Mayor John Kiggins previewed a controversial play in January 1911 together with regulation officers. He excluded a Columbian reporter from the preview, claiming he wished no publicity.
Afterward the mayor accredited the play, “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery,” for his Grand Theater. However regardless of the mayor’s needs, it drew a number of publicity.
As Kiggins and his group have been previewing the play, it was staged at Bungalow Theater in Portland, the place police cleared out the viewers and arrested the actors. Though all prices have been dropped inside days, The Oregonian known as the theatrical “unfit for Portland,” despite the fact that it “didn’t shock Vancouver.”
The “based on a true story” play showcased the 1908 New York homicide of a 19-year-old white girl with two Chinese language lovers. In Leon Ling’s condominium, investigators found 35 love letters and Elsie Sigel’s strangled physique stuffed inside a trunk. Their search uncovered a second lover, Chu Acquire, additionally holding a stash of affection letters. Ling vanished, and Sigel’s homicide stays unsolved.
The homicide sparked anti-Chinese language alarm throughout the nation, though few Chinese language lived in the US on the time. The 1882 Chinese language Exclusion Act, signed by President Chester Arthur, blocked Chinese language entry into the nation. Congress prolonged the unique 10-year restrict a number of occasions earlier than ending the act in 1943.
Nonetheless the play outraged whites and Chinese language alike. Its interracial sexuality, an opium den scene and a teenaged sufferer flamed anti-Chinese language emotions. The Oregonian quoted a Portland prosecutor as saying the play was a “whirlwind of lust, greed, sin and death.”
In Vancouver, the Rev. Otis Grey urged prosecuting legal professional Fred Tempes to file an injunction in opposition to the mayor to cease the debauched manufacturing, and demanded Tempes discover Washington regulation about comparable immoral performs. In an editorial, The Columbian griped in regards to the lack of mayoral transparency and requested whether or not the mayor had some “fear of the press.”
Chinese language in Portland responded. So did a neighborhood Chinese language businessman with ties to the Portland Chinese language neighborhood, Kong Loy. By coincidence, his celery stand was robbed about the identical time. The Portland Chinese language and Loy protested the theatrical efficiency as a result of it made Chinese language appear like criminals. Municipal officers thought-about treaty rights and their relationship to the play.
Chinese language consul Thomas O’Day argued that given the “most favored nation status of China,” the native Chinese language had each proper to protest the manufacturing. In his view, a 1903 statute “against presenting books or plays having to do principally with the act of felons or desperados” legally coated the case. Nonetheless, the present went on.
That November, Vancouver confronted its personal Chinese language Trunk Thriller. An exquisite, outsized trunk arrived on the afternoon categorical. When lifted, it was so weighty the expressman dropped it. Purple liquid trickled out of a small break. Onlookers gasped. Had a foul crime occurred in Vancouver as in New York? When the police couldn’t break open the trunk, they rounded up 4 blacksmiths to crack the case. Ladies’s garments and a invoice poured out. The invoice revealed the trunk was bought from the Beauregard’s clothes retailer at 21 Most important St.
In the meantime, W. Derr, county clerk, had denied Kong Loy’s citizenship software as a result of the US didn’t enable Chinese language “to enter into citizenship under the Stars and Stripes.”
