The pardoning of Chinese national Hop Kee in 1892 ended a yearlong police investigation and repeated pleas from the prisoner and his supporters, approximately 1700 residents of Mount Morgan and Rockhampton, to review all the evidence in the case against him for murder. The petition signed by these supporters revealed unwavering support for Hop Kee, ‘known to be a sober, hardworking, industrious and well-behaved man’. A further look at the evidence confirmed it was insufficient. It appeared this was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A photograph of Hop Kee, charged with murder and later pardoned.
Sunday Mail image, 12.05.1936.
The petition outlined the observations of witnesses on the day another Chinese man, a fruiterer named Lee Ying, died:
- that Lee Ying was found with extensive head wounds, upon his bed inside his Mount Morgan hut, the wounds caused by being hit with a tomahawk after which he was utterly confused, and shortly succumbed to an unconscious state before his death six hours later at 3pm,
- during the period of confusion, being drowsy and unable to control his movements, Lee Ying was asked by Police Constable Martin Mooney who of three Chinese men had attacked him. The men were lined up in front of Ying who indicated towards Hop Kee, also a fruiterer,
- the extent of the injuries would have caused major blood loss but no blood splatter was located on the clothing of the accused, nor garments in his home and other likely places, and there was insufficient time for Hop Kee to clean up before others arrived at the location,
- a small smudge of blood located on the accused’s hat was more likely to have come from the constable who had assisted Lee Ying to hospital directly from his blood-stained hut, and immediately prior to handling Hop Kee’s hat for the purposes of collecting evidence,
- two witnesses required the interpretation of their testimonies from Chinese to English. The interpreter was later described by His Honour as vague and uncertain,
- it was also suspected the first interpreter, Sam Hand, was a relative of the deceased, and the second interpreter, Sam Young, indicated that the language he spoke was very different to the language spoken by the witnesses,
- one of those witnesses did clearly recall sleeping in the neighbouring hut of Lee Ying, but did not hear any noises during the night in question, nor see anyone, and that the other witness worked in a nearby garden and saw no one in the vicinity,
- another witness suggested there was ‘bad blood’ between the accused and the deceased, but then suggested the deceased had committed suicide,
- Lee Ying was lying next to the tomahawk, and there was no connection between it and Hop Kee, who had been consistently described as quiet and respectable.
It was fortuitous for Mr Kee that Senior Constable Michael O’Sullivan was in the process of transferring from Winton to Mount Morgan, just weeks before the fixed execution date, and was reading through the evidence of the case. O’Sullivan later offered; “To me, it was far from satisfactory. I made careful examination of all the facts and circumstances, and the further I went into the matter the more I became convinced that it was a miscarriage of justice”.
Mr Justice Harding had sentenced Hop Kee to death for the murder at Happy Valley in Mount Morgan of Lee Ying on October 15, 1891. Whilst Hop Kee remained incarcerated at the Rockhampton Gaol during May 1892, Ministers considered the petition and a report by Senior Constable O’Sullivan highlighting “serious discrepancies and very weak points in the evidence”. This re-examination proved beyond reasonable doubt that Hop Kee was innocent of any crime, prompting his release from Rockhampton Gaol in April 1893. Hop Kee later named his first child Michael, grateful for the assistance of the police officer in his release from gaol and eventual pardon.
Pictured c1910, Sub Inspector Michael O’Sullivan was the officer in charge of the CIB at the time and went on to become Deputy to Police Commissioner Patrick Short in 1921 during Mr Short’s absences from Queensland.
Image number PM0109 courtesy of the Queensland Police Museum.
Of interest, Constable Mooney was transferred to Clermont in July 1892. Senior Constable O’Sullivan was promoted to Sergeant in 1899 after a move to Emerald. In 1921 an entry was made in a handwritten Personnel Register which confirmed that O’Sullivan was ‘Appointed Deputy of the Commissioner during the Commissioner’s absence from the state’.
You can find more about Michael O’Sullivan in previous posts written by Queensland Police Museum volunteers; The Luck of the Irish and Michael O’Sullivan.
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This article was written by Museum Assistant Georgia Grier from the best resources available at the time of writing. The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane.
Email: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM the VAULT – From Death Sentence to Pardon, Hop Kee is Cleared” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/legalcode