Ah Sing

Ah Sing's Willoughby Road shop c.1907. Detail from a postcard. The boy in the white shirt at the lower right is possibly Sing's second son, Arthur. Stanton Library

Ah Sing was the most prominent of North Sydney's Chinese residents and businessmen and yet his historical record is somewhat confusing.

In large part this is due to there being at least two men called Ah Sing in the St Leonards/North Sydney/Willoughby areas from the 1880s through to the early 1900s. Furthermore, it is likely that some historians have conflated Ah Sing, who made a name for himself as a well-established grocer in Willoughby Road, Crows Nest, with a prominent Parramatta shopkeeper called Lee Gumbuk Sing/Ah Lee/ Ah Sing. (see Jack Brook, From Canton with Courage, 2010, p.113)

Before discussing Ah Sing, the grocer, it is helpful to note the details of Ah Sing, the fruit seller, who declared his address as 43 Lane Cove Road in an oath signed in Chinese characters in 1907. That man was probably gathering the documentation necessary to travel to China and return to Australia. Sing's name does not appear at that address in North Sydney Council's ledgers but No. 43 Lane Cove was leased continuously by Chinese traders from 1900 to 1910 so it is quite possible that Sing rented a room from Ah Chew the lessee. This Ah Sing is likely the man who was granted a hawker's license in 1886 (Hawkers), was charged with mistreating a horse later that year and found guilty of the theft of two wheels from behind his Lane Cove Road abode in 1892. The following year, one Ah Sing, 'gardener', was assaulted and robbed at Willoughby.

By then Ah Sing, the grocer, had established himself in Crows Nest in a handsome two-storey brick shop in North Sydney Road, subsequently named Willoughby Road (St Leonards West Map) and (Explore sources). The front of that building would bear the banner 'Ah Sing Wholesale and Family Grocer … Est. 1879'. It is not clear where Sing opened that first shop. The earliest reference to him in Council records is in 1883. That was in association with a shop dwelling at 71 Lane Cove Road, now the Pacific Highway, between Berry and McLaren Streets. Sing maintained an interest there until 1892. His Crows Nest store opened in 1890.

It is possible that the family lived above the shop. There is no record of Sing's marriage in the colonial registry but the mother of seven or eight children is named variously as Ah Gue, Ah Lee and Ah Yee in the NSW Register of Births. She was one of the few Chinese women in Sydney. There were only 64 in 1881 and 159 by 1901. All the Sings' children were registered in 'St Leonards', the original name for North Sydney.

Their first child was born in 1886. He was named Willoughby, apparently after the Parish of Willoughby which took in St Leonards. Arthur was born in 1900. Georgie followed in 1901. Leonard, perhaps named after St Leonards, was born in 1903. A girl, May, followed in 1905. Jack was born in 1907 and Tommy in 1909.

Leonard - 'Lennie' - died in 1911. The newspaper notice which announced his funeral at Rookwood Cemetery on 4 December indicated that the family had moved to an address on the corner of Harbour and Little Hay Street in the Haymarket area – the future location of Chinatown. The family had apparently sold the Willoughby Road shop to William Eden Shaw in 1905 and remained there as tenants until 1910.

Ah Sing established a name for himself during his 25 or so years in North Sydney. In 1891 it was suggested he stand for local Council, an office for which he was ineligible because he not naturalised. The prominence of the Willoughby Road shop gave rise to the colloquial name 'Ah Sing's Corner'. In 1898, Ah Sing gave generously to the relief fund which was established to help Margaret Simpson and her seven children after she was rendered a double amputee in a local tram accident and a widow with the co-incidental death of her husband.

Sing and his family had to endure their own travails. There was a burglary in 1893. Another in 1901 prompted one of Sing's Chinese employees, or possibly one of his sons, to chase the robber armed with a revolver. Sing had his name forged on a cheque in 1900. There were suits and countersuits for monies and goods owing on several occasions.

Perhaps the most unpleasant attack came in 1904, when the openly racist newspaper Truth printed verses ridiculing Willoughby Sing, then just 18 years old, because of his relationship with a 'white' employee of the family shop called Fanny Asher. The 'poet' was WT Goodge, a British-born journalist who, by 1904, was writing for Truth and living in North Sydney.