Inquest papers are held at Public Record Office Victoria in an uninterrupted series from 1840 to the present day.¹² An inquest file contains a statement of the verdict and details of the conduct of the inquiry, including witnesses' depositions and sometimes a police report. Under the Coroners Act 1865, the Coroner had jurisdiction to inquire into violent or unexpected deaths or deaths from illness where no doctor had been in attendance.¹³ In the nineteenth century the civic function of the inquest was reinforced by the intimate involvement of the community.¹⁴ It was held in a public place, often a hotel, close to the scene of the death. The Coroner gathered together a jury of twelve eligible men whose duty was to determine the cause of death and whether it had been the result of crime.¹⁵ The Chinese, not being 'natural born subjects' of the Queen were not eligible to serve as jurors. The Coroner was instructed to record the witnesses' evidence as first person narrative, their 'very words'. Though questions asked at the inquest shaped the responses of the witnesses, these questions were omitted from the reports. In Chinese cases the evidence is recorded through the filter of the Chinese interpreter. Inquests were normally held on the day of death or the day succeeding death; however, sometimes the absence of the Chinese interpreter necessitated a delay of proceedings. Despite these drawbacks, the researcher gains valuable insight into the experiences of ordinary men and women from the inquest files.

Bendigo, in Central Victoria, was one of several centres of Chinese migration into Victoria in the nineteenth century. The Chinese came to join the search for gold, first arriving in large numbers in Bendigo in 1854, two years after the opening of the goldfield, when already the enormous potential of the alluvial field seemed to be waning. The years from 1855 to 1857 were years of peak migration to Bendigo, a time when Chinese miners formed from twenty-five to thirty-five per cent of the male population of around 17,000.¹⁶ When quartz mining began to succeed alluvial mining by 1860 and capital was needed to extract the gold, many European miners gave up their freedom to work for capitalists in large-scale mining operations. Chinese miners continued to occupy themselves in the overworked alluvial gullies, their numbers declining as their fortunes declined.¹⁷ Some were fortunate to return to their homeland, generally one of the four See Yap counties of Guangdong Province in South-East China, and some migrated to other states or countries, but many lived, worked, died and were buried in Bendigo.¹⁸

For the years 1854 to 1865, official records of ninety-seven inquests conducted into deaths of Chinese in the Bendigo district survive. All concern adult males, confirming the statistical records of the goldfields that the Chinese population was almost universally male.¹⁹ Using inquest and cemetery records, I have been able to ascertain the ages of sixty-two of the deceased, which range from eighteen to seventy-one, but three quarters of those who died were between twenty-one and forty years of age.²⁰ The average age of death was thirty-three years, while, like Europeans, the average age of those dying from illness was thirty-seven.²¹ Unfortunately, records were not kept consistently enough to provide further personal information, but we do know that some men had wives and children in China.²² Temporary separation of families was commonplace for Chinese from Guangdong Province. Migration of male workers to many South-East Asian countries was a response to the problems caused by a population explosion, poor seasons and civil war, in conjunction with the news of gold rushes in distant countries.²³

Figure 3 - Ages of Deceased Chinese Examined by Coroner's Inquest in Bendigo 1854-65.
Graph by Valerie Lovejoy based on information from PROV, VPRS24/P0, Inquest Deposition Files

The overwhelming majority, (seventy-one per cent), of the deceased were miners or puddlers,²⁴ but eleven per cent were unable to work because of illness. The occupations of ten per cent were unknown or unstated in the records. The numbers of occupations represented in the inquest statistics for these years is extremely limited, which reflects the reason for the large-scale Chinese migration to Victoria in the 1850s.²⁵ Mining was an extremely hazardous occupation. Mining accidents accounted for thirty-two per cent of the deaths investigated by inquest in this period while only fifty per cent died from ill health.²⁶

Figure 4 - Occupations of Deceased Chinese Examined by Coroner's Inquest in Bendigo 1854-65.
Graph by Valerie Lovejoy based on information from PROV, VPRS 24/P0, Inquest Deposition Files

Of course Chinese deaths from mining accidents were far more likely to be subject to inquest than deaths from ill health. For example, of the 110 adult male deaths investigated by inquest in the Bendigo district in 1857, the sixteen Chinese (fifteen per cent) were significantly under-represented.²⁷ (In December 1857 the Chinese made up twenty-eight per cent of the male population of 16,660 on the Bendigo goldfields.²⁸) Of the forty-one mining deaths investigated, however, a roughly proportional eleven (twenty-seven per cent) were Chinese. Mining accidents in that year accounted for a staggering sixty-eight per cent of Chinese deaths investigated by inquest in comparison with forty-four per cent of European male deaths.²⁹ Even so, in 1857 the mortality rate from mining accidents for both Chinese and Europeans was less than one per cent of the male population.³⁰

Working Conditions
Deaths from mining accidents reflected the dangerous working conditions. Falls of earth from collapsing embankments were by far the most frequent mining accident. (Twenty-six of thirty-one deaths from mining accidents were caused by earth falls.) Like Europeans, the Chinese usually worked their alluvial claims in pairs, most commonly mining in shallow shafts of about ten to twelve feet in depth. While one partner was occupied driving or digging out the dirt, the other remained at the top of the hole, pulling up the washing stuff and taking it to the nearest water to wash out the gold. The partner on top was usually the lucky one. Frequently he would observe a threatening collapse of earth and warn his mate, but usually the warning came too late to save the miner beneath. In a typical case, Nam Quin was driving in his twelve foot deep hole on 20 September 1856 while his mate Wye Bing remained on top pulling up washing stuff.³¹ Wye Bing saw earth falling from the side of the shaft and cried out to warn Nam Quin, sending down a rope. Before Nam Quin could grasp it another earth fall buried him. Wye Bing estimated that about three quarters of a ton of earth had fallen on his mate. It took one and a half hours to dig Nam Quin out of the hole, by which time he had been suffocated by the earth fall.³²

Even if a miner did not suffocate immediately, the time it took to dig out the victim meant that death was almost certain. If a miner survived the accident he was likely to die from injuries to his spine that left him paralysed. Of the twenty-six deaths resulting from falls of earth between 1854 and 1865, six survived the initial accident but died within a few days. In the case of Min Yok, who was admitted to the Bendigo Hospital in January 1861 after an earth fall, Dr Atkinson, the superintendent, found that he had fractured his spine so badly there was no hope of recovery. Min Yok lived for eleven days after the accident.³³