21, 1887.
Like gambling, opium: “Opium Dens Resuming,” NYH, May 18, 1883; Allen S. Williams, Demon of the Orient (New York: by author, 1883), 12.
The drug, imported from Asia: “Opium Pays No Toll,” NYS, Sept. 23, 1894; “How Opium Is Smuggled,” NYS, March 18, 1888.
The reporter Wong Chin Foo: “Product of the Poppy,” Tombstone Epitaph, June 16, 1888.
A hop fiend: Walling, Recollections of a New York Chief of Police, 420–22. Walling was New York’s chief of police from 1874 to 1885.
It was easy for the police: “Chinese in New York,” SFC, May 27, 1883; “Opium Dens Shut,” Syracuse Standard, May 12, 1883; “In the ‘Big Flat,’” Rockford Gazette, July 7, 1884; “The Talk of New York,” NHR, Dec. 14, 1884; “Opium Smokers Arrested.”
Citywide, more than $3 million: Gustavus Myers, “Tammany and Vice,” Independent, Dec. 6, 1900, 2924–27; “This City’s Crying Shame,” NYT, March 9, 1900.
Gambling parlors were charged: “This City’s Crying Shame.”
In 1888, he worked energetically: “Hallison and Molton,” LaPorte City Progress, July 4, 1888, quoting the New York Star; “Chinese for Harrison,” St. Paul Daily Globe, Aug. 23, 1888.
In early 1889, when flooding: “Chinamen to the Rescue,” NYH, March 5, 1889; NYW, June 7, 1889; American Missionary, July 1889, 186.
When Yuet Sing: “Yuet Sing’s Bride,” NYH, Sept. 30, 1888; “Joss Saw Their Nuptials,” PI, Oct. 1, 1888; “General Lee Yu Doo’s Funeral,” NYH, Oct. 30, 1888; “A Chinaman’s Funeral,” Forest Republican, Dec. 19, 1888; “Yung Chee Yang’s Funeral,” Kansas City Times, May 11, 1890. By one account, however, the so-called general was simply a poor clerk who “had won the regard of the entire Chinese community by the probity of his character,” and his military service was a myth. See Stewart Culin, “Chinese Secret Societies in the United States,” Journal of American Folklore, Jan.–March and July–Sept. 1890, 41–42.
When Lee took sick: Virginia Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 67–68; “Tom Lee Is Ill,” NYT, Aug. 16, 1887.
“a powerful Republican factor”: “They’ll Naturally Vote for Ben,” NYW, Nov. 4, 1888.
Chapter 3: “A Clear Case of Corruption”
“the Bloody Sixth”: “Seven Police Captains Lose Their Commands,” NYH, Jan. 24, 1891; “Police Circles Startled,” NYT, Jan. 24, 1891.
When he got to Chinatown: “Silent Are the Fan-Tan Dens of Mott Street,” NYH, Jan. 30, 1891; “They Played Fan Tan,” NYH, Feb. 2, 1891.
Members of the Gamblers’ Union: “Wirepulling in Chinatown,” NYS, June 6, 1891; Moss, American Metropolis, 2:426–29.
After the New York Herald: “Gambling with Shells While Police Look On,” NYH, Jan. 20, 1891; “Seven Police Captains Lose Their Commands”; “Police Circles Startled.”
Brooks, for his part: “The New Police Captains,” NYT, July 1, 1887; “Inspector Brooks Looks Back over His Forty Years on the Force,” NYT, Dec. 25, 1904; “Biographical Sketches of Greater New York Police,” Tammany Times, Jan. 15, 1900, 22.
Tom Lee immediately: “Silent Are the Fan-Tan Dens of Mott Street.”
“Readers: Because of cheating”: Original Chinese notice is illustrated in Moss, American Metropolis, 2:427. Translation courtesy of Lester F. Lau.
“eliminating despots”: The Chinese expression is “” (Chubao Anliang). Another interpretation is “to rob from the rich and give to the poor.”
for many generations: Arthur Bonner, “The Chinese in New York, 1800–1950,” in Chinese America: History and Perspectives, 1993 (San Francisco: Chinese Historical Society of America, 1993), 142; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change, 187; “An Umbrella Aeronaut,” NYW, June 20, 1894; Ling, Chinese Chicago, 133.
Peace, however, would turn out: “Sheriff Lee Back from China,” NYH, Dec. 14, 1891; “New York Republicans to Get Down to Work,” PI, Dec. 14, 1891; “Chinese Rise in Protest,” NYW, Aug. 11, 1892; “Chinamen Are Good and Handy Patrons of Bowery Shooting Galleries,” NYW, Sept. 5, 1888.
But New York, by contrast: Wang, Surviving the City, 136.
Smuggling Chinese into the United States: “The Smuggling of Chinamen,” NYT, July 27, 1893; “Chinamen Evading,” Salt Lake Herald, Sept. 10, 1889.
“organized bodies of men”: “The Highbinders,” Oregonian, Oct. 2, 1887.
The tong began to establish: “Chinese Anarchists,” NYS, Aug. 24, 1888; “Chinatown Excited,” PI, Aug. 30, 1889; “Chinese Blackmailers,” PI, Aug. 29, 1889.
In New York, the fault line: “Chinatown,” Havana Journal, July 30, 1887.
“Here is the headquarters”: Ibid.
In addition to being Tom Lee’s nephew: “Loie Sung’s Murder Was All a Mistake,” NYT, Oct. 19, 1905.
Sometimes known as Black Devil Toy: “Mary Chung’s Romance,” NYW, Oct. 9, 1892; “Wicked Celestials They,” NYW, April 24, 1894; “Two Chinese Women in Court,” NYT, March 27, 1895.
When the gambling bosses: “Done by the Hatchet Gang,” NYW, Oct. 12, 1891; “Lee Toy Smote Two Men,” NYW, Oct. 11, 1891.
Price had also defended: “Bought Unstamped Opium,” NYH, Jan. 22, 1891.
The defense alleged: “Good Wages for Murderers,” NYS, Nov. 20, 1891; “Hatchet Mob Rebuked,” NYW, Dec. 2, 1891.
On April 8, 1894, police raided: Deposition of Wong Gett before Immigration Inspector F. S. Pierce, Dec. 19, 1911, in Chinese Exclusion Act Case File for
Mrs. Duck Mok, Record Group 85, box 323, Case Nos. 95, 146, Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Archives and Records Administration—Northeast Region, New York; “Wicked Celestials They.”
Wong had been pummeled: “Pursued by a Mob of Chinamen,” NYPR, April 11, 1894; “Chinamen in Combat,” NYW, April 16, 1894.
“It is a clear case”: “Wicked Celestials They.”
The rotten system: “The Golden Prime of Tammany,” NYT, Oct. 28, 1917.
“The mayor and those associated”: Fred A. McKenzie, “Tammany,” Eclectic Magazine, Jan. 1898, 128–35.
Challenged for proof: Sloat, Battle for the Soul of New York, 18–27; Gardner, The Doctor and the Devil, 35–39.
The vehicle created: “Prosperous Chinese Arrested for Voting”; “Umbrella Aeronaut”; “Raiding Chinese Dens,” NYW, Aug. 27, 1894.
There was considerable irony: Peter Baida, “The Corrupting of New York City,” American Heritage, Dec. 1986; “A Palace of Plunder,” NYT, Dec. 6, 1913.
Wong Get, who did not require: “A Chinaman’s Evidence,” NHR, June 28, 1894.
“Is not Tom Lee generally considered”: Report and Proceedings of the Senate Committee Appointed to Investigate the Police Department of the City of New York (Albany, N.Y.: J. B. Lyon, 1895), 2:2240–66.
Wong Get was determined: “Chinamen in a Fight,” NYT, Dec. 4, 1896; “Battle in Chinatown,” NYS, Sept. 26, 1897.
“lucrative and influential job”: “Mayor Tom Lee Boycotted,” NYS, July 9, 1894.
Two could play: “Protection in Chinatown,” NYS, July 29, 1894.
“organized for the sole purpose”: “Hired Assassins,” Utica Observer, Aug. 4, 1894.
Chapter 4: The Chinese Parkhursts
The committee favored making: “Lexow’s Final Summing Up,” SR, Jan. 18, 1895.
The most prominent: Richard D. White Jr., “Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner: Linking the Influence and Development of a Modern Administrative President,” Administrative Theory and Praxis 22, no. 4 (Dec. 2000): 696–713.
It is easy to understand: “Mayor Strong Acts,” BJ, April 2, 1895; “Mr. Kerwin Refuses,” NYH, May 5, 1895.
“I was appointed”: Roosevelt, Autobiography, 185.
During his relatively brief tenure: Kelly, History of the New York City Police Department; Roosevelt, Autobiography, 198–211.
Roosevelt made short work: “Parkhurst Finds Fault,” NYT, Jan. 1, 1895; “Byrnes Retires with a Pension,” NYH, May 28, 1895; Peter Hartshorn, I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens (Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint Press, 2011), 44.
The Hip Sings, sensing: “Roosevelt’s Chinese Ally,” NYS, July 19, 1895.
In March 1895, Lee Toy finally: “Wang Get, a Lexow Witness, Wins,” NYT, March 24, 1895.
“The conviction of Lee Toy”: “Lee Toy’s Great Pull,” NYW, March 26, 1895.
Tom Lee—who surely: “Murder the Talk in Chinatown,” NYW, March 31, 1895.
Despite mounting evidence: “Police and Fan-Tan,” WS, June 28, 1894.
This rise to respectability: Bonner, Alas! What Brought Thee Hither?, 139; Deposition of Chu Fong before Immigrant Inspector H. R. Sisson, April 24, 1905, in Chinese Exclusion Act Case File of Chu Fong, New York District Office of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Archives and Records Administration—Northeast Region, New York.
The young man’s name: “Chinamen Alleged to Be Smuggled In,” NYTGM, Sept. 9, 1896; “Strong in Chinatown,” NYW, April 5, 1895; “The Mayor in Chinatown Late at Night,” NYTR, April 5, 1895; “A New Temple for Chinatown,” NYTR, May 14, 1895.
In August 1895, officers raided: “Colin Orders a Raid,” NYW, Aug. 11, 1895; “Chinese Spies Cause a Raid,” NYS, Aug. 11, 1895; “Only Three Chinamen Held,” NYW, Aug. 12, 1895.
“I am not through”: “Only Three Chinamen Held.”
“to establish and maintain”: “To Make Chinatown Moral,” NYT, Nov. 8, 1896.
Not to be outdone: “Mott Street’s New Club,” NYS, Feb. 18, 1897; Certificate of Incorporation, Chinese Merchants Association, Feb. 4, 1897, New York State Department of State, Division of Corporations.
To mark the occasion: “On Leong Tong Celebration,” NYT, Feb. 18, 1897; “Mott Street’s New Club.”
“He is bold, plucky, resolute”: Moss, American Metropolis, 2:413–14.
In court, the attorney: “Dong Fong Says He Knows Moss,” NYTGM, April 26, 1897; “Dong Fong Paid a Fine,” NYTGM, April 28, 1897; “Has a Pull with Moss,” NYW, April 27, 1897.
But there was dissent: “Chinese Parkhurstites,” NYS, Sept. 2, 1897; “Odd Incidents by Chinamen,” NYW, Sept. 2, 1897; “Dong Fong in Disgrace,” NYT, Sept. 6, 1897; “Battle in Chinatown.”
“the spirit of a tiger”: Deposition of Mok See Duck (Mock Duck) before Immigration Inspector F. S. Pierce, Sept. 8, 1911, in Chinese Exclusion Act Case File for Mrs. Duck Mok, Record Group 85, box 323, Case Nos. 95, 146, Immigration and Naturalization Service, National Archives and Records Administration—Northeast Region, New York; W. O. Inglis, “The Golden Hegira of Mock Duck,” Saturday Evening Post, May 27, 1905.
The “shining light”: “Knives to Stop Chinese Reform,” NYH, Sept. 26, 1897.
On September 21, Mock Duck: “Battle in Chinatown”; “The People, etc. in Complaint of Leung Tai v. Chu Luck,” City Magistrate’s Court, First District, City and County of New York, Municipal Archives of the City of New York, Sept. 30, 1897; City Magistrate’s Court, First District, City and County of New York in the case of the People, on the Complaint of Chu Lok v. Leung Tai, Mock Tuck, and Wong Get, Municipal Archives of the City of New York, Oct. 20, 1897; Court of General Sessions of the Peace of the City and County of New York in the case of the People of the State of New York v. Wong Get and the case of the People of the State of New York v. Leung Tai, Municipal Archives of the City of New York, Jan. 11, 1898; “Three Alleged Highbinders on Trial for Assault,” NYW, Nov. 23, 1897.
some seventy others spent the evening: Among them were the New York state senator Jacob A. Cantor; the attorney Thomas McAdam; Thomas F. Smith, secretary to the outgoing Tammany head, John C. Sheehan, who was about to become clerk of the city court; John W. Keller, shortly to become commissioner of public charities; the Brooklyn attorney and former congressman Daniel O’Reilly; and the police justice Joseph Koch.
And because Tammany: “Chinatown Honors Tammany,” NYTR, Nov. 24, 1897.
“We are living here”: “Notes from Gotham,” Bay City Times, May 21, 1899; “Lees’ Fete in Chinatown,” NYT, April 18, 1899.
“every one of whom is an expert”: Beck, New York’s Chinatown, 122–33.
Chapter 5: The War Begins
The first to die: “Murder in Chinatown,” NYT, Aug. 13, 1900; “Chinese Armed to Kill Another,” NYPR, Aug. 13, 1900; “Chinese Allege Assassins’ Plot,” NYTGM, Aug. 13, 1900; “Chinaman Killed in Faction Fight,” NYH, Aug. 13, 1900; “Homicide in Chinatown,” BSU, Aug. 13, 1900; “Riot in Pell Street. One Chinaman Killed,” NYW, Aug. 13, 1900.
According to the rumor mill: “Chinese in Gotham Meet and Riot Follows,” CT, Aug. 13, 1900.
The plan, police learned: “Murder in Chinatown”; “Riot in Pell Street”; “Shooting in Chinatown,” NYT, Aug. 17, 1900.
Lung Kin’s assassination initiated: For the numbering convention for the New York tong wars, I am grateful to Arthur Bonner, author of Alas! What Brought Thee Hither? His book provided an invaluable road map to the conflicts in New York’s Chinatown.
Charged with homicide: “Feud Renewed in Chinatown,” NYTGP, April 21, 1901; “Chinese Murderer Held,” NYTR, Aug. 14, 1900; “Goo Wing Ching Arraigned,” NYT, Aug. 14, 1900.
“I go die”: Testimony of Officer Henry Touwsma, the People v. Mock Duck, Criminal Branch of the Supreme Court of New York County, Minutes of the First Trial, New York Public Library, 1902.
Ah Fee had no pulse: “Chinaman Killed in a Fight,” NYTR, Sept. 22, 1900; “Death Ends Chinese Riot,” NHR, Sept. 22, 1900; “Ah Fee’s Slayer in the Tombs Isn’t Talking,” DPP, Sept. 23, 1900.
Tom Lee confirmed: “Death Ends Chinese Riot”; “Highbinders in Chinatown,” NYTR, April 14, 1901; “Feud Renewed in Chinatown.”
He took note when Asa B. Gardiner: “Col. Gardiner Is Removed,” NYT, Dec. 23, 1900; “Philbin Is Now in Office,” NYT, Dec. 25, 1900; “Philbin After Big Game,” NYT, Feb. 20, 1901; “Gamblers Do Business with Great Caution,” NYT, April 9, 1901.
Philbin inherited the Chinatown: “Life Sentence for a Chinaman,” NYTR, April 16, 1901; “Sue Sing Sent Up for Life,” BSU, April 15, 1901.
In the meantime, the Hip Sings: “Highbinders After Tom Lee,” NYT, April 21, 1901; “Highbinders After Life of Tom Lee,” NYH, April 21, 1901.
“They are after me now”: “New York Daily Letter,” CPD, April 24, 1901; “Tom Lee Packs a Two-Foot Gun,” Salt Lake Telegram, Feb. 5, 1902.
Philbin and Garvan pursued: “Five Chinamen in Murder Plot,” NYW, June 11, 1901; “Three Chinamen Killed in Fire in Manhattan,” BSU, Sept. 3, 1901.
The men bolted: Testimony of Detective John Farrington, Court of General Sessions of the Peace of the City and County of New York, Part II in the case of the People v. Mock Duck, Minutes of the Second Trial, New York Public Library, 1902.
“I’ve been working hard”: “To Try Mock Duck for Murder,” NYS, June 12, 1901.
But before any trials: “Boston Chinaman to Be Tried Here,” NYTR, July 11, 1901; “Three Chinamen Killed in Fire in Manhattan”; “Chinamen Indicted,” DPP, June 12, 1901; “Mock Duck Tried for Murder,” BS, Feb. 20, 1902.
The man was thirty-nine-year-old: “Joy in Chinatown: Sing Cue Is Dead,” NYH, Sept. 4, 1901; “Chinese Burned to Death,” NYT, Sept. 4, 1901.
The authorities believed the fire: “Three Chinamen Killed in Fire in Manhattan”; “Chinese Burned to Death.”
“I think we can convict”: “Three Chinamen Killed in Fire in Manhattan.”
Tong Wars Page 33