Pod Insights ABC Rewind The story of Sam Poo - Chinese bushranger? About this episode It's 1865 in remote central west NSW. A police office is fatally shot by a man he believes is a Chinese bushranger. But all may not be as it seems. A bushranging tale with a twist
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0:08 Speaker 01 He was always referred to as Cranky Sam Poo.
0:14 Speaker 02 Cranky meant a little bit mentally unstable.
0:21 Speaker 03 Hi, welcome to Rewind and the story of Sam Poo. I'm Dr Meg Foster. I'm an historian and a specialist in Australian bushranging. The word bushranger usually conjures images of colonial robbers on horseback, Ned Kelly's iconic armour and spectacular gun battles between bandits and police. But today, we're looking at a bushranging story with a twist.
0:49 Speaker 01 There's been a lot of police killed over the years in Australia, but there's only been one Chinese bushranger.
0:56 Speaker 03 We're in central west NSW South Wales and the year is 1865.
1:01 Speaker 01 Sydney Morning Herald, Senior Constable, John Ward's dying declaration.
1:07 Speaker 04 I, John Ward, do hereby solemnly declare that on the third day of February 1865, I met two men who told me that a Chinaman was about, sticking up people. I cited a Chinaman.
1:23 Speaker 05 And then John Ward just happened to come across a Chinese man with a rifle and the rest is now history.
1:31 Speaker 04 I got off my horse and took out my revolver. He followed me around the horse, fired at and wounded me.
1:40 Speaker 01 It was an exchange of shots and John missed, but the Chinese bushranger didn't.
1:47 Speaker 03 The fatally wounded policeman, John Ward, was taken to a nearby homestead where he recounted his story.
1:55 Speaker 04 He ran away into the bush, loading his gun. To the best of my belief, the Chinaman was a short, little, cranky old man.
2:06 Speaker 03 Two weeks later, a well-built, 35-year-old Chinese man named Sam Poo was arrested.
2:16 Speaker 03 By the end of that year, Sam Poo was found guilty of the murder of Senior Constable, John Ward.
2:25 Speaker 06 Sam Poo was the only documented Chinese bushranger in Australian history. So, Chinese Ned Kelly.
2:33 Speaker 03 This neat story just doesn't sit right with me. I've been researching Poo for almost a decade now. I first came across him when I was looking into atypical bushrangers. Essentially, the ones who weren't white guys. Sam Poo's story instantly grabbed me. The common story of Sam Poo paints him as a loner who swapped gold mining for bushranging and fought back when John Ward tried to stop his crime spree. But court records, newspaper articles and depositions from the time just don't match up with this story. Rereading the historic evidence, I'm actually unconvinced that Sam Poo was Ward's killer. But what do locals think?
3:18 Speaker 03 How does this colonial story live on in their communities? I'm heading to where it all happened, in central west NSW South Wales, to see how this story born on the frontier lingers in the present day.
3:34 Speaker 03 Okay, I'm at the intersection of the Castle Ray Highway and Barney's Reef Road. And I found the spot where all of this really started.
3:48 Speaker 03 I'm standing in front of a very large sign. It's brown with white lettering and it says, "Senior Constable John Ward of the Kuna Barabran Police was fatally wounded in this area by the Chinese bushranger Sam Poo on 3rd February, 1865."
4:07 Speaker 03 This sign not only pinpoints Sam Poo as the culprit, but also labels him a Chinese bushranger.
4:18 Speaker 03 A five and a half hour drive from Sydney, I arrive in Kuna Barabran and make my first visit to retired police officer Mal Unicum. Mal's been pivotal in commemorating the death of Senior Constable John Ward and petitioned to have that sign on the highway put up. I'm keen to hear what sparked his interest.
4:41 Speaker 06 How it first started was in about 1986. There was a letter received at the Kuna Barabran Police Station and it was from a relative of John Ward's. And it was asking about John Ward and what we knew about John Ward. I was embarrassed because I'd never heard of John Ward. And so I started to go through state archives. They couldn't tell me a lot. The police department couldn't tell me a lot apart from just his service history. So over a period of time, I started to dig around and ring a few locals that I thought might be able to sort of fill me in on.
5:24 Speaker 03 Mal eventually located Ward's grave, out the back of Bureau Homestead, buried under decades of dirt and debris.
5:33 Speaker 06 The graves didn't just jump out at you. So it was a lot of detective work and digging around. The grave was quite large with a sandstone slab with a cross on it. Eventually did literally dug a grave out and that grave stone matched what people said 50 years ago. It said that there was this grave and it had an inscription on it with John Ward's name on it. When I eventually dug it out, there was no inscription left, but it matched perfectly the description of the grave that had been given to me.
6:06 Speaker 03 Mal was hooked. But what made him so passionate about commemorating Ward?
6:12 Speaker 06 John was a family man, trying to do the right thing to bring this villain to justice. And it doesn't matter whether it's 150 years ago or five days ago, whatever. It's the same thing, that police officer gave their life serving his and protecting his community. There was nothing locally that celebrated John's sacrifice to his community. And that struck a chord with me.
6:40 Speaker 03 What's unusual to me is that unlike other bushranging stories, this one never casts the bushranger as a hero. John Ward, the policeman, is always the hero and Sam Poo, the alleged bushranger, has always been seen as the villain. Take this article from February 1865.
7:03 Speaker 00 The Murder of Senior Constable John Ward, Maitland-Murcury, 18th of February 1865. It is usual in cases of bushranging to accuse the sympathy of settlers, but in this instance, all these points are reversed. The residents assist the police energetically. The troopers engaged are instantly on the alert, in disguise and well-mounted, and the bushranger himself is a sniveling Chinaman afoot. Ward was a gentleman by birth and education and now, poor fellow, he is dead. He died while unflinchingly performing his duty. Could the greatest hero that ever breathed do more?
7:49 Speaker 03 Mal Unicum had spent over 40 years researching John Ward. What did he find out about Sam Poo?
7:57 Speaker 06 There was nothing apart from the fact that, you know, his name was mentioned in the court records and that was about as much as I knew of Sam Poo. Yeah, Sam Poo was just, came on the scene when he decided to murder John Ward and that was about it for me.
8:18 Speaker 03 110 Ks down the road from Kuna Barabran, in the town of Dunidoo, locals couldn't tell me much about Sam Poo either. Melissa Faro and Sharon Knott are volunteers at the Dunidoo Historical Society.
8:34 Speaker 05 Well, it's hard because Sam Poo's really unknown. I mean, probably no-one did any research on Sam Poo, but only with Trove coming out, that you can do a little bit of research and it's only what people have written in the paper. It's only white people writing it. So history's always...
8:49 Speaker 03 Normally the victor. Sam Poo didn't tell his side of the story. He didn't speak after his arrest. The court ruled that he was deliberately holding his tongue. But his silence was very likely the result of his violent capture, which took place two weeks after Ward's death. Sam Poo resisted arrest, and so Constable Miles Burns smashed him with his rifle so hard that its butt shattered to pieces.
9:18 Speaker 06 And I think he says it rendered the prisoner insincere. I mean, boy, oh, boy, today, that'd go down like a bag of cement. That would... Yeah, probably under the circumstances, there's no O C spray, there's no Taser. So you use whatever you've got, you know, on hand. And that just happened to be the butt of a rifle.
9:40 Speaker 03 Details like this make me question whether it was Sam Poo who killed John Ward. But not everyone agrees with me. John Horn is president of the Duny Do Historical Society and a fervent believer that Sam Poo murdered senior constable John Ward. Are you happy to be recorded, John?
10:00 Speaker 07 Oh, yes.
10:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, so what do you know about Sam Poo? Did you hear about him when you were growing up in the district? And what have you discovered in your travels?
10:10 Speaker 07 Well, the main thing that interests me is your view that he didn't kill Ward.
10:16 Speaker 03 Okay, but that's a recent intervention. I only wrote that in 2022. So before then, did you think he killed Ward?
10:23 Speaker 07 I still think he killed Ward.
10:24 Speaker 03 Okay.
10:25 Speaker 07 What's your reason for believing he didn't? Just circumstantial evidence?
10:32 Speaker 03 Well, there's only circumstantial evidence that he did it. And Ward's dying declaration, he's described the person who shot him as a short, little, cranky old man. And the person who was executed was muscular, 35. One newspaper thought he looked 24. He also didn't speak after he was arrested because he was smashed in the head with the butt of a rifle so hard the butt shattered to pieces. We know there were other Chinese people in the area, too. The only thing that can really be proven was that he was resisting arrest. And the only evidence we have of the murder is Ward's dying declaration, and that doesn't stack up with the person who was arrested.
11:10 Speaker 07 When he was arrested, he tried to...
11:12 Speaker 04 Killed two people, which is a black mark against him. Somebody who's a law-abiding citizen shouldn't be doing that.
11:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, I try to look at the context, though. So it's like Chinese people were very often assaulted by criminals, by bushrangers, sometimes by the police. And when you think about what has been shot, two weeks beforehand, there are roving parties of police and volunteers looking for a Chinese suspect. To me, it's plausible that he may have had a reason to actually resist arrest. We don't know the circumstances around that. Apart from the view of the police, we don't actually have his perspective there. So for me, it's reasonable doubt. But for you, it sounds like you still very much believe that the right person was arrested?
12:00 Speaker 04 Yes.
12:01 Speaker 03 Is it the fact that Sam Poo was resisting arrest that makes you convinced he's the person who did it?
12:07 Speaker 04 It helps, yes. No, I've just gone with the general view.
12:12 Speaker 03 So you think in the local area, people believe Sam Poo did it?
12:16 Speaker 04 Yes, yes, I would think, I would think 100% believe that Sam Poo shot Ward.
12:24 Speaker 03 When I put it to Mal Unikum that Sam Poo might not have killed John Ward, he was similarly unsuayed.
12:31 Speaker 06 Look, I look at it from the point of view that when they came across Poo, he fired upon them. And to have two Chinese people in the same spot who are shooting at people, from my point of view, it's a pretty long bow to try and draw, you know, that it wasn't Sam Poo.
12:53 Speaker 04 My father used to reckon that the police were no better than the bushrangers.
13:02 Speaker 03 My next stop is the regional hub of Mudgee, where I find a new perspective.
13:10 Speaker 03 Local artist Michael Burke puts Sam Poo front and centre of the story.
13:15 Speaker 01 I'm a bit more interested in the myth, but also in the character of Sam Poo than I am in John Ward, God bless his soul. Yeah, nothing against John Ward. What I like to do with the art is play around with the idea of truth and the idea of what really happened and what we think might have happened. It was very hard to track anything down and everything I've found about him seemed to be of dubious validity and suggested another question, really.
13:49 Speaker 03 Michael's bold paintings give Sam Poo a Ned Kelly makeover. Like Kelly, Poo wears a helmet, but a triangular one, modelled on the conical Chinese hat. The Poo of Michael's imagining finds himself in strange scenarios, like disguising himself in butterflies to rob a bank and being thrown out of a bushranging conference with Ned Kelly.
14:12 Speaker 01 Well, sometimes I think when you don't actually know what happened, it's valid to just throw a question mark over everything. Yeah, to make people scratch their heads, I suppose. But most people, when they see the pictures, have been surprised that there's any truth at all. They've said, oh, they didn't know that Sam Poo was a real person.
14:32 Speaker 03 But we do have some clues about the real Sam Poo. After trawling through the archives, I found Poo's prison register. It stated that he was from Amoy in China. This one small detail makes a huge difference in understanding this story.
14:52 Speaker 03 When Poo's origins are discussed, it's assumed he was a gold rush migrant. But Chinese gold miners migrated years after most Amoy men like Poo and largely came from the Pearl River Delta area. The two groups even spoke different languages.
15:12 Speaker 03 My final destination and the final resting place of Sam Poo is Bathurst. I'm here, meeting Dr Anita Quoc, an expert in Chinese Australian history, who explains why Amoy men like Pooh came to New South Wales in the first place.
15:29 Speaker 02 You know, there's a labour problem.
15:31 Speaker 03 Right, so they don't want convicts to come back.
15:32 Speaker 02 They don't want convicts back.
15:34 Speaker 03 Yep.
15:34 Speaker 02 But they need labour, and the labourers that they do bring out from Britain don't want to go to the places where they're needed, because they're on the frontiers. They might get attacked by Aboriginals who are defending their land. It's dangerous, lonely as well.
15:53 Speaker 03 New South Wales pastoralists needed labour, and Amoy men came to the colony to seek opportunity, as well as flee crime, unrest and famine back home. Demand for indentured labourers quickly outstrips supply, and so underhand recruitment tactics were soon used. Chinese men were increasingly conned or kidnapped into bondage.
16:17 Speaker 02 At least 3,000 Chinese indentured labourers came out. They made up between about a third to a half of all of the shepherds. They're going to those dangerous districts where nobody else wants to go. They were brought over to be docile labourers, but they're anything but. They discover that their contracts aren't delivering what they were promised, and that the conditions are so appalling, they're not receiving the pay. And also, the overseers are often very cruel to them.
16:50 Speaker 03 And so many Amoy labourers take action. Some workers take their grievances to the courts, others run away or refuse to work, and some even stage insurrections.
17:03 Speaker 03 We don't have a record of Samhout's first experiences in Australia. But like many Amoi, he didn't go back to China after his contract ended.
17:12 Speaker 02 Once they finished their five-year contracts, those labourers often stayed on and they continued to work in the pastoral industry. And their work was highly regarded.
17:24 Speaker 03 With no ticket home included in their contracts, we can't be sure Samhout wanted to stay in Australia. He may have worked in the pastoral industry after his contract ended, or he might have tried his luck on the goldfields. For Anita, the revelation that Samhout was from Amoi also shed light on the common description of him as a loner.
17:46 Speaker 02 The Amoi men were used to life in Australia, had found a place for themselves. And then all of a sudden, there's this great influx of Chinese from the Pearl River Delta, who have a different culture, different language. They don't like each other. So, there is conflict.
18:10 Speaker 03 People from Amoi spoke Hokkian, and people from the Pearl River Delta mainly spoke Cantonese. So they probably couldn't even understand each other.
18:19 Speaker 02 It's not surprising then, now that we know that he was an Amoi man, that he wasn't getting much support from other Chinese.
18:28 Speaker 03 By the 1850s and 60s, Amoi men were a minority of a minority, with the number of gold-mining migrants far outstripping the numbers of original indentured labourers. But these distinctions between Chinese migrants were often lost on Europeans. In one instance...
18:45 Speaker 02 There's a fight between the Cantonese and the Amoi, who are said to hate each other. But not long after that, then there's an attack by the European diggers against the Chinese. So whereas the Chinese saw a lot of differences, you know, cultural and language differences amongst themselves, Europeans are seeing them all because of their, the look of them. They're seeing them as all one and the same.
19:13 Speaker 03 Seeing Chinese migrants as all one and the same could also lead to cases of mistaken identity.
19:19 Speaker 01 Australians at the time would have seen, you know, a Chinese person. Any of them will do, as long as you get one.
19:27 Speaker 03 In cases like Samhout's, the stakes were high. Murder was a capital offence.
19:35 Speaker 03 The site of the courthouse where Sam Poo was tried is only a short drive from Wanita's house.
19:45 Speaker 03 I'm going to turn left and then if you look to your left then you'll see the courthouse.
19:53 Speaker 03 Okay, so Wanita and I are standing in front of a sign at Mickati Park. And the sign says, "The first buildings on the site were Bathurst's, largest second jail built in 1844 and a modest courthouse built in 1849." So this would have been where Sam Poo actually was kept and where he actually faced the court.
20:13 Speaker 03 Even before his trial for murder, some colonists had already decided Sam Poo was guilty.
20:19 Speaker 07 The Western Post, Maggi, February 1865.
20:25 Speaker 07 Sam Poo, the Chinaman recently apprehended on the charge of shooting Senior Constable Ward, was brought into court on Wednesday and was accommodated with a chair. His face bore the marks of the shot and only one of his eyes was partially open. He is a rather well-built man of about 420, still maintains almost complete silence. His wounds and injuries are not nearly so dangerous as was first imagined. It is consequently very probable he may live to meet the death he so richly deserves.
21:02 Speaker 03 Public hangings were held nearby the jail and later more privately within the jail walls.
21:10 Speaker 03 So, let's go have a look.
21:15 Speaker 03 Beautiful sculpted paths that kind of zigzag through.
21:20 Speaker 03 Different garden beds raised with flowers.
21:25 Speaker 03 There's an artificial lake with some ducks.
21:32 Speaker 03 But in 1865, this was a sight of death. Sam Pu wasn't just found guilty of Ward's murder, he was executed for it.
21:44 Speaker 07 Bathurst Free Press, 25th of December 1865.
21:50 Speaker 07 The convict, Sam Pu, suffered the extreme penalty of the law.
21:56 Speaker 07 The wretched man, who, ever since his apprehension, has been quite weak in intellect, appeared perfectly unconscious of his fate, and until his arms were pinioned by the executioners, stood at the door of his cell, clapping his hands.
22:13 Speaker 07 He was led to the gallows without speaking a word, or even lifting up his head.
22:19 Speaker 07 The rope was fixed, the bolt drawn, and the soul was ushered into eternity.
22:26 Speaker 07 Sam Pu struggled convulsively for about a minute, and then all was still.
22:39 Speaker 02 That's where the hangings would have taken place. They were a spectacle and hundreds of people would assemble to come and watch them. Apparently, the young son of the storekeeper used to look across and be able to see the public hangings from here.
22:57 Speaker 02 Then, the people who were executed were then buried, so we might be walking over Sam Pu's body as we go.
23:07 Speaker 03 Sam Pu's life ended in Bathurst. In central west NSW South Wales, he lives on as Australia's only Chinese bushranger. But when you think about it, it's actually pretty odd that Pu is known as a bushranger. Sam Pu was never charged with robbery or any other bushranging crime.
23:29 Speaker 03 1860s talk of a Chinese bushranger in their area is unsubstantiated. Bushranging only really comes up in the court records to explain why Ward stopped his Chinese attacker to begin with. Because Ward thought the man might be a bushranger. I couldn't end my road trip without asking locals what they actually thought about bushrangers. I wasn't anticipating their responses.
23:55 Speaker 06 You know, here I am, a retired police officer with a mailbox that is Ned Kelly. So I guess, you know, you're glorifying somebody who actually murdered police officers. When I think about it, it probably doesn't sit that well. If you ask about, you know, the police officers that Ned Kelly murdered, nobody would know. They wouldn't know the names.
24:18 Speaker 03 Do you both see Sam Poo as a bushranger?
24:22 Speaker 05 It's a bit hard because he's not an Aussie. Most of our bushrangers are Aussie, so it's...
24:27 Speaker 07 Ned Kelly's, the Ben Hall's, they were all colonial boys, you know, trying to make good, you know, the haves and the have-nots. While the Chinese, I mean, let's face it, Australia had a white Australian policy for many, many years. And so they were never really regarded as Australians, even though they lived here and did so much for our country.
24:48 Speaker 05 If you put a picture of him up and showed anyone and said, "Pick out the bushranger", I'm sure that they wouldn't pick him, no.
24:56 Speaker 03 There are some signs of change. Michael Burke's artwork of Sam Poo has made it onto a revered Aussie icon: a beer can.
25:04 Speaker 01 Bang on a beer can's exciting. But I was more excited for Sam Poo. I thought he was finally receiving the recognition that he deserved. You know, such an Anglo space, a beer can, and a Chinese bushranger who'd been neglected all these years, that he was there. I just felt it was about time.
25:31 Speaker 03 As I head back to Sydney and leave the Central West behind, I drive by signs and sites that keep this 160-year-old story alive. I pass the commemorative plaque to John Ward that Mal Unikum put up in Coona Barabram Police Station. A street named to honour Ward's sacrifice, and a memorial garden on the site of Ward's rediscovered grave. I also head past that large brown road sign, the sign that labelled Sam Poo a Chinese bush ranger, and Ward's murderer.
26:10 Speaker 04 History is written by the winners and by the people who survive. And generally, it's not by the poor people, it's by the elites, which gives not a true reflection of how things actually were.
26:27 Speaker 02 But how good would it be if we could just all go back with our little drone, fly over the scene and get the true story? So, we'll never know the true story, but the fact that it happened in this area, we at least know that, you know? And it is a story to be told.
26:42 Speaker 03 Do you think it matters? Because even if my story's right, Ward was still killed in the line of action. There was a Chinese man of some description who did kill him in the line of his duty. How much do you think it matters whether that person was Sam Poo?
26:59 Speaker 04 It matters a fair bit, but the important thing is to remember Ward.
27:06 Speaker 03 As I take one last look around Bathurst, I'm struck by what this place meant for Sam Poo. Okay, we're here, I'm walking through two sandstone gates. There's a huge, beautiful park, there are daffodils and jongles.
27:26 Speaker 03 And yet, as I look to my feet, I can't help but hear Oneida's words that "I could be treading on Sam Poo."
27:37 Speaker 03 It's creepy, and it's weird, and it is also sad.
27:45 Speaker 03 The official story is that this is the site of a state sanctioned execution.
27:52 Speaker 03 But if Sam Pu was innocent, then this is the site of a murder.
28:03 Speaker 03 The story of Sam Pu was written and narrated by me, Meg Foster. The producer was Roz Blewett and the sound engineer was John Jacobs.
28:14 Speaker 03 Many thanks to everyone I interviewed in central west NSW South Wales. For more details, please head to our webpage.
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