Sai Wing Mock
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Sai Wing Mock aka Mock Duck (1879 – July 23, 1941) was a New York Chinese criminal and leader of the Hip Sing Tong, who replaced the On Leong Tong as the dominant Chinese-American Tong in the Manhattan Chinatown in the early 1900s.
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[edit] Emigration
Mock Duck arrived in the United States during the late 1890s, settling in New York's Chinatown where he formed the Hip Sing Tong, a minor criminal organization. Within several years, Mock Duck began challenging Tom Lee whose domination of criminal activities in Chinatown, as well as police and political protection of Tammany Hall.
[edit] Manhattan Chinatown
In 1900, Mock Duck demanded half of Lee's revenue from his illegal gambling operations. When Lee refused, within 48 hours, Mock Duck declared a Tong war against the On Leongs setting one of Lee's boarding houses of fire which resulted in the deaths of two men. Following another incident in which an On Leong member was decapitated by two Hip Sing hatchetmen, open warfare began on the in Chinatown.
One Chinatown historian describes Mock Duck in 1904 as "strutting around on Pell Street, covered in diamonds," adding that, at that time, "Mock Duck is firmly in control of the Hip Sing, his sinister image bolstered by his long, lethal-looking fingernails, which signal he is too grand to do the dirty work he assigns to others."[1]
Mock Duck survived repeated attempts on his life and wore a chain mail vest. He was named by the press the "Clay Pigeon of Chinatown" and the "Mayor of Chinatown". During several attempts on his life, Mock Duck reportedly squat down in the street and would fire at his attackers with two pistols as his eyes were closed.
After Lee had put a bounty on Mock Duck and the rest of the Hip Sings, Mock Duck formed an alliance with the rival Four Brothers. Mock Duck took advantage of the reform crusade started by Charles Parkhurst. Duck posed as a businessman, and supplied information including addresses of the On Leongs criminal operations to Parkhurst. The authorities raided On Leong opium dens and gambling dens on Pell and Doyers Streets, although he withheld addresses from the lucrative Mott Street operations to use for leverage in his campaign against Lee. Although a truce between the warring Tongs was signed in 1906, the Hip Sings and the On Leongs would again be at war the following year.
Mock Duck, who had begun consolidating his power during the late 1900s, finally defeated Lee during the "Bow Kum" Tong wars of 1909-1910. Although arrested several times during the next decade, during which time a number of attempts were made on his life, he was convicted only once in 1912 and served two years imprisonment in Sing Sing Prison for operating a policy game. In 1932, Mock Duck agreed in an arraignment with the US and Chinese governments to declare a peace among the Tongs of Chinatown and he retired to Brooklyn where he lived until his death on July 23, 1941. [2].
[edit] Further reading
- Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. ISBN 978-1-56025-275-7
- MacIllwain, Jeffrey Scott. Organizing Crime in Chinatown: Race and Racketeering in New York City, 1890-1910. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7864-1626-4
- O'Kane, James M. The Crooked Ladder: Gangsters, Ethnicity and the American Dream. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994. ISBN 978-0-7658-0994-0
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Hall, Bruce Edward, Tea That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown, The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 1998, pp. 142-3.
- ^ Brooklyn Death Index: "Mock Sai 62 y July 23 1941 15191 Kings County
[edit] References
- Devito, Carlo. Encyclopedia of International Organized Crime. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. ISBN 978-0-8160-4848-9
