Today in San Francisco History - Tong boss "Little Pete" assassinated in a Chinatown barbershop
The "tong" secret societies are as American as Chop Suey -- which is to say, invented in San Francisco and completely unknown in China.
The first tong was organized by Gold-Rush era immigrants as a means of mutual support and defense against a mostly-hostile white dominated world, and before long, tongs had popped up in most every city with a Chinese population.
It didn't take long, though, for the money to be made from drugs, gambling and prostitution to attract a criminal element, especially in chaotic Barbary Coast-era San Francisco. The world of tongs devolved into a near-constant state of bloody gang warfare over control of Chinatown's underworld.
"Little Pete"
In the 1880s, a young man by the name of Fung Jing Toy rose to the top of this wild-west gangster scene, and created his very own tong -- a personal army of hand-picked hatchetmen. He was nicknamed "Little Pete", and with this army of boo how doy began violently pushing the other tongs off of their hard-won turf, moving inexorably towards complete control of Chinatown.
After an attempt to bribe one of his soldiers out of a murder rap landed him temporarily in San Quentin -- and made him famous throughout San Francisco -- Little Pete learned to buy protection in the white world.
By forging a cash-based alliance with "Blind" Buckley, the Democrat boss who controlled San Francisco's hopelessly corrupt City Hall, Little Pete became the undisputed king of Chinatown.
Not only was he new immune from the pesky annoyances of the law, but if a brothel or gambling dive failed to pay him their percentage, a "coincidental" raid by the police would shut them down, and Little Pete's boys would take over.
Gambling. Blackmail. Opium. Prostitution. Murder. For a solid decade Little Pete was the most powerful and feared Chinese on the Pacific Coast.
A price on his head
Little Pete had pushed the other tongs too far. They finally set their mutual enmity aside and put a price on the King's head: one thousand dollars.
There were no takers. Little Pete ran a high-security operation, which Herbert Asbury describes vividly in The Barbary Coast:
"He slept in a windowless room behind a barred and bolted door, on either side of which was chained a vicious dog. During his waking hours he wore a coat of chain mail, and inside his hat was a thin sheet of steel curved to fit his head. He employed a bodyguard of three white men, and when he went abroad, one walked beside him, and another in front, while the third brought up the rear. And prowling within call were half a dozen of his own boo how doy, heavily armed."
I should mention here that hiring white guards was a particularly clever move -- if a Chinese were to injure or kill a Caucasian, the racist white establishment would tear him apart. Asbury goes on to write that
"... wherever Little Pete went he was accompanied by a trusted servant bearing his jewel-case and toilet articles, for the tong leader was a great dandy, and much concerned about his appearance. He changed his jewelry several times daily and never wore a suit, though he had forty, two days in succession. Two hours each morning he spent combing, brushing, and oiling his long and glossy queue, of which he was inordinately proud."
The assassination
Frustrated by the lack of action, the rival tongs raised the bounty on Little Pete first to $2000, and then to the unheard sum of $3000.
That did it. On the evening of January 23, 1897 -- Chinese New Year's Eve -- two Chinese men from Oregon strolled into the barbershop on the ground floor of Little Pete's building at the corner of Washington and Waverly Place. There sat the tong boss alone in the barber's chair with a hot towel covering his face.
The men had been watching the building for just such an opportunity. For some reason, Little Pete had brought only one bodyguard, and had just sent him out to buy a paper. The barber was wise enough to just step out of the way.
One assassin stood guard at the door. The other strode across the room, grabbed Little Pete by his damp queue and shoved a revolver down the back of his neck, inside the coat of mail.
Five shots rang out, and the reign of Little Pete was over.
Police flocked to the scene, but in typically racist fashion arrested the nearest convenient "Chinaman" for the crime. The killers got away clean. They collected the reward money and caught the next train to Oregon, where the Portland Chinatown greeted them as heroes.
Tongs would continue to battle for control of Chinatown's underworld well into the twentieth century, but they'd do it without Little Pete.
