The First High-Binders

I’ve been reading about San Francisco before the big earthquake of 1906, and one word that comes up a lot is “highbinder.”

Merriam-Webster defines that as “a professional killer operating in the Chinese quarter of an American city,” or alternatively “a corrupt politician.”

There were plenty of corrupt politicians in Gilded-Age San Francisco, but in the newspapers of the time and in histories since the term “highbinder” definitely meant a thug of Chinese extraction.

I wondered what the etymology of that term was. What were those men binding, and how high? Was is something to do with queues, or Chinese dress?

It turned out the answer lies in the early 1800s, and it has nothing to do with Chinese-American culture at all.

The term surfaced in New York City at the end of 1806. The Evening-Post of 26 December reported on a riot the evening before this way:

There has for some time existed in this city, in and about George and Charlotte-Streets, a desperate association of lawless and unprincipled vagabonds, calling themselves High-binders, and which, during the last winter, produced several riots, making the demolition of houses of ill-fame the ostensible object of their disorderly practices.

The Weekly Inspector of 27 December stated:

On Christmas Eve, a party of banditti, amounting, it is stated, to forty or fifty members of an association, calling themselves High-binders, assembled in front of St. Peter’s Church, in Barclay-street, expecting that the Catholic ritual would be performed with a degree of pomp and splendor, which has usually been omitted in this city. These ceremonies, however, not taking place, the High-binders manifested great displeasure, but were at length prevailed on to disperse.

I should clarify that these original High-binders wanted to jeer at and disrupt a high Catholic ceremony inside St. Peter’s Church (shown above), not to participate. They were a Protestant, probably nativist gang.

The High-binders’ actions on Christmas Eve provoked counterattacks by Irishmen the next day. Those fights escalated until a town watchmen was killed. Although the police arrested only Irishmen at first, the Republican Watch-Tower of 6 Jan 1807 (misdated 1806 by its printer) said, “It is shrewdly suspected that the murderer will yet be found among the ruffians denominated high binders.”

The Bowery Boys site tells the story of the Christmas Riot of 1806 here.

On 24 Jan 1807, the American Citizen, another New York paper, reported on the trials arising from that violence. Its editors did their best to sort out the sides. They also stated that the correct term was “hide-binders,” for men working in the leather trade.

Within just a few months the May 1807 Weekly Inspector published this item at the end of a column:

An American bull.—An American, speaking of the turbulent conduct of the “hide-binders,” observed that these low Irishmen were so used to being hung, that they could not live without it.

Just five months before the High-binders had burst onto the New York scene by besieging a Catholic church and then brawling with its Irish defenders. Now the term had become a pejorative label slapped onto “low Irishmen” since apparently only they could be thugs.

COMING UP: Spreading out of New York.