1. Sam Poo was a Chinese bushranger in Australia who was active in New South Wales during early 1865.
28 Facts About Sam Poo
1. 2.
On 3 February 1865, Sam Poo killed Senior Constable John Ward, who was looking for him.
3.
Sam Poo was sentenced to death and he was executed by hanging on 19 December 1865.
4.
Sam Poo was fictionalised in David Martin's novel The Hero of Too and since has been a theme of a circus show, a children's novel and a planned feature film.
5.
Sam Poo was not his real name, as a Chinese equivalent for it does not exist.
6.
Sam Poo was a Chinese emigrant to Australia during the Gold Rush.
7.
Sam Poo worked as a "hatter" at Talbragar River between present-day Dunedoo and Mudgee in New South Wales.
8.
Sam Poo began practising pidgin-English, horse riding and shooting, using a tree stump as his target.
9.
Sam Poo's victims were mostly Chinese but he targeted white settlers.
10.
Several days prior to the killing of John Ward, Sam Poo allegedly threatened a Mudgee woman, Elizabeth Golding, after speaking with her daughter.
11.
On 2 February 1865, Sam Poo robbed a hut of a shepherd who was in the employment of farmer James Plunkett and later that day he threatened to shoot two stockmen if they didn't inform him of the topography of the locality.
12.
Sam Poo was informed by two men that an armed Chinese man was robbing travellers at a locality known as Barney's Reef.
13.
Sam Poo was at a gully 10 miles from Cobbora when he was found by constables M'Mahon and Burns.
14.
Sam Poo fired at them and escaped to the scrub, where two policemen lost him.
15.
When Sam Poo raised himself from the ground and tried to fire again, Burns hit him with the butt-end of his rifle, fracturing Sam Poo's skull and smashing the stock to pieces.
16.
Crown prosecutor Edward Butler presented the case, the policemen involved in Sam Poo's capture were heard as witnesses and the victim Hughes was heard.
17.
Sam Poo, being very weak and emaciated, was remanded for sentence.
18.
Sam Poo was tried for the murder of John Ward on 10 October 1865 at Bathurst Court House.
19.
Sam Poo was charged with wilful murder and he was defended by court-appointed barrister, Joseph Innes, who pleaded him not guilty.
20.
Sam Poo took no part in proceedings as he had little or no understanding of what was going on; according to The Sydney Mail, "ever since his apprehension [Sam Poo] has been quite weak in intellect".
21.
Macklin concludes that what happened to Sam Poo was "legal lynching".
22.
On 19 December 1865, Sam Poo was hanged at the Bathurst Gaol.
23.
Sam Poo was then led to the gallows without speaking a word or raising his head.
24.
Travers omits Sam Poo's alleged threat to Elizabeth Golding and her daughter.
25.
Sam Poo was raised from obscurity when he was fictionalised as Lam Yut Soon in David Martin's novel The Hero of Too.
26.
Sam Poo's life was dramatised for radio in The Shadow of Sam Poo and episodes of Outlawry Under the Gums.
27.
Since then, Circus Oz created a show about Poo in 1993, Christopher Stitt wrote a children's novel about Poo in 2003, and in 2014 Robert Macklin and Chinese-born film producer Cindy Jia Li teamed up to create Aodaliya Gold, a movie about Poo and in the same year the trailer for the movie was released.
28.
Sam Poo appears in two paintings by Mudgee artist, Michael Bourke in an exhibition 'A Brief History of Mudgee' held at Mudgee Arts Precinct in April 2022.