John Douglas and Aborigines in Torres Strait

This post is an extract from my PhD thesis analysing John Douglas - then the Government Resident of Thursday Island - and his relationship with Aborigines in the Torres Strait at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.


Douglas was also responsible for overseeing and regulating Aborigines, drawn from the Aboriginal tribes in western and northern Cape York, working in the Torres Strait fisheries.  Many of them had been kidnapped,[1] and in 1884 it was estimated that half of the 500 or so men employed in the bêche-de-mer fishery on Murray, Darnley and Yorke Islands were Aboriginal.[2]

Some went voluntarily, seeking adventure in the new world; some were kidnapped and forced to work as divers; many were sold for a bag of flour by tribal elders, who themselves were exploiting the young men.[3]

Douglas was in no doubt that this “scandalous traffic” had led to Cape York Aborigines being hostile towards the fisheries industry.[4]  This hostility was further fuelled by fishery crews who often stole Aboriginal women and spread venereal disease through the communities, causing immense social disruption and disintegration.[5]  In 1891, Douglas assisted Moravian missionaries to establish the Mapoon mission, the first mission settlement on western Cape York.  He selected a site for them on the Batavia River, and, on the missionaries’ arrival at Thursday Island, prepared two luggers to transport them and their supplies.  He also provided a police guard.[6]

Douglas saw it as his duty to protect Aborigines from the depredations of the fisheries’ owners and consequently refused to issue permits for the employment of Aboriginal children or women.[7]  His religious and social code reinforced a deeply felt sense of fair play, which was genuinely offended when marginalised groups were harshly treated.[8]

This was poignantly illustrated in 1890 when, after a lugger had been stolen, two Aborigines from the Batavia River region were captured by pearl-shellers and brought to Thursday Island to stand trial.  Douglas wrote to the colonial secretary in London:

I felt some sympathy for them – they looked like frightened wild things who were in mortal terror of their lives.  It is difficult to know what to do with them.  We are trying to find an interpreter who understands their language.  They have offended no doubt, but what possible conception can they have of our forms of law.[9]

On another occasion, following the theft of a boat, Douglas dismissed it as being prompted “on the part of some hired blacks, merely by the desire to return home as their period of service had expired.”[10]  Douglas’s role in protecting Aborigines from the worst abuses of the pearl-shellers was resented by employers,[11] as was his support for the Mapoon mission.  Fisheries employers were concerned that many Aborigines living and working on the mission and coming under the influence of missionaries would refuse to work in the fisheries.[12]

Douglas’s support for the mission extended to his penning an anonymous article in the Queenslander newspaper in which he refuted all the complaints made against it by the pearl-shellers.[13]  Despite Douglas being a thorn in their side, the pearl-shellers did - and, indeed, could do little about it.  As a visitor to Thursday Island in 1894 recorded in his diary, Douglas was:

a very worthy man, most conscientious and strict … The inhabitants, we were told, or at least many of them, want to get rid of him, the real objection I believe being that he is too upright for them.[14]

On northern Cape York, Douglas did what he could to improve conditions for Aborigines.  He wanted to set up a system similar to that of the Mamoose in Torres Strait, and arranged for Yarra-Ham-Quon and Tong-Ham-Blow, the chiefs of the Jardine River and Seven Rivers tribes, to visit Thursday Island.  There they experienced “something of the customs and laws of the Whites,” agreed to govern their community in a similar manner, were given farm and household implements, and installed as ‘Kings.’  However, Douglas believed that no “lasting beneficial results” would occur until a “sufficiently disinterested” European was prepared to live among the tribes on a permanent basis.[15]  Moreover, despite his support for the Mapoon Mission, by 1903 Douglas despaired of countering the pernicious effects of European contact on the Aboriginal population of the Cape York Peninsula: “The poor things …It is very difficult to save them.”[16]

Douglas clashed with the pearl-shellers over other matters as well.  In 1898, when nearly 300 Aborigines were employed in the industry,[17] he recommended to the government that it prohibit pearl-shellers from recruiting additional Aboriginal labour from the Albatross Bay and Embley River areas of western Cape York.[18]  In the following year Douglas also established a regulatory system to ensure that employers complied with the provisions of the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, designed to protect Aborigines in employment.[19]

---

[1] John Douglas to Samuel Griffith, 22 October 1885.  Queensland State Archives, COL A/443 letter 8225:  Lockley, p. 34

[2] Ganter (1999), pp. 43-44

[3] Harris (1990), p. 483

[4] John Douglas to Samuel Griffith, 22 October 1885.  Queensland State Archives, COL A/443 letter 8225.  Despite Douglas’s anger, he recognised that in many of these cases: “it cannot, however, be contended, that any legal offence has been committed, either under the kidnapping Acts of 1872 and 1875 or under the Native Labourers Protection Act of 1884.”

[5] Ibid.; Gaynor Evans.  Thursday Island 1878-1914:  A Plural Society.  BA Hons thesis. University of Queensland, p. 73; Lockley, p. 34

[6] Harris (1990), p. 484; Ward, pp. 46-47 & 65-68

[7] Shirleene Robinson and Kay Saunders.  ‘One Long Record of Brutal Cruelty, Bestiality and Debauchery:’ Aboriginal Workers in Queensland’s Pearling and Bêche-de-Mer Industries in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth centuries.  Unpublished article, Brisbane, 2003, p. 9.  Despite this, Douglas had to frequently return Aboriginal “boys and girls of tender years” to the Batavia River area.  (Douglas (1894), p. 914

[8] Roebuck. p. 35

[9] John Douglas to the Colonial Secretary, 27 August 1890.  Queensland State Archives, COL/A629/9587.  Quoted in Gaynor (1978), p. 74.  There were also several murders of pearl-shellers by Aborigines.  For more information on these, see Ward, pp. 139-48; Gaynor (1978), p. 75; “Murder by Gulf Natives.”  Queenslander, 18 November 1893, p. 1000; “Suspected Murder by Blacks.”  Queenslander, 2 December 1893, p. 1096; Noel Loos.  Invasion and Resistance: Aboriginal - European Relations on the North Queensland Frontier 1861 - 1897.  Canberra, ANU Press, 1982, pp. 138-41

[10] Brisbane Courier, 6 April 1891, p. 4

[11] For a further example of attempts by Douglas to ensure that Aborigines were paid fair wages and protected from abuses, see Walter Roth to Colonial Secretary, no date but around May 1898.  (Queensland State Archives, COL/142 no 6944/1898 (QSA Z1608)

[12] Ward, p. 136.  As Douglas informed his sons, employers opposed the missionaries “because they did a good deal to put an end to the nefarious trade in natives which had been going on.”  (John Douglas to his children, 22 January 1895.  McCourt Papers)

[13] Ward, p. 144

[14] Rev. Fred Chatterton.  Rough Notes of a Trip from Nelson New Zealand to England, 21 April 1894, p. 42.  Copy held in the National Library of Australia, Mfm M1953

[15] Brisbane Courier, 6 April 1891, p. 4

[16] “The Hon. John Douglas.  Visit to Brisbane.  An Interesting Interview.”  Brisbane Courier, 11 December 1903, p. 5

[17] C. B. Marrett, Inspector of Police, Cooktown, to Commissioner of Police, Brisbane, 19 March 1898.  Queensland State Archives COL/142/5931/1898 (QSA Z1609)

[18] John Douglas to the Under Secretary, Home Office, 13 April 1898.  Queensland State Archives, HOM/A18.  This area was south of the Mapoon Mission and the where the Aurukun Mission would be established in 1904.

[19] John Douglas to the Under Secretary, Home Office, 20 January & 20 October 1899.  Queensland State Archives, HOM/A22

John Douglas and the Asian presence in Torres Strait

This post is an extract from my PhD thesis analysing John Douglas - then the Government Resident of Thursday Island - and his relationship with the Chinese, Malays and Filipinos in the Torres Strait at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

Douglas’s attitude to the other Asians on Thursday Island was very different to his attitude towards the Japanese, for, being fewer in number, they never threatened the European way of life on the Island.  To Douglas, the major problem with Chinese residents was their opium smoking, a vice he considered far worse than alcohol.[1]  As well, he disapproved of their gambling and condemned many of them as “insatiate gamblers.”[2]  By 1899, there were two wholesale and eight retail opium dealers on the island with a clientele including Malays and Europeans.[3]

The two other main Asian groups living and working in Torres Strait were the Filipinos and Malays.  Filipinos, known as Manila men, were brought, like Malays, to Torres Strait from Singapore on three-year agreements to work in the fisheries.[4]  By 1885 there were 147 Filipinos in Torres Strait, but in subsequent years their numbers declined and there were rarely more than 100 in any given year.  Some settled permanently on Thursday Island, married women selected for them in the Philippines, and acquired boats of their own.[5]

As naturalized British subjects, Filipinos were considered to be the “only fully-integrated Asians” on the island.[6]  Nevertheless, being identified as Asian still made them the object of racial hostility by Europeans: the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners Advocate expressed alarm over “hordes of Asiatic aliens”[7] when an additional 150 Filipinos arrived on the island in 1899.  Douglas, however, viewed Filipinos in a different light, and considered them the most settled of the Asians, “good residents” who circulated their money on the island.[8]

Douglas was also impressed with Malays and regarded them as having “furnished both good crews and good divers” for the Torres Strait fisheries.  However, unlike Filipinos, most Malays returned home at the end of their agreements.[9]  Douglas was particularly moved by the plight of a Malay leper consigned to the leprosarium on Dayman Island in Torres Strait and remarked that he was “an intelligent man, who, in spite of his troubles, contemplates life with equanimity.”[10]  Douglas’s views towards the Malay and Filipino populations on the island were enlightened for the period.  Malays were believed capable of running amuck at any time, while Manila men carrying sharp knives were routinely seen as dangerous, and were forever tainted with the murder of Senior Constable William Conroy by one of their number, Frank Tinyana, on Thursday Island in 1896.[11]

Douglas did his best to keep the peace on the island.  In 1892, he was able to observe with some satisfaction “that among this motley population very fair order is maintained,” with no serious crimes recorded in the previous five years.[12]  However, this state of affairs could not last indefinitely.  Early in 1901, an organized fracas occurred between Pacific Islanders and Manilamen, leading to one dead, several seriously injured, and the shop of the leading Filipino on the island, Heriverto Zarcal, being extensively damaged.[13]   Douglas took immediate steps to prevent any further outbreak of violence, swearing in special constables and imposing a curfew, during which the police and military patrolled the streets.[14]

Despite this melee, there was, considering the small size of the island, its tropical climate and isolated location a surprising degree of tolerance and harmony.  Economic interdependence required a degree of cooperation between all sectors of the community, which in turn led to the development of a cosmopolitan and relatively stable society.  As Douglas proudly observed of his beloved island in 1902:

We have all the essentials which may be regarded as appertaining to a white Australia:  we have the same all-pervading British law, applicable to Asian and Australian alike, the same English language, and the same forms of social intercourse which prevail in southern Australia:  our churches and schools are an exact counterpart on a small scale of what they are in Melbourne or in Brisbane.[15]

Douglas was government resident during the formative stages of the development of Thursday Island as a thriving multiracial community.  However, the introduction of the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 following federation forever changed the nature of the fisheries in Torres Strait, changes that in turn affected the makeup and composition of the Thursday Island community.  By the time of Douglas’s death in 1904, aliens, as authorized under the Act, were brought in as indentured labour under articles and only allowed to set foot ashore on Thursday Island for a short period twice a year.[16]

The society in Torres Strait that developed and was nurtured under Douglas’s benevolent administration was atypical for its time, a testament to his liberal beliefs and unflinching respect for British values and the rule of law. The aftermath of Douglas’s death would see steady erosion in the freedoms enjoyed by non-Europeans in Torres Strait and increased restrictions and prohibitions imposed by the Queensland government.

---

[1] John Douglas to his children, 7 September 1893.  Andrew and Lorraine Douglas Papers; John Douglas.  “Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island for 1898.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 1, 1899, p. 900.

[2] John Douglas to Edward Douglas, 7 October 1894.  Andrew and Lorraine Douglas Papers

[3] Douglas (1899), p. 900; Queensland Parliamentary Debates, vol LXXXII, 1899, p. 338

[4] John Douglas.  “Asiatic Aliens in Torres Straits.”  13 January 1895.  p. 1.  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105

[5] Ibid., p. 2; Douglas (1902), p. 51

[6] Renato Perdon.  Brown Americans of Asia.  Sydney, Manila Prints, 1998, p. 116; Douglas (1896), p. 2.  Douglas was a strong supporter of naturalisation.  (Douglas (1898), p. 425)

[7] Quoted in Perdon, p. 121

[8] John Douglas.  “Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Pearl-Shell and Bêche-de-mer Fisheries Commission,” p. 2.  In, Report, Together with Minutes of Evidence and Proceedings, of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the General Working of the Laws Regulating the Pearl-Shell and Bêche-de-mer Fisheries in the Colony.  Queensland Votes and proceedings, 1897, vol 2, p. 1720

[9] John Douglas.  “Asiatic Aliens in Torres Straits,” 13 January 1895, p. 2.  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105

[10] Douglas (1890), p. 174.  For further information on the Leprosarium, see Raymond Evans.  Charitable Institutions of the Queensland Government.  MA thesis.  University of Queensland, 1969, pp. 209-18 & 231-35

[11] Ibid., pp. 6-7; F. Urquhart to John Douglas, 24 July 1895.  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105.  For details on the murder of Conroy, see Police Commissioner’s Staff Files, File 300 AF [re William Conroy].  Queensland State Archives, A/38748.  I am indebted to Dr Anna Shnukal for alerting me to the file’s existence.

[12] John Douglas.  “Annual Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 2, 1892, p. 1031

[13]  “Brown and Black.”  Torres Straits Pilot and New Guinea Gazette, 19 January 1901, p. 2

[14] Ibid; “The Pearl Shelling Industry.”  Sydney Morning Herald, 2 May 1901, p. 4

[15] Douglas (1902), p. 51

[16] Hugh Milman.  “Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island for the Years 1904.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 1, 1905, p. 26; Ganter (1999), p. 107

John Douglas and the Japanese in the Torres Strait

This post is an extract from my PhD thesis analysing John Douglas - then the Government Resident of Thursday Island - and his relationship with the Japanese in the Torres Strait at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.

The major industry in Torres Strait was centred on the exploitation of its fisheries, especially pearl shelling, trochus and bêche-de-mer.  Europeans who employed Pacific Islanders initially controlled it, but over time, the growing numbers of Japanese attracted to the industry increasingly threatened their dominance and control.

The first Japanese came to Torres Strait in the late 1870s seeking work in the pearling industry.[1]  Employed as divers, they were so successful that European employers increasingly preferred them to others.  From 1891, Japanese merchants facilitated worker migration, resulting in increased numbers coming to Torres Strait.[2]  On Thursday Island, the Japanese population grew from 22 in 1890 to a peak of 619 in 1898, when, for the first time, they outnumbered the European population.

This rapid growth and dominance of the Torres Strait fisheries by non-Europeans at the expense of Europeans greatly concerned Douglas and other like-minded Queenslanders, who saw Japanese as a threat to both their livelihood and their British way of life.[3]  Douglas’s remarks about Japanese residing on Thursday Island, in 1895, reveal his reasons, for:

they have their own shops, their own boat building slip … it will very soon be a case, I fear, of the survival of the fittest, and if things go on as they are doing, the Caucasian will be played out. [4]

Although Douglas had nothing against individual Japanese, he believed that collectively they posed a danger to the European way of life on the island:

I have really a great respect for the Japanese and a great admiration for their physical and mental capacities; all the same, I think we shall have to look out.[5]

Moreover, as a group he regarded them as “a positive menace” to the British way of life on Thursday Island.[6]  Douglas’s beliefs in this regard had not deviated since his successful efforts at halting Chinese immigration to Queensland almost two decades previously.  He continued to believe in:

maintaining the idiosyncrasy of the races from which we derive our origin – We must, through the length and breadth of Australia, be commandingly European.[7]

Most Queenslanders wanted Queensland society to be based on British values and customs, not Asian ones.  Therefore, it was hardly surprising that Douglas and others became increasingly alarmed over Japanese entrenchment in the pearling industry in Torres Strait in the mid 1890s.[8]

Douglas kept the Queensland government well informed as to the numbers of Japanese arriving and the impact their presence was having on the fisheries and the Thursday Island community - and consistently demanded that it take action to restrict their migration to Torres Strait.[9]  He complained that Japanese women were brought to the island as prostitutes and that the number of Japanese men arriving was too great to be absorbed into the local fishing industry.[10]  Douglas also believed it unfair that aliens, who would never settle permanently in Torres Strait, were allowed to exploit the fisheries.

I hardly think that British fisherman, with all their pluck and indomitable love of freedom, would as cheerfully invite their French or Dutch neighbours to share in the privileges of their home fisheries as we do when we license Japanese or Malays to fish within the limits of our maritime boundary.[11]

Nevertheless, his concerns were lessened somewhat by his belief that, being fishermen, most Japanese would not settle permanently on Thursday Island as they desired to return to Japan, while the liberal in him admired them as “a hardworking people, tractable, inoffensive, and reasonable.”[12]

The Queensland government, always receptive to Douglas’s concerns, acted quickly.  It voiced its opposition to the flow of migration from Japan to Torres Strait and in 1897 appointed a commission of inquiry to investigate the matter.  The commission’s findings led to the amendment of the relevant Act, resulting in Japanese being prohibited from renting boats or acquiring boat licenses in the colony.[13]  These restrictions, together with the active involvement of the Japanese government in restricting immigration of its nationals to Queensland[14] and the federal government’s Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, halted the influx of Japanese to Torres Strait.

Nonetheless, resentment towards the Japanese took time to settle, as this observation in 1899 in the local newspaper, the Torres Strait Pilot and New Guinea Gazette, attests.

The Japanese, despite his industry and his cleverness, is not liked and is not trusted.  The race are personally agreeable, but they get everything into their own hands, both by underselling, mysterious, and unfathomable systems of combination.  Japanese were first brought to Thursday Island as divers.  Then they got to own boats and then combined in the ownership of boats … subsequently they took to building boats … The 30 or 40 White men who formerly worked at boat-building and repairing work are no more.[15]

By the late 1890s, Douglas was satisfied that the threat had been reduced, observing in 1901, that, as Japanese arrivals to the island had “dried up” almost completely, the “Japanese problem” was being “solved”.[16]  Nevertheless, despite the ‘White Australia’ policy now in force, Japanese and other non-Europeans were still needed in the pearling industry.  Douglas recognized that while “White men can do well as divers,” they refused to do this sort of dangerous work, and he therefore accepted the need for Japanese to have an ongoing involvement in the industry, if only as “auxiliaries.”[17]  For him, the solution was obvious, namely increased employment of Torres Strait Islanders and Papua New Guineans in the Torres Strait fisheries.[18]

Douglas was initially intent on capping Japanese immigration and influence.  On achieving this, he was in later years more concerned with ensuring that Japanese abided by the regulations and legislation governing the pearl-shelling industry.  As a police magistrate, he was involved, on a daily basis for almost two decades, in upholding the peace and meting out justice, and this he did without fear or favour.  Non-Europeans were accorded a measure of dignity and respect, fairness frequently espoused elsewhere but rarely put into practice as it was on Thursday Island.

One instance of Douglas’s impartiality in dispensing justice concerned the arrest of a Japanese diver, Nakane, for indecency and resisting arrest on Thursday Island in January 1898.  The arrest was made under what appeared to be difficult circumstances, with 200 of his countrymen present, while the case itself, heard before Douglas over four days, was attended by several hundred Japanese.  Although Douglas found that Nakane was indeed guilty of indecent exposure for urinating in public on a Saturday afternoon in the main thoroughfare whilst under the influence of liquor, he called for discretion on the part of police, as not only were there no urinals there, but he himself had

urinated in a public street, though of course in a quiet corner, and never felt that I had committed an act of indecency.[19]

Despite finding that Nakane had resisted arrest, Douglas refused to record a conviction on this count and instead criticised the police for their excessive use of force as the constable had “downed him [Nakane] a second time in a rather inhuman manner, and knocked him senseless.”[20]

Douglas’s verdict was controversial, the local paper taking an opposing position when it reported on the case.  As its title subheading exclaimed:

A charge of Indecency:  Extraordinary decisions:  The police snubbed:  The lawbreakers complimented.[21]

While the paper may have adopted a populist position, Douglas’s impartial actions in this and other cases demonstrated his respect for the rule of law and helped ensure relative peace and stability between diverse groups on a small and remote island.

[1] Ganter (1999), p. 100

[2] Ibid., pp. 102-4

[3] John Douglas.  “Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island for 1892-3.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 2, 1894, p. 909.  For reaction to the influx of Japanese to Torres Strait, see John B. Armstrong.  The Question of Japanese Immigration to Queensland in the Nineteenth century.  MA thesis, University of Queensland, 1970, pp. 63-70

[4] John Douglas.  “Thursday Island and the Japanese.”  5 June 1895.  Dixson Library, State Library of NSW, AD 39

[5] Ibid.

[6] “The Japanese Question.”  Brisbane Courier, 12 May 1897, p. 4

[7] Ibid.

[8] John Douglas.  “Asiatic Aliens in Torres Straits,” p. 2.  13 January 1895.  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105

[9] “Précis of Papers Dealing with Necessity for Restricting Japanese Immigration.”  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105.  See also a debate on Douglas’s actions on this matter in “Thursday Island.”  Queensland Parliamentary Debates, vol Lxxix, 1898, pp. 529-35; “In the Gallery.”  Brisbane Courier, 15 September 1898, p. 5

[10] “Précis of Papers Dealing with Necessity for Restricting Japanese Immigration.”  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105; John Armstrong.  Aspects of Japanese Immigration to Queensland before 1900.”  Queensland Heritage, vol 2 no 9, November 1973, p. 5; John Douglas.  “Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island for 1894-95.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 1, 1896, p. 502; John Douglas.  “Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island for 1896 and 1897.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 1, 1898, p. 425

[11] Douglas (1894), p. 4; Douglas (1901), p. 992

[12] John Douglas.  “Asiatic Aliens in Torres Straits,” 13 January 1895, p. 13.  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105

[13] “Report, Together with Minutes of Evidence and Proceedings, of the Commission Appointed to Inquire into the General Working of the Laws Regulating the Pearl-Shell and Bêche-de-mer Fisheries in the Colony.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, 1897, vol 2, pp. 1301-52

[14] See, Yuichi Murakami.  Civilised Asian:  Images of Japan and the Japanese as viewed by Australians from the early Nineteenth Century to 1901.  PhD thesis.  University of Queensland, 1999, chapter 5 & Willard, pp. 116-18

[15] Torres Strait Pilot and New Guinea Gazette, 30 September 1899, p. 2

[16] “Colour at Thursday Island.”  Brisbane Courier, 3 May 1901, p. 4; John Douglas.  “Report of the Government Resident at Thursday Island for 1899.”  Queensland Votes and Proceedings, vol 1, 1900, p. 1059; Douglas (1901), p. 1; Sydney Morning Herald, 2 May 1901, p. 4

[17] The Age, 6 September 1902, p. 10; John Douglas.  “Asiatic Aliens in Torres Straits,” 13 January 1895, p. 3.  Queensland State Archives, PRE/105

[18] Douglas (1901), pp. 3-4.  This is what subsequently happened, with some 200 New Guineans employed in the industry by late 1903.  (“The Hon. John Douglas.  Visit to Brisbane.  An Interesting Interview.”  Brisbane Courier, 11 December 1903, p. 5)

[19] “A Charge of Indecency.”  Torres Strait Pilot and New Guinea Gazette, 29 January 1898

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid.  For a similar account, see Old Colonist.  “Reminiscences of Half a Century and Present-day Politics.”  Record Printing Company, Rockhampton, 1898, pp. 66-67

---