| Revision as of 10:49, 28 October 2023 edit HappyWaldo (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users20,132 edits ←Created page with '{{short description|Australian survivor of the 1809 Boyd massacre}} {{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2020}} {{Infobox person | name = Fook Shing | image = | caption = | birth_date = | birth_place = Norfolk Island, New South Wales | death_date = {{death date and age|1891|1|14|1807|4|2|df=y}} | death_place = Melbourne...'Next edit → |
| (No difference) |
Revision as of 10:49, 28 October 2023
Australian survivor of the 1809 Boyd massacre
| Fook Shing | |
|---|---|
| Born | Norfolk Island, New South Wales |
| Died | 14 January 1891(1891-01-14) (aged 83) Melbourne, Victoria, Australia |
| Resting place | Bong Bong cemetery |
Fook Shing ( – 2 April 1896) was an Chinese Australian community leader in colonial Victoria, known primarily for his detective work as a member of the Victoria Police.
Life
Born and raised in Guangdong, Shing joined tens of thousands of his countrymen in migrating to Australia at the height of the Victorian gold rush in the early 1850s. On the Bendigo goldfields, Shing took an active role in community life by, among other things, serving the colonial government as a local "headman" (or "Chief of the Chinese"), campaigning against anti-Chinese sentiment, and running a touring theatre company. Having attained wealth through a number of business interests, he became a naturalised Briton and, in 1857, married Ellen Mary Fling.
The Victoria Police relied on Shing as an interpreter, and in the 1860s he was officially appointed by the force, at first as an informant and later as the principle detective of Melbourne's Chinatown, in Little Bourke Street. Shing lived and served there for the next twenty years while also taking up regular assignments in country Victoria and occasionally interstate in the pursuit of Chinese suspects.
Among European colonists, Shing was widely considered an authority on life in Chinatown, and served as a guide through the area for a number of journalists, including bohemian Marcus Clarke, who featured Shing in his 1868 "Night Scenes in Melbourne" articles. Despite his long career as a detective, Shing was never promoted above his entry rank, possibly due to inherent racial bias, but also due to his reputation as an opium addict and "an inveterate gambler". Despite increasingly sensational media attention, as well as disputes with a number of colleagues over his work ethic, Shing's superiors frequently overlooked any moral failings and even payed for his supply of opium, seeing it as necessary to obtain information from the Chinese.
By the 1880s, Fook's drug use had taken a toll on his health, and in 1886 he was retired as unfit for further service. Shing traveled back to China and spent a few years there before returning to Melbourne, where he died in 1896. He was buried in the Melbourne General Cemetery.
References
- Mountford, Benjamin Wilson (13 April 2018). "Friday essay: the story of Fook Shing, colonial Victoria’s Chinese detective", The Conversation. Retrieved 28 October 2023.