The evening world. Newspaper, August 10, 1922, Page 16

ey HUE R pty A OREN Police on Guard, Fearing Recent Murdei ot Ko Low, Hip Sing President, May Be Initial Move in Chinese Tong War— Would Add New Chapter to Series of Sanguinary Conflicts in Gopyright, 1922 (New York Evening World Most of the affairs going on 1n shing Come Chinatown were und are as man standing I adroitly hidden from !tt of alien de hadows of race as the guns and kr th weuy # No, killers were Concealed in their roomy leeves, ‘The first intimation that war % an 23 Pel} was on often came with the clatter of idler, apparently, pistol shots and the gathering of po fumbling witha hand- licemen and ambulance surgeons to Herohiet hold a pow-wow over one or two dead Chinamen in the roadway and a brace othe: n com eee Ueld ult of long barrelled, blued steel .44.« ing from a restaurant ¢ 24, JUSt bre revolv: found in the gutt across the way—one of « party of five fhe secret societies of Chinatown he fm which there are two young women e always had at faith tn tt primitive method of disposing of ene > race of the quarte not of the race of the quarter mies or other lesirables’’ by elim The man in the doorway stra inating them 1© Hip Sings and ens from his lounging, adva a the Ong Leong ht be called “The step, and then, from beneath the jeties for D. Without ne eople handkerchief, come f quick Mire \ndeatvablds Wave. fidked’ oft ef flame tn the dafk of Mott or Pell or Doyers Six hours later Ko Low, nati Stre nd at the very first rev dent of the powerful Hip reports the street of the sh who had me so curelessiy would be deserted save for from the restaurant, is dead in Beek- crumpled figure on the sidewall man Street Hospital with a bullet But again, as in the shooting-up of through his body CHULChInEae itsa teen Dopaiy treet ‘And now the police are wondering on Aug. 6, 1905, murder was carried Whether long-silent automatics are on being taken from their oiled rags to itself could provide. This was one of Break the ten-year peace which has the best examples of Tong warfare. existed between the Hip Sings and the The police snid at the time that the Ong Leongs. Hip Sings started the row, and Mock with more drama than the theatre The “Bloody Angle,” where Dovers Street enters Pell, and the scene of many Tong killings. That ‘‘Truce’’ Had Apparently Chinatown Ended. Duck invested for It. At any several hundred Chi eatre attending a “sa hen some one in the set off bunches of was looked n f fir It upon as enthu r the concert. But when uditorium was filled with smoke four Chinamen arose as if by prearranged signal. One was at re f the he ¢, another at the s' end of the centre aisle, the third was to the right midway down the side and the fourth in a corresponding place on the left. These four arose fired simultaneously, apparently hout taking aim, and no one fell Instantly re was @ rush for scape on art of fhe audience and the plac vas in an uproar The Chinaman at the back of the house met the rush with drawn revolver and a burse of bullets. ‘The crowd charged for the stage and the China man there greeted them as the first had done Kushes to right or left were checked by the other two gun. men, Finding themselves thus cut off, men in the milling crowd, Ong Leongs, so It was said, drew. their long-barrelled revolvers now and let fly The result of the battle was five mortally wounded Chinamen Th police said that the Hip Sings w under orders to “get” five Leongs. And five were ‘got."’ ‘Tong wars in the past have been due, in most cases, to contest over the graft from ple gow and fantan houses and such resorts, @r over the fickle white women who cast their lives with the Chinamen of the quar- ter, But there was one war, waged for years, Which followed the murder Ong of a Chinese slave girl in a dingy Mott Street tenement The killing of this girl was an atrocity, even for Chinatown. She was Bow Kum and she was twenty- one years old when she died, She had been a slave girl since a child. In 1907 she arrived in San Francisco, coming from Canton to Secome, of tensibly, @ maldservant. What she became was the property of a rich Chinaman who, as she was pretty, paid a handsome sum for her. Her master died and she became a coquette in San Francisco's China- town, distinguished among other things for the number of pistol battles fought over her. A mission worker tn- duced her to give up her mode of life and while being ‘‘cc ted" she met one Chin Len, an Ong Leong man, He got her away from the mission house on pretext of marrying her, but he put her in a dive in Oakland. There she met Low Dong, 4 former sweetheart, a Four Brothers man, who tried to get her to go away with him. Chin Len learned of this and spirited her to New York in February, 1909, making @ ho for her in the tene ment at No. 1 et. Early in the morning of A that year Chin Len ran ¢ room saying he had been mu 1 ad been stabbed to death wi ferocity. ievable THE EVENING WORLD, Within a short time the war started, Hip Sings, Ong Leongs and Four Brothers swearing vengeance on one another, each charging one of the oth- ers with the killing. It may be sald that the blood that flowed from Bow Kum's wounds did not dry for a year in the streets of Chinatown. Not less than four murders are said to have been done in reprisal There are ny ‘underground’ wn that a man ften gets wind of e the eity—only channels in ( t marked for it and manages t to be picked off me other com munity, for the a f Chinese ven geance is symbolized in the length of @ manda r 8 But not all Chinaine htened aw One who long refused to be terrified, thoug ‘ to be marked for knife or ey, was old Tom Lee, once head of the Ong Leongs and THURSDAY, AUGUST 10, 1922. pelea tect en) called ‘‘Mayor of Chinatown,’* dead now. He lived on the top floor of No, 14 Mott Street and early one morning a bullet whizzed past his pillow and drilled an alarm clock beside his bed. On another day a heavy flagpole, adroitly sawed, fell almost on him as he walked in tho street. Neither of these experiences drove him from the quarter. Eventually the Hip Sings exploded a bomb in his home and he He ts retired in haste te the Bronx entu- ally he ca back and Ain became head of his Tong, dying naturally anti being buried in great pom; There was one resident of the quar ter who thought he had obtained ; ection against any enemy y proprietor of the Chinese Theatre, He knew that he wa ys in danger of a sly bullet, so he had a secret staircase built s from the theatre in Bow Kum, beautiful Chinese whose murder in 1909 precipitated a_ bitter war which lasted for slave girl, ‘ years. ister Shadow of ‘the Hatchet Chinese Delmonico Restaurant at No. 24 Pell Street, where Ko Low was shot in what may prove the beginning of a new Tong war. Doyers Street to his living quarters in adjacent Chatham Square. At the foot of the stairway was an iron door and a guard, At the top was another fron door and another guard. But a Chinese murderer got past all these and killed the theatre man in his own living room A famous Tong killing twelve years ago when Leongs went to Hip Sin oceurred three Ong \eadquar ters at No. 12 Bowery apd. squatting in the street, shot down several of that ciety's officers as they came night meeting ne of the fiving bullets went into a saloon where a longshoreman was taking his first. drink in weeks and with the first money he had earned after a long period shattered the The hand of idleness. glass in his bullet and entered his forehead, xilling him in- stantly was also shot Two of the Chinamen captured after this shooting were found wearing ar another a One had on a mailed waistcoat In the fusillade a small boy shirt and ew days later the Hip Sings went Pell Street and at “The lloody Angle where Pell and Doyers meet 0k ample revenge, killing two Ong Leongs may be said that the fg wa started about twenty t arrival 8 city of ute China- man of the name-of Mock Duck, He stil ting what he de lares be a profitable importing usines klyn. The Internal Revenue people have been at him onc or twice, but not to his discomfiture Mock Duck e from Chicag where he had n of importance it Chinese affairs, and was held to be a an of power and resource. As soo is he arrived here he went to Lee and explained that he might t ound to be “useful? to the Ong Leongs in the matt f the main of gambling prerogatives in the district over which Tom Lee held power. It uld be understood her If To! that the two chief causes of been disagreements disagreements « women, mainly, who cast their lives with Chinamen wars have gamblers and Occidental But Tom Lee saw no reason why Mock Duck should be employed by him or his Tong, and said so. Mock Duck went away, and a little while thereafter the pol applied with iecurate information, raided all the i fan tan games being con- pie gow a ducted by the Ong Leongs. This was too much to be borne, two days later Mock Duck was dis covered on a cold sidewalk in China- town with a bullet through his ab domen, He never had to ask who shot him. He was taken to a hospital and there slowly recovered. ‘The bul~ seemed to let in a great light, be- let cause Mock Duck Immediately be- came a reformer and, some sald, an informer. He allied himself with Frank Moss, one of the leaders of the Society for the Suppression of Crime, and a clean-up of Chinatown was soon under way. By this time Mock Duck was head man of the Hip Sings and powerful beyond words, since he had ‘the people from uptown" with “paring the short time Mock Duck was at the head of the Hip Sings and in the leadership which followed his, the Tong wars went on with few armistices. Men were marked for death because they had done some thing or failed to do it, and the gun- men were sent out after them. The killings in Chinatown, which totalled about sixty, became such an offense that steps were taken to end them. The powerful Chinese Mer- chants’ Association busted itself with the task and aided by the Chinese Consul General of New York and J Warren W. Fostee of General Sessions, an Tongs wa agreement between tho unged and 4 truce was tant aocument was t ears ago in Judge Fos Now the police ¥ the peace of ten rs st Ken 1 pew Tong war over Ko Low,