A Certificate in Accordance with the Act

Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume Six, 2013 南方華裔研究雜誌, 第六卷, 2013 A Certificate in Accordance with the Act © 2013 Brad Powe Abstract: The twenty-eighth of February 2012 was the 150th anniversary of the cut-off date for nearly 13,000 residents of New South Wales to register under the Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act of 1861. The author's great-great grandfather “Apow” (Gwok Ah Poo, also known as George Harper) received a parchment certificate, numbered 1311, on the Tambaroora goldfield. While the National Museum of Australia may have one of these certificates, and the National Archives of Australia holds another two, the vast majority of these durable documents appear to have disappeared. A public request for information on other examples in private hands (published in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday, 18 February 2012) confirmed the existence of only one more of these potentially informative documents. Keywords: Ah Poo, Tambaroora, Shoalhaven, Parramatta, Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act, certificate Introduction The twenty-eighth of February 2012 was the 150th anniversary of the cut-off date for nearly 13,000 residents of the colony of New South Wales to apply for a “certificate of exemption” under the Chinese Immigrants Regulation and Restriction Act of 1861. The colonial government’s legislative response to the Lambing Flat riots of 1861 was to institute An Act to Regulate and Restrict the Immigration of Chinese (25 Vic. No. 3) on 22 November that year. Despite the violent agitation against the Chinese population on the goldfields, the Act did not seek to overly restrict those already in the colony – but it did apply punitive costs on any future arrivals. In order to distinguish those Chinese already resident from those who may have wished to join them and exempt these residents from payment of the requisite £10 fee, Section 8 of the Act required that: All Chinese within the Colony of New South Wales shall on or before the twenty-eighth day of February one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two apply to the nearest Clerk of Petty Sessions or Gold Commissioner for a certificate and such Clerk of Petty Sessions or Gold Commissioner shall deliver to any Chinese so applying a parchment certificate; which shall bear on the face of it the name of the Chinaman applying and the signature of the Clerk of Petty Sessions or Gold Commissioner granting such certificate and all other matters which the Government may deem necessary and the holder of such certificate shall be exempted from payments under this Act. The Act specified that the certificates be on parchment (i.e. calf skin or lamb skin), a material that is much more durable than paper. The parchment certificate in the author’s possession measures roughly 20.5 × 17.5 cm (8 × 7 inches).1 Apow’s Certificate This certificate, issued under the Act and numbered 1311, was received by “Apow”2 on the Tambaroora goldfield, near Hill End in central-western New South Wales, on the “28th day of February, A.D. 1862”. The certificate (figure 1) continues to be held by the descendants of the recipient, later known as Ah Poo, Gwok Ah Poo, George Ah Poo and finally George Harper. 1 There has been differential shrinkage of the parchment; originally it would have been the traditional paper size for official documents known as “Foolscap quarto”: see British Association of Paper Historians, “Old English Paper Sizes,” baph.org.uk/reference/papersizes.html, viewed 5 June 2013. 2 A variety of transliterations of the Cantonese honorific 阿 appear in English-language documents before the more familiar form “Ah” was settled on by the late 1870s: the Beechworth Ah Poo (see footnote 21) appears as “Appoo” in some sources, for example. Powe: A Certificate in Accordance with the Act 114 Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume Six, 2013 南方華裔研究雜誌, 第六卷, 2013 Joseph Cox, the local Gold Sub-Commissioner, would have devoted considerable time to the completion of some 1600 similar certificates – the number of Chinese recorded as being on the Turon River goldfields in the 1861 Census – especially as the reverse is inscribed with biographical and biometric information. Figure 1. Certificate 1311 of “Apow” received at Tambaroora, 28 February 1862 (Author’s collection) The reverse of the form (figure 2) is pre-printed with the legend “DESCRIPTION of [blank] mentioned in the Certificate on the other side:—” and the following information was added by Sub-Commissioner Cox: Apow Country Canton Age 20 yrs From English ship Height 5' 7" After 150 years, the ink is very faded, and the certificate itself has been repeatedly folded, rendering the second and third lines largely illegible to the naked eye; until recently the fourth line was thought to read “Brown eyes, black hair” — a common but hardly useful description! 3 However, recent examination under ultraviolet light has revealed the additional details about Apow shown above, and they have proven to be valuable for cross-referencing with other records. 3 The physical description of Ah Hang (see note 13) is "Height 5 feet 5, Hair black, Eyes brown.” Kate Bagnall, private communication, 19 June 2013. Powe: A Certificate in Accordance with the Act 115 Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume Six, 2013 南方華裔研究雜誌, 第六卷, 2013 Figure 2. English text on the reverse of Certificate 1311 The other end of the reverse of the certificate has been inscribed with five Chinese characters in an unknown hand (figure 3). These have been identified as “咸豐拾壹年” (xian feng shi yi nian), meaning the eleventh year of the reign of Emperor Xianfeng of the Qing Dynasty.4 He was the husband of Empress Dowager Cixi and ruled between 1850 and 1861. Although the Xianfeng Emperor died on 22 August 1861, news of his demise had presumably not reached the Chinese community of Tambaroora by the end of February 1862 when Apow’s certificate was issued. This may not be surprising, given that the sea journey from Canton (Guangzhou) or Amoy (Xiamen) to Sydney typically took more than two months, followed by the overland journey to the Turon.5 Figure 3. Chinese text on the reverse of Certificate 1311 The Rarity of Records One might reasonably assume from the social tensions and degree of moral panic exhibited by the Lambing Flats rioters that the colonial government’s legislation could well have been more restrictive than just the issuing of a free certificate of residence, for example, by creating centralised registers or restricting the movement of Chinese residents. However, Premier Charles Cowper6 appears to have been trying to achieve a balanced response between the xenophobes of the goldfields and the liberal humanism demonstrated elsewhere in colonial society.7 4 Louisa Cheung, private communication, 10 June 2011. 5 There were two routes to the Turon fields, either via Bathurst or along the Mudgee Road; both were about 280 kilometres (175 miles) long and would have taken two to three weeks to walk. 6 For the character of the premier, see John M. Ward, “Cowper, Sir Charles (1807–1875),” Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University), http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cowper-sir-charles-3275/text4967, viewed 31 May 2013. 7 For an account of Cowper’s appearance at Lambing Flat, see “Australian Reminiscences: The Lambing Flat Riots,” Singleton Argus, 26 February 1910, p. 2. Powe: A Certificate in Accordance with the Act 116 Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies, Volume Six, 2013 南方華裔研究雜誌, 第六卷, 2013 In response to the author’s surmise regarding the extent of records created under the 1861 Act, an archivist with the State Records Authority of New South Wales pointed out that the legislation: does not state that a register should be kept at either the local level or centrally. If the Act does not specify that one should be kept it is not reasonable to assume that one would have been. It is clear from ... section 8 of the Act that it was the local Clerks of Petty Sessions or ... Gold Commissioner who provided the certificates applied for by the Chinese. There are a few surviving records of Courts of Petty Sessions and a few also of the Gold Commissioners from this period, but I cannot see any specifically relating to the 1861 Act. A few descriptions mention recording numbers of Chinese, rather than recording their names.8 The absence of a centralised register was effectively confirmed by the sole response to a public request by the author for other private holders of similar certificates to come forward.9 Ken Rolph of Blacktown, New South Wales, is the current holder of a certificate numbered 62/70 acquired by his maternal ancestor “John Watt of Newington, Parramatta River, Police district of Sydney, dated 21 February 1862 [and] Signed by Henry Connell, Clerk of Petty Sessions”.10 John Watt was born in Amoy circa 1825 and arrived in the colony in 1841 to work on John Blaxland’s Newington Estate. 11 Henry Connell’s numbering system may reflect the stable employment and domicile of the local Chinese,12 counterpointing the flux of gold-seekers elsewhere in the Colony. Apart from one example held by the National Museum of Australia in Canberra and two13 held by the National Archives of Australia in Sydney14, the two certificates described here are currently the only known survivors of the nearly 13,000 that could have been issued; there are apparently none in the collection of the State Records Authority of New South Wales. 15 Some were probably lost, stolen or destroyed, but the majority presumably returned to China with their recipients. Logic suggests that there would have been a trade in the certificates, which could presumably be used to evade the impost applied to later immigrants – which rapidly increased from the initial £10 fee.

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