A Threat in Chinatown: The Laundryman, the Secret Society, and the Police Escort
After a robbery in Wa Chong’s building, a Chinese agent fears assassination by a band of seventeen ‘highbinders’ and asks Captain Brennan for safe conduct home.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Developments this morning as a result of the robbery in Wa Chong’s building a few nights ago, by which Ah Chin, a laundryman, was robbed of $1 by two of his fellow countrymen, would indicate that a band of highbinders had commenced operations in this city. At 12:30 o’clock this morning Capt. Brennan received the following note:
“Seattle, March 25, 1894. Capt. Brennan: Please come to my store immediately. CHU YONG, of Wa Chong Co.”
The captain hurried to the store and learned from Quong, who is Wa Chong’s agent, that the highbinders, a band of seventeen men, held him responsible for the information the police had received in the recent robbery, and that they intended to take his life at the first opportunity. He desired that the captain give him safe conduct to his home on Washington, between South Fifth and Sixth streets. The captain complied and at the corner of Washington and South Fifth four Chinamen, whom he said were members of the highbinders, were passed. They looked at Quong and the captain in an ugly manner and swore in their own language. When at his own door Quong said he had no fear of the assassins. Officer Powers, who patrols Washington street, was informed of the matter and told to keep a special lookout for the murderous highbinders.
“They looked at Quong and the captain in an ugly manner and swore in their own language.”
The term ‘highbinder’ was a racist slur for Chinese secret society members, and stories like this fed the era’s anti-Chinese panic. Behind the lurid framing was a real community under threat, navigating crime and policing in Seattle’s Chinatown. Today, the Chinatown-International District remains a vital neighborhood, still fighting outside stereotypes and real public-safety challenges.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.