About the Episode
No one was surprised when there was a rough house at the “chop suey” restaurant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, around 1900. Fights, vandalism, commercial sex, and gambling were regular features of the restaurant, boarding house, and laundries that made up this city’s Chinatown. Find out more about the immigrant entrepreneurs who ran these businesses and the colorful customers who found adventure and refuge there.
Resource List
Chin, Gabriel and John Ormonde. “The War Against Chinese Restaurants.” Duke Law Journal, vol 67, no. 4 (January 2018), pp. 681-741
Lui, Mary Ting Yi. The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.
Credits
Written and narrated by M. Alison Kibler. Extra voices from Caitlin Bonner, Vinny Smaldone, Sara Smith, and Frances Taylor.
Research assistance from Hope Glidden.
Thanks to staff of LancasterHistory for their assistance with the Law and Order Society Papers. We are grateful for the financial support from Franklin & Marshall College.
Sound engineering by the Institute of the Mechanical Surround and Vincent Smaldone.
