Secondary Research - The murder of Joe Kum Yung
A historic photo of Haining street
A racist anti-asian extremist named Lionel Terry had been walking all throughout Nz from Mangōnui to Wellington, giving talks on racial 'purity'. When he was unsuccessful at convincing the government to refuse Asian immigrants he set out to Haining street in 1905 and shot dead a prolific Chinese man named Joe Kum Yung. He turned himself into the police the day after and was found guilty on trial and sentenced to death. The sentence was then changed to life imprisonment on grounds of insanity and he was later diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic.
Site: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/race-killing-lionel-terry-murders-joe-kum-yung-in-haining-st-wellington
https://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/destinations/nz/76317109/where-to-go-to-discover-new-zealands-chinese-heritage
Self portrait of Lionel Terry
"He also wrote to Dr Maui Pomare suggesting that the Maori people be confined to Stewart Island and the Chathams...
...In his later years, Terry became convinced that he was a second Messiah. He wore a white robe and sandals, grew a beard and long hair down to his shoulders, and spoke of the menace of communism. He died at Seacliff on 20 August 1952."
Site: https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/terry-lionel
An interested and well researched article from the dom post written in 2014
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/64512110/murder-aimed-to-spread-yellow-peril-message
Lionel Terry had been ignored and he wasn't going to take it any more.
He'd walked 1400 kilometres from Mangonui to Wellington, handing out pamphlets about racial purity but nobody took the Chinese threat seriously.
Arriving in Wellington in September 1905, the Englishman tried to alert MPs to the "yellow peril" but his pleas had been brushed off.
He decided to kill a Chinaman, as Chinese people were then widely known, in that hated den of iniquity known as Haining St. Then, perhaps, people would notice him.
Haining St was the centre of Chinese Wellington, notorious among Europeans for its gambling, its opium dens and its foreignness.
Joe Kum Yung was an old man. He'd come to New Zealand from China 25 years previously, but a mining accident had left him crippled and he couldn't work.
He was living in Wellington's Chinese street and hoping his friends could afford to send him home.
At 7.45pm on September 24, Terry walked onto Haining St. He was carrying a revolver. Kum Yung happened to be standing outside.
The tall Englishman walked up behind him and shot him through the head before darting into the crowds on nearby Ingestre St. Kum Yung died about 10pm that night.
"Street murder in Wellington" was The Evening Post's headline the next day. "A Chinaman shot".
Terry handed himself in to police and confessed to the killing. Police inspector Ellison said Terry had not been in New Zealand long and "appeared to have a craze about aliens".
He was well-dressed, well-spoken and behaved like a gentleman, Ellison said - he was particularly keen to get the police to read his anti-Chinese pamphlet, The Shadow.
"This will make it clearer to you," Terry told them.
Before going to Haining St that day, Terry had written a letter to the governor, which was reprinted in the Post.
"I will not under any consideration allow my rights and those of my brother Britons to be jeopardised by alien invaders: to make this perfectly plain I have this evening put a Chinaman to death."
Terry attempted to defend himself at his trial, which began in November.
"I have nothing to say except that my action was right and justifiable," Terry claimed.
There was not really any question he had killed Kum Yung, only whether he was sane and fully understood what he had done.
He did not help himself. No, he was not mad, he said. But why were so many Asiatics allowed to give evidence? Did the court not see they weren't to be trusted? Didn't people understand they were taking over the country?
He gave a long statement summing up his views and claiming the Chinese were not entitled to protection in New Zealand, claiming he chose Kum Yung because he was an old and crippled man and his life was a painful burden.
The judge and jury were unmoved by his arguments. Terry was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. But mercy was recommended, on the ground he was insane.
The Evening Post applauded the decision.
"Few lawyers or journalists could have stated his case with more clearness, dignity or literary skill and yet, by its logical basis, is characterised by that fantastic inconsequence we associate with a dream, or a joke."
Public opinion was split. Many shared Terry's hatred of the Chinese, while stopping short of murder, and tried to have him spared the noose.
Others spoke up, condemning him and denouncing those who spread hatred and fear about the "yellow peril".
Eventually, the Government decided to commute Terry's sentence. He spent the next 47 years in lunatic asylums, dying largely forgotten in 1952.
But Wellington has not forgotten Joe Kum Yung.
A memorial plaque was put up on Haining St in 2005, the 100th anniversary of the murder, by members of the Chinese community.
- The Dominion Post
Info on Terry's life and death. His story has taken interest in more recent years, partly in a scholarly manor as an eccentric historical figure and partly by white supremacists as more of a heroic figure.
A copy of Terry's 'The Shadow'
An article from the New Zealand Railways Magazine in 1933 has a detailed account of the trail and following imprisonment of Lionel Terry
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov08_04Rail-t1-body-d11.html
An account from the previous article reads that Terry walked into Haining Street from Taranaki Street then disappeared off into Ingestre street ... but the only street by that name seems to be in Brooklyn on both modern and historic maps of Wellington.
In my research I'm finding a lot of information on Lionel Terry and very little on Joe Kum Yung. This article touches on him briefly but it seems there was little recorded about him, and lots of inconsistencies in the information I do find.
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