Midnight In The City’s Underground Shadows

On a July evening in 1907, Loo Lee was enjoying what should have been a quiet night beside the fire in his small hut, tucked away in one of the alleyways off Walker Street. As he shuffled around inside, there came a knock at the door. Ignoring it, Loo Lee carried on with his evening. As the knocking quickly became thumping, he suddenly sprang to life and frantically moved between rooms in his tiny dwelling. A few moments later the banging on the door was replaced by the sound of footsteps hurrying around the outside of the property.

Concerned, Loo Lee made a desperate attempt to put a few of his possessions away. With little time to do much more, the heavy thumping at the back door was soon followed by a splintering crash as the door was kicked in and two detectives burst through

A search of the little hut quickly produced exactly what they were after. Among the hot ashes of the fire were tins of opium. As the detectives searched the home, they found more tins, along with pipes used for smoking the drug. It seems Loo Lee wasn’t simply a man enjoying an occasional pipe by the fire. The police believed he was selling the stuff among the community. He was arrested, taken before the court and fined £10. It wasn’t his first encounter with the law. Loo Lee already had three previous convictions for similar offences, all the way over in Arrowtown.

The Walker Street raid was a small episode in a much larger story. By the beginning of the twentieth century, opium had become an established part of the city’s underworld, finding its way into the back rooms, huts and cramped lodgings of places such as the Devil’s Half-Acre.

For some, opium was a habit. For others, it was a business. For the police, it was another problem to be chased from one dark corner of the city to another. There is something almost familiar about Loo Lee’s story. A man, a fire, a quiet evening and a knock at the door that changes everything. But beneath it was a habit that had become increasingly difficult to control.

Fines could punish the sellers, but they could not necessarily make the smokers stop. And so the trade continued. Even after the police had kicked in the door on Walker Street, there were plenty more tins of opium waiting somewhere in Dunedin.

By the early years of the twentieth century, Dunedin’s Devil’s Half-Acre had started to change. The narrow streets around Walker Street still contained a mixture of lodging houses, small businesses, workshops and homes, and among them lived members of Dunedin’s Chinese community. Some worked as market gardeners, supplying vegetables to the city. Others ran small businesses or worked wherever they could find employment. Behind some of these unremarkable buildings, among the illegal bars and brothels were hidden opium dens.

Opium had been smoked in New Zealand for decades, particularly within parts of the Chinese community and by the early twentieth century, it was coming to the attention of the police that they should probably pay a little more attention to it. One man who came under their attention was Ah Loy. By the winter of 1911, Ah Loy was an old man. About sixty-six years of age, he was a Chinese gardener living on Walker Street, in a part of Dunedin where the respectable city quickly gave way to something rather less respectable. Yet we know a surprising amount about him. He was born about 1845, stood five feet five inches tall and had a sallow complexion, black hair, dark-brown eyes and a “flat, squat” build. There was a scar on his right hand. His occupation was simply recorded as gardener, his native place as China.

Perhaps Ah Loy had arrived in Otago decades earlier, when Chinese miners were coming south to work the goldfields. Perhaps, like many others, he eventually exchanged the goldfields for the vegetable gardens that fed a growing Dunedin. We cannot say for certain. By 1911, though, he was an elderly gardener living near Walker Street, and the city around him had changed considerably since the days of the gold rush.

Then, on the evening of 17 August, Detectives Thomson and Constable Hall came knocking, looking for opium. Inside Ah Loy’s hut they found about three ounces of prepared opium, an opium pipe, a pipe head, a smoking needle and other equipment associated with the habit. But it was what was sitting over the fire that interested the police most. There was a tin containing a liquid substance believed to be laudanum, being reduced into a form suitable for smoking. Ah Loy admitted that he had made the opium.

The discovery revealed something more interesting than a simple possession charge. Imported opium was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, and the police believed Chinese smokers were finding another way. Instead of relying entirely on smuggled opium, they were obtaining laudanum and evaporating it until it could be smoked. Ah Loy, it seems, had learned how to do exactly that. The police suspected he had a reputation for making and selling it – Ah Loy pleaded guilty.

The magistrate fined him £5, along with 10s 6d costs, with six months’ imprisonment if the money was not paid. The Police Gazette later recorded that the fine was paid. And then Ah Loy almost disappears again. There is no grand finale, no notorious criminal career and no dramatic conclusion. Just an elderly Chinese gardener, a small hut off Walker Street and a pot simmering over a fire.

Next Dispatch: Friday 21st August: Rancid Rations (Hunger, Contamination and Food in the Half-Acre)