Anti-Chinese Riots: When Brisbane Streets Erupted in Racial Violence

By the late 1880s anti-Chinese sentiment in Queensland was at its peak. Leading up to the state election in 1888, political parties were promising to deal with the "Chinese Question", and newspapers were urging to eradicate the 'yellow peril'. On election day 5 May, the streets of Brisbane erupted with racial violence.
The area itself was known locally as Frog's Hollow. An area that Raymond Evans, in Radical Brisbane: An Unruly History, describes as being at the time:
"[...] dilapidated, unsanitary zone was [...] associated with moral decay, for it was the home of Brisbane's red light district, with its cluster of brothels in Margaret Street, owned by Mary O'Brien and Marie Naylor, as well as Brisbane's small Chinatown, located virtually at the centre of Frog's Hollow, along Albert and Mary Streets. Here, Chinese shops, residences and boarding houses subsisted alongside gambling rooms, opium parlours, pubs and sly-grog shops. To these 'hot-beds of crime and vice' it was said, 'prowling gangs of wolf-like larrikins' were attracted like magnets, mixing with a 'filthy swarm of cursing slatterns' and young blue and white-collar workers 'out on a spree.' The area was forbidden territory, exciting, dirty and dangerous; and, in any one year, yielded up hundreds of charges of 'obscene language,' disorderly conduct and riotous behaviour [...] due to the over-policing of its streets."
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Using documents from the Queensland State Archives, we can see letters, reports and investigations that occurred before and after the riots in Brisbane took place.
Archive Search: www.archivessea...
See more images in our Flickr album: www.flickr.com...
The Queensland State Archives are located at 435 Compton Road, Runcorn. Opening hours are 9.00am to 4.30pm Monday to Friday.

[@rickylee64]

ahh, Australia's long and distinguished racist history. it continues today. just the targets have changed.

[@user-fw3fq3de3z]

Battle of brisbane was aussies fighting Americans

[@o0posh0o58]

But fighting for the conintued existence of the white race and the future of white Children is surely a morally respectable duty.... what would you have white people do?... be taken over and replaced?