DescriptionA shop in Fremantle variously described as a Merchant Shop and a Drapery.
Managed by Hee Kee and employed several Chinese men.
The business, advertised as 'Drapers and Grocers', was registered as a business on 31 May 1898. By this time it may have already been operating for several years.
In July 1915, Ah You was found dead in the shop. Ah You's peers rejected the theory of suicide and the presence of £1,000 of gold in the safe suggested that robbery was not the motive either. Ah You's peers remained convinced it was a case of murder and his death remained 'A Fremantle Mystery' as reported in the newspapers of the time. Hee Kee & Co. offered a reward of £400 for information that would lead to a conviction.
In May 1916, Hee Kee & Co. decided to ‘give up business as Drapers and Fancy Goodsmen, Hosiery, Millinery’ at ‘marvellously low prices…now that the War has caused High Prices’. The remainder of their stock was sold by public auction in June 1916.
The company may have kept on trading for another few years at least and possibly under the slightly different name of S and Y Hee Kee & Co. In 1918, Manager Dar Turn was charged with 21 counts of defrauding Customs Officers by presenting non-genuine or non-original invoices. He was fined £210 + costs and imprisoned until the fine was paid. (West Australian, 12 October 1918, p. 8)
Further research is required to ascertain if the company continued to function throughout the 1920s. In the late 1930s, in 1937, Hee Kee & Co. at 4 South Terrace was listed as a receiving point for donations of clothes as part of a campaign for the Perth Chinese Relief Committee's efforts to organise donations of clothes for those in need in China.
This photograph, taken around 1906, shows how South Terrace would have looked at the time Hee Kee & Co. was operating (source: State Library, 010117PD). Hee Kee & Co. is believed to have been located on the left hand side of the photograph.