1883: Not Afraid: Mah Poo Hanged in Adelaide for the Murder of Tommy Ah Fook
Tommy Ah Fook ran a shop on Adelaide's Hindley Street, where his cook, Mah Poo, lived alongside two other employees. Last seen locking up after midnight, Ah Fook vanished, and when nightmen cleaning out his cesspit two days later found his body crammed inside, dead from a gunshot to the head, suspicion fell straight onto the cook. Mah Poo had turned up for work the next morning in his best clothes, wearing his dead employer's scarf pin, and carrying bundles of laundry he could never account for; he had also bought a revolver and ammunition weeks earlier, and bank staff later traced Ah Fook's missing takings to a deposit made under a false name.
The case against him was entirely circumstantial but convincing. After five days of testimony a jury took only twelve minutes to convict him, and he was sentenced to hang in Adelaide. He was executed there on 10 November 1883, walking to the scaffold calmly and climbing its steps unaided.
Days before his death Mah Poo signed a full confession admitting he alone shot Ah Fook after enduring constant abuse from him, and told his gaolers without a trace of fear, "Me shoot Tommy, he die; you hang me, me die; me no 'fraid."
