Historical Chinese Australian names throw up all sorts of challenges – from the ubiquity of ‘Ah’ to confusion of name order – but in my recent research on Chinese Tasmanian history, it’s the challenge of matching Chinese and English versions of people’s names that’s been puzzling me.
As part of our Everyday Heritage Linkage project, we have compiled a list of the Chinese names of more than 950 people connected to Tasmania, dating from 1901 to 1936, taken from historical newspapers digitised in Trove.
“專 件 [Special Report]”, Tung Wah Times (Sydney), 18 October 1919, p. 6, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article227016320 – this newspaper article, about the establishment of a Tasmanian branch of the Chinese Anti-Discriminatory and Patriotic Association, includes the Chinese name of Claude Nam ShingTo do this, researcher Brian Tseng located 82 relevant newspaper articles in four newspapers: Chinese Republic News, Chinese Times, Chinese Australian Herald, and the Tung Wah News/Times. Many of these articles are newspaper subscription notices, society membership lists, or lists of philanthropic donations.
In time, our list of names, and the newspaper articles they came from, will be included in our forthcoming Chinese Tasmanian Stories 塔華舊事* website. But for now, they are one of the sources we’re using in researching the stories of Chinese individuals, businesses and places.
One of the individuals we’ve been looking into is Claude Nam Shing.
Claude (or Claudie) Nam Shing, greengrocer / fruiterer / market gardener, left a small but meaningful trace in the written archive in Tasmania, including English-language newspaper reports, post office directory entries (between 1907 and 1936), reports in the police gazette, and an alien registration record.
Given his long residence in Hobart and Glenorchy, we would expect that he also appeared at least once in the donation and subscription lists that we uncovered in the Chinese-language newspapers – but how do we work out what his name is in Chinese characters, beyond an educated / lucky guess?
Claude Nam Shing’s grave in the Cornelian Bay Cemetery, Hobart, January 2026
Luckily, Claude Nam Shing is buried in the Cornelian Bay Cemetery here in Hobart, and, even luckier, the headstone includes an inscription in Chinese. I was alerted to this fact by photographs of the grave in the Find a Grave website. The headstone is much weathered, as many of the old Chinese headstones in Cornelian Bay are, but it is possible to make out some of what it says from these online photographs.
Imogen Wegman and I also payed Nam Shing’s grave a visit to see if it would be easier to read in real life, with the help of rubbings. After some tricky deciphering, I am pretty confident that this is what it says:
CLAUDE NAN SHING
Died 15 June 1940 Aged 76 Years
增城 翁之墓 趙南成 (or another ‘sing’ character such as 盛) 廣東
Armed with these characters for his name, I then looked in our list of Chinese Tasmanians from the Chinese-language newspapers, and, lo and behold, there were half a dozen articles that mentioned 趙南盛 – lists of donations to famine, disaster and food relief, and membership of the Tasmanian branch of a Chinese-Australian community association – dating between 1908 and 1920.
Claude Nam Shing is just one of the hundreds of Chinese people who lived in Tasmania in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. We’re making a start at bringing their stories out of the archives, but as Claude’s case demonstrates, the biographical data that is found in Chinese headstone inscriptions is a critical piece of the puzzle of understanding both the Chinese and the Tasmanian sides of their lives. Enough remained of the inscription on Claude Nam Shing’s headstone to make it possible to read it, but this isn’t the case with others, and who knows, in a few years’ time, maybe Nam Shing’s headstone will be similarly illegible.
Transcription of some Tasmanian Chinese headstones was undertaken by researcher Kok Hu Jin some years ago, but perhaps we in Tasmania might look to the model of CAFHOV’s wonderful database of Chinese Graves at Melbourne Chinese Cemetery as an example of what is possible when it comes to documenting this precious aspect of Chinese Tasmanian heritage.
* For those of you who don’t read Chinese, 塔華舊事 is pronounced taap wàh gauh sih in Cantonese and tǎ húa jiù shì in Mandarin, and it means 塔 Tasmanian 華 Chinese 舊事 stories from long ago / echoes of history / traces of the past – you get the gist!
The Everyday Heritage: Chinese Tasmanian Stories project team is made up of me, Annaliese Claydon, Imogen Wegman and Tim Sherratt, with Chinese-language research assistance by Brian Tseng.
If you have wandered past the library on the corner of Murray and Bathurst streets, Hobart, you might have noticed a billboard featuring arresting black-and-white portraits of a young Asian woman in Edwardian dress.
Across the front and side portraits of the woman is an annotation that reads, ‘Tie Cum Ah Chung — 11–9–03 —’.
The caption below the photographs tells us that these 1903 images of Tie Cum Ah Chung come from Hobart Gaol’s Prisoners Records Books, held by Tasmanian Archives.
Billboard in the carpark of the State Library of Tasmania on the corner of Murray and Bathurst streets, Hobart, 7 November 2025. Photograph by Kate Bagnall
In this blog post I want to look into the history of Tie Cum Ah Chung, to see what can be uncovered about her life in Tasmania.
The obvious first place to look for information about Tie Cum Ah Chung is her prisoner record, which can be found through the Tasmanian Names Index (although under a slightly different spelling of her name).
The prisoner record notes that 18-year-old Tie Cum Ah Chung was first imprisoned for a month for larceny in September 1903, and then three months later she was imprisoned for another month for perjury. She was 5 foot 3 inches tall, single, had smallpox scars on her face, worked as a domestic, and apparently could not read nor write. Her native place was recorded as Yokohama, Japan, although the name of the ship that brought her to Tasmania was unknown. (Yokohama had a sizeable Cantonese population and a ‘Chinatown’, and I have come across other records of Chinese in Australia and New Zealand who stated their birthplace as being Yokohama – so this is not impossible!)
The Tasmanian Names Index brings up no other obvious records for Tie Cum, although there are, of course, other records for people with the name ‘Ah Chung’, including naturalisations, births, deaths, marriages and wills. Many of these records relate to the family of Chin Ah Chung and his wife Lily, whose descendants are still in Hobart today.
The next easy place to look for Tie Cum is in the historical newspapers in Trove, to see if there are any reports of her crimes, arrests or trials. ‘Ti Cum Ah Chung’ (in inverted commas) brings up two results, neither of which are what might have been expected – they relate to a shooting in Launceston late one Friday night in February 1906, which Tie Cum witnessed. She had been standing in York Street, near Storrer’s (an undertaker’s), talking to two young men at the time of the shooting, and she reportedly not only saw the victim but was threatened by the shooter and then warned passersby of the danger. Both articles referred to her as ‘Chinese’.
Searching under the variant spelling of her name – “Tie Cum Ah Chung” (in inverted commas) – yields some more results in the historical newspapers, with reports from September and December 1903 about her court hearings, and one further article about the 1906 shooting.
A month after the shooting, Tie Cum gave evidence at the trial, which was held at the Police Court in Launceston on Friday, 2 March 1906. Her evidence was reported under the heading ‘The Chinese Girl’. Tie Cum told the court she was a Christian, and she was sworn on the Bible. There was no mention of an interpreter, and she appears to have given her testimony in fluent English. Her evidence tallied with the earlier press reports of her involvement – she had been standing on the corner of York and St John’s streets with Albert Brooks and Alfred Grant when the events took place; interestingly she also stated that she knew two of the policemen involved in the case, one from her time in Hobart ‘before I came up here’.
A CHARGE of LARCENY. Tie Cum Ah Chung, a young Japanese woman, was again before the Court, charged with stealing 21b of biscuits from Mrs Meredith, of Harrington street. Accused was defended by Mr Davenport Hoggins (Hoggins and Gilmore). After hearing evidence, accused was found guilty and sentenced to a month’s imprisonment. An application by counsel for his client to be treated under the First Offenders Act was refused, Mr Shaw stating that the Act was never intended for persons of accused’s character. She had been before the Court several times under disreputable circumstances, and a short term of imprisonment would perhaps give her time to think over her position and probably—though he was afraid not—lead to her reform. The Court then rose.
PERJURY. Tie Cum Ah Chung pleaded guilty to having committed wilful and corrupt perjury at the City Police Court, Hobart, where, being charged with the larceny of a couple of pounds of biscuits from a shop in Argyle street, she elected to give evidence on her own behalf. Prisoner was defended by Mr C. Davenport Hoggins (Hoggins and Gilmore). Mr Hoggins made a strong appeal for leniency, and said the Salvation Army was prepared to take the woman in hand. His Honor imposed a sentence of a month’s imprisonment.
I also tried searching Trove Newspapers using some other variations of her name (Ti/Tie/Tye/Tei and Come/Chum, as well as just Ah Chung), refining the search using parameters like date range and place, with some further success. My other go-to place for researching Chinese Australians in the early twentieth century is RecordSearch (National Archives of Australia), but no records about her obviously come up under variations of the name Tie Cum Ah Chung.
Most of the other newspaper reports I found about Tie Cum were repeats of the information about her larceny and perjury convictions, and the Launceston shooting, including one that includes a more detailed account of her biscuit theft from Mrs Meredith’s shop. One other that piqued my interest was from the Hobart Mercury in July 1903, three months before the theft:
City Police Court. – On Thursday, before the Police Magistrate (Mr. B. Shaw) and Mr. A. Riddoch, J.P. …Two young women named Elsie Hardwicke and Ti Chum AhChung pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace in Elizabeth-street by assuming a pugilistic attitude. The former was fined 25s., and the latter, who was a first offender, 5s.
The circumstances of Tie Cum’s life as recorded in these few easily found records seem really quite remarkable – from what I am learning about Tasmania’s early Chinese community, there are many remarkable stories of women and families to be uncovered!
‘Melbourne Ghost Signs’ researcher Sean Reynolds has delved into Tie Cum’s history, too – she apparently left Tasmania for Victoria not that long after these events – and for her story in later life (as Sean has been able to piece together), you might have a look at his creatively (flamboyantly?) written blog post, Otherwise, Yokahama, or listen to his Royal Historical Society of Victoria podcast episode of the same name (embedded below). Note that I haven’t closely reviewed Sean’s research, but on the surface it seems to largely hold together; it’s just perhaps a little fanciful about her origin story.
What then of Tie Cum’s early life? How and when did she come to Tasmania? Was she really born in Yokohama? And was she connected in any way to the Ah Chung family that I know?
My first tantalising clue has come in the form of a newspaper report in the Hobart Mercury in May 1898, located in a search for ‘Chinese girl’ in Tasmanian newspapers, which reported an accident in Hobart involving a fourteen-year-old Chinese girl named ‘Tarcum’:
Accident. – Yesterday evening, as a butcher’s waggon was being driven along Melville street, a Chinese girl named Tarcum, aged 14, who was playing on the footpath with some other children, ran on to the road, and got on the vehicle. Just then a sudden jerk caused her to fall, and the hind wheel ran over her. She was severely injured, and subsequent to being called to her mother she was conveyed to the hospital and admitted. The extent of her injuries has not been ascertained.
This Chinese girl, ‘Tarcum’, was aged fourteen in 1898, and Tie Cum Ah Chung was aged eighteen in 1903, which broadly tallies. Could they therefore be the same person? I think it’s a real possibility! If so, she was born in about 1884 or 1885.
The 1898 article mentions that Tarcum was called to her mother after being injured, suggesting that she came to Tasmania with her family; if she was Tie Cum Ah Chung, a Tasmanian childhood would account for Tie Cum’s fluency in speaking English (as suggested by her 1906 court testimony).
So, here is my crazy theory, which makes sense with the limited evidence I have to date.
The only ‘Ah Chung’ family with a Chinese mother that I know of in Hobart in the 1890s was that of Chin Ah Chung (carpenter / cabinetmaker, later fancy goods storekeeper) and his wife Kim Wing aka Lingo, later known as Lily. Kim Wing came to Hobart in about 1892, aged in her mid to late teens, and she was known to have had her feet bound in childhood. She was befriended by white women in Hobart who taught her to speak English, and she was remembered as speaking without an accent.
We know that other Chinese wives coming to Tasmania around that time were accompanied by companions or maids (e.g. Lula Mon Chinn and Fanny Lee Fook). Is is possible then that Tie Cum was a mui tsai or maid who accompanied Kim Wing to Tasmania? She would have been perhaps 10 years younger than Kim Wing, although it’s hard to get a firm grip on their exact ages. There is no family memory of Kim Wing having migrated with a maid servant, but information about her early life is also scant. I think this arrangement would have been more likely than her being Kim Wing’s daughter, as the age difference was too close.
I hope that as time goes on I will be able to make more sense of Tie Cum’s early story in Tasmania in the 1890s and early 1900s, and either confirm or disprove my crazy theory. Whatever her story, it seems she was among the earliest, and most intriguing, immigrant Chinese women to call our island state their home.
UPDATE 14 November 2025: There goes that theory! Today I came across a snippet from the Mercury on 9 September 1903 that reads: ‘Tie Come Ah Chung is nothing to do with Ah Chung in Elizabeth-street whatever.’ This was around the time 18-year-old Tie Cum was getting into trouble in Hobart.
‘Ah Chung in Elizabeth-street’ is Chin Ah Chung, mentioned above. I guess it is possible that the Ah Chungs were distancing themselves from Tie Cum because of her disreputable behaviour, but I think for now I will put aside my theory that she came to Hobart with Kim Wing.
FURTHER UPDATE later the same day: Ha, I was right after all! Tie Cum was associated to the Ah Chung family of Elizabeth Street, Hobart! I came across another little snippet in the Mercury in August 1900, a classified inserted by Ah Chung, that reads:
MRS. QUIN, late of Garibaldi, having been residing with me for three months, went away on Wednesday night last without any cause, taking with her Tie-Com, my servant. I will not be Responsible for their actions or any debts contracted in my name. AH CHUNG, 102 Elizabeth-street, Hobart.
One final find for today is perhaps less exciting, but it does provide one more little clue about Tie Cum in Tasmania.
In October 1905, the complainant in a maintenance case, Emily Maria Deeks, stated that:
when in Hobart she was living in Harrington-street as the housekeeper of a Mr Lung [and going by the name of Mrs Lung]. There were also in the house Mr Bowring, Mr Spurling, and a Chinese woman.
We know that at the time of her arrest in 1903, Tie Cum was working as a domestic (according to her prisoner record) and also that she was publicly disowned by Ah Chung that same year. So it would make sense for her to be the ‘Chinese woman’ mentioned by Emily Maria Deeks as also residing in the house of Mr Lung, presumably working as a domestic. Again, there is nothing concrete here to say this was Tie Cum, but given the circumstances it is very possible.
AND ONE FURTHER UPDATE: Just to document the last piece of evidence I’ve found so far that is possibly about Tie Cum in Tasmania – a search in Trove Newspapers for ‘Ah Chung’ turned up the report of a fire at Ah Chung’s premises at 162 Elizbeth Street on 21 March 1898. The article noted that at Ah Chung’s house, ‘there were four Chinamen, a woman and a girl’. If this was the right Ah Chung (still to be confirmed), then could the girl be Tie Cum? Bear in mind that by this stage Chin Ah Chung and Kim Wing (later known as Lilian Ah Chung) had two young sons: Royden (born 1894) and Tasman (born 1896). It is also unlike the colonial press not to mention the race of the woman and girl if they too were Chinese.
It’s the Year of the Tiger, and today’s my birthday. Four of us in my little family are tigers, born 1962, 1974, 1998 and 2010 (I’ll leave you to guess which year I was born).
With birthday thoughts in mind, here are a three stories celebrating the long lives of some early Chinese Australians.
George Moo-hong of Young
Market gardener George Moo-hong of Young celebrated his 104th birthday on 29 July 1954. He was born in around 1850 and arrived in Australia from China at the age of 25 (c.1875). In 1954 it was reported that he’d been living in the Young area for about 70 years.
Tasmanian patriarch James Chung Gon celebrated his 96th birthday on 23 July 1950; he was born c.1854. Chung Gon had started his life in Australia almost 70 years earlier, working as a tin miner then orchardist. He married in China, but his wife joined him in Tasmania and the couple had 11 children. The Tasmanian press noted the family’s celebration of the occasion, as it had each year since his 90th birthday.
Hobart resident Willie Chung Sing celebrated his 82nd birthday in late December 1945. Born in around 1863, he arrived in Tasmania as a young man in 1887, working for Ah Ham & Co. in Hobart, then running his own businesses in Launceston and Wellington (New Zealand), then once again returning to work as general manager at Ah Ham & Co. for 36 years. He made regular trips back to China, where his wife and children remained, and in 1946 was heading back again to rejoin his family.
