A Shakedown in San Francisco

Highbinders? They come in crowds?

I learned a bit of old slang today. The word is “highbinder,” and according to Wiktionary, originally referred to a specific gang in New York City of the early nineteenth century, but later came to refer to Chinese criminal gangs.[1] It’s in this second meaning that I encountered it. However, another work, The Crooked Ladder, suggests that “highbinders” were the paid assassins of Tong gangs in New York and San Francisco.[2] A little further research showed that the word was once a familiar term that has fallen into disuse.

It’s not clear to me exactly when this story actually happened, as I have found reports with dates from November 5th through the 7th, 1888. Maybe as early as the 4th. Certainly those papers who are giving it a later date are wrong. The story deals with a shakedown within the Chinese community of San Francisco, but other than that it happened in Chinatown, no specific address is given, though a map of Chinatown from the 1880s locates the bordellos with Chinese prostitutes at the northern end, while those with white prostitutes were at the southern end. One article specifies that the inhabitants were “a number of Chinese women,” so it is more likely that the building was in the northern part of Chinatown.

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