Discrimination

The Chinese endured discrimination with regards restrictive immigration laws since the 1860s.

The arguments made for those laws typically relied upon racist and unfounded claims about the threat to social order and progress represented by the Chinese. From those ideas, stemmed mistreatment including abuse and violence. Journals were free to print virulent material while politicians such as Henry Parkes openly claimed that the Chinese had no place in a British culture. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Chinese people suffered physical and emotional abuse and violence through the 19th and much of the 20th centuries. The antipathy and aggression meted out is difficult to reconcile with Edgar Wright's memories of the Chinese as 'quiet', 'inoffensive' and hard working (Hawking).

Chinese men were especially vulnerable as they often travelled alone. In 1911 it was reported that 'Chinaman' and 'vegetable hawker', Ah John, was assaulted and robbed while driving a cart on Cremorne Road. (Sydney Morning Herald, 19/7/1911) The assailant knocked him unconscious when Ah John reached for the cauliflower requested.

It would also appear that the Chinese were targeted by some criminals. That was the mode of operation for the so-called 'bag thief' of North Sydney who preyed upon Chinese men in 1901. 'White' attackers may also have been motivated by a sense of impunity or racism. When, in 1908, Willoughby gardener Ah Bing was severely beaten in Crows Nest by two youths, one asked the arresting constable: 'You wouldn't put a white man away would you?'. (Northern Star, 18/9/1908)

In December 1893 Lane Cove Road greengrocer, Ah Sing, accused two local men of ambushing, assaulting and robbing him as he drove his cart to Willoughby. As the attacked occurred in broad daylight, Sing was able to name one of his attackers. The case was dismissed as an instance of mistaken identity because both of the accused had alibis that were accepted by the police. The attack on Ah Sing came shortly after another Chinese man, Ah Bun, was killed by two 'youths' throwing stones. In 1898, the allegation of assault against three men by North Sydney gardener, Sam Hop, was dismissed.

This page from Sun Johnson's 1890s Chinese / English phrase book titled 'Troubles in the Street' listed various phrases reflecting the violence that might confront a Chinese man in public (State Library of NSW).

Other crimes against the Chinese were, nonetheless, successfully prosecuted by the police. When the servant Ah Lee was punched in the mouth by the son of his employer who was angry that instructions had not been followed, the judge remarked that 'the day of allowing a man to beat his servant had passed'. (Evening News, 30 January 1889) In July 1902, Robert Howard, alias Robert Byers, robbed North Sydney grocer, Arthur Kong, of 16s 2d worth of produce. The defendant was found guilty of 'obtaining a quantity of groceries … by means of a false pretence and with intent to defraud'. He was sentenced to one month imprisonment with hard labour. (Sydney Morning Herald, 29/1/1902)

The persecution of Chinese people reflected fear and hostility and this, in turn, emerged from an aversion to difference. Their appearance, customs and habits were alien to those who sought reassurance or a sense of superiority in the dominant Anglo-Celtic colonial culture. The cartoons that appeared frequently in the press revealed an unabashed racism. Often there were double standards imposed as the Melbourne-based Chinese community leader, Cheok Hong Cheong, noted: ‘[a] morality was expected of the Chinese … that Europeans could not, and did not, claim for themselves.' (‘The Chinese Question in Australia’, 1879).’

That double standard was nowhere more obvious than in the attitude to gambling and opium smoking. It was feared that these 'vices' would lead to penury, the creation of Chinese beggars and the corruption of the wider society. Illegal gambling occurred with the pak-ah-pu lottery and the card game fan-tan. Opium use was legal until 1906. Both were prevalent within Sydney's Chinese communities, a result no doubt of loneliness, boredom, marginalisation and harsh living and working conditions. While the broader problem of working-class gambling and drunkenness prompted condemnation from religious reformers, it did not motivate such intense scrutiny.

This cartoon by Phil May appeared in the Sydney-based journal, The Bulletin, on 14/4/1888. The publication was very popular and particularly hostile to the Chinese. The portrayal of the opium-pushing 'Chinaman' was mild in comparison to some caricatures.

The link between the Chinese and opium goes back, of course, to the profiteering of the British East India Company in the early 1800s and the need to offset the demand for Chinese tea with a product that, by its addictive nature, established a dependent market in China. The Opium Wars of the 1840s were fought over the right of the British to export this drug from India to China. That conflict began what Chinese people still remember as a century of humiliation at the hands of Europeans and led to the ceding of Hong Kong to the British, and the Chinese diaspora throughout the British empire (Immigration Controls). For all the condemnation, opium importation remained legal until 1906. Up to 37,000 pounds (16,700 kgs) were imported to NSW annually between 1871 and 1905, all of it attracting duties which benefitted public revenue. In 1906, the Australian Star noted the decline in opium consumption among both 'white' and 'coloured' residents of Sydney. The paper singled out the market gardens of North Sydney and Botany as residual centres of opium use. (Australian Star 7/08/1906) As several raids were conducted on Willoughby market gardens in later years, it is possible that North Sydney was used as a general term for north shore. In any case, the North Sydney gardens were destroyed by suburban subdivisions shortly after the Star's article.

These phrases from The Self Educator clearly indicate that Chinese people were both subjected to unprovoked attack and they regarded such behaviour as immoral (State Library of NSW).

Various anti-Chinese gambling leagues had been established in Sydney, including North Sydney, in July 1891. The following month the colonial government created a Royal Commission into Alleged Chinese Gambling and Immorality. The inclusion of the word 'alleged' suggests a degree of impartiality and indeed the Commissioners interviewed several members of the Chinese community. Prominent Chinese community leader Quong Tart was appointed as a commissioner. Many witnesses spoke convincingly of the respectability of their brethren but it was clear that opium use was rife.

Whether the formation of a North Sydney chapter of the Anti-Chinese Gambling League was prompted by local instances of gambling or simply a general fear of the Chinese is unclear. But it is interesting that, in 1899, concerned local resident Henry Nicholson had to travel across the Harbour to the Rocks to purchase a pak-ah-pu lottery ticket in the company of a police constable in an entrapment exercise.

While racism was generally accepted in public discourse, the Chinese were often associated with outbreaks of disease – along with some other non-British groups such as Sydney's small Syrian and Italian population. The Bulletin's articles were typically cruel and abusive. In 1902, the North Sydney Sanitary Inspector identified the area's Chinese market gardeners as potential carriers of the bubonic plague, which had broken out around Millers Point the previous year. Market gardeners 'regularly sent their produce wholesale to Sydney from nearly all the northern suburbs' he said, and they 'returned with the same vehicles laden with manure, among which possibly deceased rats might be conveyed from some of the infected areas, thus forming a serious source of danger.' (Sydney Morning Herald, 15/5/1902). The plague-related death of North Sydney man Cyril Atkins was linked, without confirmation, to a ride he had taken in a market gardener's cart.

In 1904, the fervently anti-Chinese newspaper, Truth, reported that the cows pastured near the Chinese market gardens in Cammeray produced unsanitary milk because they drank from the polluted Willoughby Falls Creek. The creek may have been polluted by urban run-off but the newspaper attributed blame to 'the drainage of many acres of Chinese cabbage gardens', and 'foul-smelling and festering pools' nearby. As a result 'dangerous intestinal disease [was spread] among children.' (Truth, 15 May 1904)

Claims were also made that Chinese market gardeners used human excreta, 'night soil', as manure and that this was a potential source of contamination. When interviewed during the 1891 Royal Commission, War Hop denied such use. The preferred fertiliser was 'bone-dust and horse-dung'. (Royal Commission, p.416) There were no health epidemics conclusively linked to Chinese market gardens.

Always there was the highlighting of ethnicity – of 'race'. When, in 1909, potato blight appeared in Sydney, reporters asked the Minister of Agriculture explicitly whether the source had been traced to a 'Chinaman's' market garden in North Sydney. The answer was 'yes', but the source of the seed potatoes had not been verified. (Daily Telegraph, 22 September 1909)

The connection between contamination and the Chinese flowed over into personal relationships. Henry Parkes had spoken of the need to keep the colony's British blood 'pure' as early as 1888. That fear of miscegenation carried forward for decades. It led to a particularly vicious attack on the Willoughby Sing, the eldest son of Ah Sing. In 1904, Truth attempted to humiliate Willoughby because of his romantic connection with a young 'white' woman, Fanny Asher, who worked as a shop assistant for the family. A poem submitted by an emboldened reader tellingly ridiculed 'these two little Birds … of different breed!' (Truth, 24 January 1904) But envy was also apparent in Truth's attack. Willoughby, it was claimed, had 'grown fat and wealthy and purse proud'. It was necessary therefore to put him 'back in his place'. (Truth, 17 January 1904)