The Barbary Coast - Chapters 3-4



Chapter 3. The Sydney Ducks 

The nucleus around which the Barbary Coast developed was the colony of 
Chileno harlots and thieves which clustered along the waterfront at 
Broadway and Pacific Street, and on the slopes of Telegraph Hill. To this 
whorish quarter naturally gravitated the human scum and riff-raff who, 
once the news of the discovery of gold had gained wide circulation, poured 
into San Francisco from the ports of the seven seas in ever-increasing 
numbers. There, in particular, gathered the ruffianly larrikins from the 
frontier towns of Australia, and the escaped convicts and ticket-of-leave 
men from the British penal settlements at Sydney, in New South Wales, and 
on the island of Tasmania, then called Van Diemen's Land. This wave of 
undesirable immigration, which to all intents and purposes was one hundred 
per cent criminal, began to wash against the shores of California about 
the middle of 1849, in direct and open violation of an old Mexican statute 
which forbade the entry into the territory of persons who had been 
convicted of crime in other countries. No effort was ever made to enforce 
this law. By the early autumn of 1849 the arrivals from Australia had 
become so numerous, and so thoroughly dominated the underworld, that the 
district in which they congregated began to be known as Sydney-Town, and 
it was so called for some ten years. It was this area that later became 
notorious throughout the world as the Barbary Coast, although the latter 
designation did not come into general use until the middle eighteen-
sixties. 

The villainous inhabitants of Sydney-Town were popularly called Sydney 
Ducks or Sydney Coves, but more often the former. It was a common saying 
in early San Francisco, whenever a particularly atrocious crime was 
committed, that "the Sydney Ducks are cackling in the pond." 
Unquestionably, these foreign felons gave San Francisco's underworld its 
initial flavor; they were pioneers in the viciousness and depravity for 
which the Barbary Coast became famous, and the echo of their unholy 
cackling was not stilled for more than half a century. By the time they 
began swarming into the city in force, many of the tents and shanties of 
the Chilenos had been replaced by flimsy wooden and brick buildings, 
wherein the more commercial spirits among the Sydney Ducks opened lodging-
houses, dance-halls, groggeries, and taverns. Their public houses bore 
such fanciful and typically English and Scotch names as the Magpie, the 
Bobby Burns, the Tam O'Shanter, the Noggin of Ale, the Hilo Johnny, the 
Bird-in-Hand, the Bay of Biscay, and the Jolly Waterman, but all were 
described by a contemporary journalist as "hives of dronish criminals, 
shabby little dens with rough, hangdog fellows hanging about the 
doorways." Drunkenness, robbery, and all manner of strife and lewdness 
went on in these places. Most of them had harlots regularly attached to 
the establishment, and these women either sold their favors for a pinch or 
two of gold dust, or engaged in immoral and peculiar exhibitions, 
admission to which ranged from fifty cents to five dollars. He was a 
fortunate man who could visit a resort in Sydney-Town and escape without 
being slugged and robbed. Said the San Francisco Herald: 

"There are certain spots in our city, infested by the most abandoned men 
and women, that have acquired a reputation little better than the Five 
Points of New York or St. Giles of London. The upper part of Pacific 
Street, after dark, is crowded by thieves, gamblers, low women, drunken 
sailors, and similar characters, who resort to the groggeries that line 
the street, and there spend the night in the most hideous orgies. Every 
grog shop is provided with a fiddle, from which some half-drunken creature 
tortures execrable sounds, called by way of compliment, music. Shortly 
after dark the dancing commences, and is kept up unceasingly to the sound 
of the fiddle, until broke up by a row or the exhaustion of those engaged 
in it. These ruffian resorts are the hot beds of drunkenness, and the 
scenes of unnumbered crimes. Unsuspecting sailors and miners are entrapped 
by the dexterous thieves and swindlers that are always on the lookout, 
into these dens, where they are filled with liquor--drugged if necessary, 
until insensibility coming upon them, they fall an easy victim to their 
tempters. In this way many robberies are committed, which are not brought 
to light through shame on the part of the victim. When the habitues of 
this quarter have reason to believe a man has money, they follow him up 
for days, and employ every device to get him into their clutches. . . .
These dance-groggeries are outrageous nuisances and nurseries of crime. . 
. ." 

Perhaps the lowest of all the Sydney-Town dives were the Boar's Head, 
where the principal attraction was a sexual exhibition in which a woman 
and a boar participated; the Goat and Compass and the Golden Rule, both 
owned by one Hell Haggerty, a ticket-of-leave man from Sydney; and the 
Fierce Grizzly, so called because a live female bear was kept chained 
beside the door. The Goat and Compass was the particular hang-out of a 
Sydney-Town character known as Dirty Tom McAlear, who for a few cents 
would eat or drink any sort of refuse offered to him. When finally 
arrested in 1852 for "making a beast of himself," McAlear testified that 
he had been drunk for at least seven years and had not bathed for so long 
that he had no memory of his last ablution. He thought, however, that it 
was about fifteen years before, in England. The Fierce Grizzly was 
especially noted for various exhibitions in which the bear and a man took 
part, and for the nectar-like quality of its milk punches, which were 
heavily laced with gin or brandy, and frequently with knock-out drops as 
well. Once when a San Francisco preacher was making a shocked survey of 
the district, and, of course, seeing all the sights in order to obtain 
material for future sermons, he was taken into the Fierce Grizzly and 
given a milk punch which had been copiously dosed with gin. 

"What do you call that?" he asked, smacking his reverend lips. 
"Just milk." 
"Ah!" said the preacher. "What a glorious cow!" 

Little or no effort was made to check the rapidly increasing boldness of 
the denizens of Sydney-Town or to regulate the dives in which they drank, 
robbed, and caroused and in which innumerable criminals found refuge. 
During the early period of the gold rush government in San Francisco, 
particularly those phases of it that had to do with law enforcement and 
the administration of justice, was in the same chaotic condition that 
characterized life in general. The transition from the Mexican to the 
American systems of municipal management was not accomplished for more 
than three years after California had become American territory, partly 
because the military authorities insisted upon administering civil 
affairs, and partly because the men who would have ordinarily been the 
first to demand a stable rule were too busy making fortunes to bother with 
such comparatively trivial matters. Theoretically the business of the 
municipality was in the hands of the Ayuntamiento, or Town Council, but 
actually during this period of change the public treasury belonged to the 
man who could oftenest plunge his hands into it. Consequently it was soon 
looted by the politicians, who not only bankrupted San Francisco but 
saddled the town with a debt of almost two million dollars, most of which 
was afterwards repudiated. 

The only official with power to hold court and try either civil or 
criminal cases was the First Alcalde, whose duties were roughly similar to 
those of the American mayor. But too often this dignitary was of the type 
of an early Alcalde named Meade, who knew little law, but who had a 
violent antipathy toward Mexicans and cigarette-smokers. To admit being 
either or both was tantamount to conviction in his court. Once when a 
Mexican was arraigned before him charged with stealing a horse, he asked 
but two questions: 

"Do you smoke cigarettes?" 
"Si, señor." 
"Do you blow the smoke through your nose? "' 
"Si, señor." 
"Then I find you guilty as charged, and may God have mercy on your soul! 
Constable, take this fellow out and shoot him! He stole the horse sure 
enough!" 

The lawyers who practiced in these early courts were for the most part on 
the same intellectual plane as Alcalde Meade. One of the best-known and 
most successful was Ben Moors. He knew no law whatever, but he had 
memorized three speeches by John Randolph and one by Daniel Webster. 
Regardless of the nature of the case upon which he chanced to be engaged, 
he delivered one or another with magnificent gestures and impressive 
oratorical effects. His chief claim to fame in California, however, 
probably lies in the fact that he once publicly slapped United States 
Senator David C. Broderick. Moors was arrested for this heinous offense 
and in court described himself as "a gentleman of elegant leisure." 

The first attempt to bring order out of the chaos into which San Francisco 
had fallen was made by John W. Geary, later the first Mayor under the 
American system, who was chosen First Alcalde in August 1849, at an 
election ordered by the military authorities. Geary immediately appeared 
before the Ayuntamiento and urged the Councillors to take immediate steps 
for the protection of life and property. "You are now without a single 
requisite," he told them, "for the promotion of prosperity or for the 
maintenance of order." 

Stirred by Geary's appeal, and likewise fearful that the people would 
again take matters into their own hands as they had done in the affair of 
the Hounds only a month before, the Ayuntamiento appropriated sufficient 
money to purchase the brig Euphemia, which had been abandoned in the Bay 
when its crew deserted and went to the mines. For several years the vessel 
was used as a prison. It was San Francisco's first jail--and was about as 
useful for the purpose as a chicken-coop would have been. The Ayuntamiento 
also appointed the town's first peace officers--Colonel John E. Townes as 
Sheriff; and Malachi Fallon, who had been Warden of the Tombs, a Tammany 
politician, and a saloon-keeper in New York, as City Marshal. Not long 
afterwards a few policemen were employed to assist Colonel Townes and 
Fallon, and about a year later an ordinance was enacted requiring the 
dives and dance-halls of Sydney-Town to close at midnight. 

But these were futile gestures. They made no difference in the conduct of 
the criminal element; nor did Geary, an able and upright man, succeed in 
checking the activities of the thievish politicians. The latter continued 
to loot the city treasury, while Sydney-Town remained a veritable cesspool 
of corruption. According to the authors of The Annals of San Francisco, 
"it was dangerous in the highest degree for a single person to venture 
within its bounds. Even the police hardly dared enter there; and if they 
attempted to apprehend some known individuals, it was always in a 
numerous, strongly-armed company. The lawless inhabitants of the place 
united to save their luckless brothers, and generally managed to drive the 
assailant away."From this sink of sin and bawdy carousal issued murderers, 
sneak-thieves, footpads, burglars, harlots, arsonites, and swindlers of 
every variety and degree of skill, who plied their vocations throughout 
San Francisco without let or hindrance. They were protected, and 
frequently incited, by greedy and unscrupulous city officials and 
politicians. During the half-dozen years that followed Alcalde Geary's 
first attempt to form a reputable municipal government, an average of 
almost two murders a day were committed in San Francisco--and at no time 
in that period did the city have a population of more than forty thousand. 
Robberies, assaults, and other crimes were so numerous that no effort was 
ever made to determine even their approximate number. Six times in less 
than two years--from December 24, 1849 to June 22, 1951--the town was 
devastated by great fires, each of which almost wiped it out of existence. 
Investigations showed clearly that at least four of the conflagrations had 
been started by gangs of fire-bugs led by two former convicts from 
Australia--Jack Edwards and Ben Lewis. But when these precious knaves were 
at length, after much difficulty and delay, brought to trial, they were 
promptly freed by venal judges under the sway of crooked politicians. Says 
the Annals: 

"When the different fires took place. . .bands of plunderers issued from 
this great haunt of dissipation, to help themselves to whatever money or 
valuables lay in their way, or which they could possibly secure. With 
these they retreated to their dens, and defied detection or apprehension. 
Many of these fires were believed to have been raised by incendiaries, 
solely for the opportunity which they afforded for plundering. Persons 
were repeatedly seen in the act of kindling loose inflammable material in 
out-houses and secret places; while the subsequent confessions of 
convicted criminals left no doubt of the fact, that not only had frequent 
attempts been made to fire the city, but that some of these had 
unfortunately been successful. Fire, however, was only one means of 
attaining their ends. The most daring burglaries were committed, and 
houses and persons rifled of their valuables. Where resistance was made, 
the bowie-knife or the revolver settled matters, and left the robber 
unmolested. Midnight assaults, ending in murder, were common. And not only 
were these deeds perpetrated under the shade of night; but even in 
daylight, in the highways and by-ways of the country, in the streets of 
the town, in crowded bars, gambling saloons and lodging houses, crimes of 
an equally glaring character were of constant occurrence. People at that 
period generally carried during all hours, and wherever they happened to 
be, loaded firearms about their persons; but these weapons availed nothing 
against the sudden stroke of the 'slung shot,' the plunge and rip of the 
knife, or the secret aiming of the pistol. No decent man was in safety to 
walk the streets after dark; while at all hours, both of night and day, 
his property was jeopardized by incendiarism and burglary. 

"All this while, the law, whose supposed 'majesty' is so awful in other 
countries, was here only a matter for ridicule. The police were few in 
number, and poorly as well as irregularly paid. Some of them were in 
league with the criminals themselves, and assisted these at all times to 
elude justice. Subsequent confessions of criminals on the eve of 
execution, implicated a considerable number of people in various high and 
low departments of the executive. Bail was readily accepted in the most 
serious cases, where the security tendered was absolutely worthless; and 
where, whenever necessary, both principal and cautioner quietly 
disappeared. The prisons likewise were small and insecure; and though 
filled to overflowing, could no longer contain the crowds of apprehended 
offenders. When these were ultimately brought to trial, seldom could a 
conviction be obtained. From technical errors on the part of the 
prosecutors, laws ill understood and worse applied, false swearing of the 
witnesses for the prisoners, absence often of the chief evidence for the 
prosecution, dishonesty of jurors, incapacity, weakness, or venality of 
the judge, and from many other causes, the cases generally broke down and 
the prisoners were freed. Not one criminal had yet been executed. Yet it 
was notorious, that, at this period, at least one hundred murders had been 
committed within the space of a few months; while innumerable were the 
instances of arson, and of theft, robbery, burglary, and assault with 
intent to kill. It was evident that the offenders defied and laughed at 
all the puny efforts of the authorities to control them. The tedious 
processes of legal tribunals had no terrors for them."(*)

(* The Annals of San Francisco, pages 566-7. It is interesting to note how 
aptly this passage describes present-day conditions in many American 
cities.) 

It was this condition of affairs, the nearest approach to criminal anarchy 
that an American city has yet experienced, that ultimately brought about 
the formation of the first Vigilance Committee. About four months before 
the actual organization of this great popular tribunal, however, San 
Francisco was thrown into such a furor by a particularly brutal assault 
upon a respected storekeeper that an excited crowd gathered in Portsmouth 
Square, and only an unexpected display of energy by the municipal 
authorities prevented the immediate application of lynch law. Out of this 
assault grew one of the most amazing cases of mistaken identity in the 
annals of American crime. The principals were Thomas Berdue, an itinerant 
gambler, who had operated in a small way in the gold-fields and who twice 
narrowly escaped hanging for crimes he hadn't committed; and James Stuart, 
better known as English Jim, a ticket-of-leave convict from Australia, and 
one of the most infamous of the Sydney Ducks. Stuart was deported from 
England at the age of sixteen, following his conviction of forgery, and 
served about twelve years in the British penal colony at Sydney. He 
received a ticket-of-leave some time during the late eighteen-forties and 
made his way to New York, where he became associated with a famous London 
burglar and sharper called Bristol Bill, whose father had been a member of 
the British Parliament and who had himself escaped from Sydney after 
serving a fourteen-year sentence.(*) For several years these accomplished 
scoundrels operated successfully in Eastern cities, especially in Boston 
and New York, but eventually detectives got close upon their trail. In 
search of new fields for their activities, they went to Vermont in the 
late autumn of 1849. There, within a few weeks, they robbed half a dozen 
banks, floated a large quantity of counterfeit money, and swindled a score 
of merchants and other business men. The bucolic police, however, 
succeeded where their more sophisticated brethren had failed. They 
captured Bristol Bill, convicted him of burglary, counterfeiting, and 
other crimes, and sent him to state's prison for fourteen years. English 
Jim escaped their clutches and came to San Francisco, where he at once 
became one of the chief ornaments of Sydney-Town. This was early in 1850, 
and throughout the next year English Jim pursued an extraordinary career 
of crime, not only in San Francisco, but in the gold-fields and other 
parts of the state as well--during these comparatively few months he is 
said to have committed or assisted in more murders and burglaries than any 
other man in the California of his time. In December 1850 he was arrested 
in Sacramento for killing Sheriff Moore of Marysville and stealing four 
thousand dollars from the Sheriff's home, but escaped after a few days' 
incarceration. 

(* Bristol Bill's real name was never known in this country. The London 
police knew it, but refused to divulge the information to the American 
authorities because of the prominence of the burglar's family.)

At eight o'clock in the evening of February 19, 1851 two men entered the 
store of Jansen, Bond & Company, in Montgomery Street, knocked J. C. 
Jansen, senior member of the firm, unconscious with a slung shot, and fled 
with two thousand dollars in gold coin, which they had taken from the 
till. Next day the San Francisco police arrested Thomas Berdue, believing 
him to be James Stuart, and lodged him in the jail to await transportation 
to Marysville and trial there for the murder of Sheriff Moore. A man named 
Windred, found in Berdue's company, was also arrested, on suspicion. 
Berdue was recognized as English Jim by half a dozen men who had known 
Stuart well, and was also positively identified by Jansen as one of the 
two men who had assaulted him. As the other, Jansen identified Windred, 
though not so certainly. Berdue protested his innocence and attempted to 
prove that he was not Stuart, but his protestations and evidence were 
alike in vain against the overwhelming physical similarity between himself 
and the Australian convict. In weight, height, color of eyes and hair, 
shape of feature, and in every other general characteristic, the two men 
were identical. But the resemblance went even further. The notorious 
Sydney Duck was known to have a small scar over his left eye. So did 
Berdue. In English Jim's left ear was a slit where he had been cut by a 
knife. Such a slit was found also in Berdue's left ear. English Jim's left 
forefinger had been amputated at the first joint. Berdue had suffered a 
precisely similar injury. So far as was ever known, Berdue and English Jim 
were not related. Nor did they ever so much as see each other. 

The examination of Berdue and Windred was begun in the City Hall by the 
authorities on Saturday, February 22, and within a few hours the building 
was surrounded by a restless crowd of more than five thousand men. The 
authors of The Annals of San Francisco, who were present, described the 
gathering as "not a mob, but the people, in the highest sense of the term. 
They wanted only a leader to advise and guide them to any undertaking that 
promised relief from the awful state of social terror and danger to which 
they were reduced." Because of the positive identification of the 
prisoners by Jansen, there was scarcely anyone in San Francisco who 
doubted their guilt. There was, also, scarcely anyone who was not 
convinced that the two men would eventually escape punishment through the 
connivance of politicians and crooked officials. From the moment the crowd 
started to assemble, the situation possessed very dangerous possibilities, 
which were made more acute by the circulation of several thousand copies 
of this handbill:

CITIZENS OF SAN FRANCISCO.
The series of murders and robberies that have been committed in this city, 
seems to leave us entirely in a state of anarchy. "When thieves are left 
without control to rob and kill, then doth the honest traveller fear each 
bush a thief." Law, it appears, is but a non-entity to be scoffed at; 
redress can be had for aggression but through the never failing remedy so 
admirably laid down in the code of Judge Lynch. Not that we should admire 
this process for redress, but that it seems to be inevitably necessary. 

Are we to be robbed and assassinated in our domiciles, and the law to let 
our aggressors perambulate the streets because they have furnished straw 
bail? If so, "let each man be his own executioner." "Fie upon your laws." 
They have no force. 

All those who would rid our city of its robbers and murderers will 
assemble on Sunday at two o'clock on the plaza.
 
This inflammatory document was unsigned, but it is believed to have been 
the work of Samuel Brannan, who was always willing and ready to hang every 
desperado who showed his head. Despite its anonymity, it was immediately 
effective. A great shout of "Now's the time!" arose from the outskirts of 
the crowd, and several hundred men rushed into the court-room, where the 
prisoners were being questioned by the police. They attempted to drag 
Berdue and Windred into the street, but were repulsed by the members of 
the Washington Guard, a volunteer military organization, which had been 
mustered by the Mayor at the first sign of trouble and had been stationed 
in an adjoining room. While the Guardsmen cleared City Hall of the mob, 
Berdue and Windred were rushed into the basement of the building and 
locked in cells. Although the excitement continued, no further attempt was 
made that day to lynch the prisoners, and about the middle of the 
afternoon the crowd dispersed. It began to assemble again at dusk, and 
after several speeches by prominent citizens a committee of fourteen men 
was appointed to prevent the release of the two men on nominal bail--the 
usual procedure in such cases--and an additional patrol of twenty men was 
chosen to guard them during the night. Several hours later the Committee 
of Fourteen met to discuss the situation and determine how best to assure 
a proper trial. The feeling of the town in general was epitomized by 
Samuel Brannan in a brief speech, which he made in response to a 
suggestion that a jury of prominent men be impaneled to try the prisoners. 
Said Brannan: 

"I am very much surprised to hear people talk about grand juries, or 
recorders, or mayors. I'm tired of such talk. These men are murderers, I 
say, as well as thieves. I know it, and will die or see them hung by the 
neck. I'm opposed to any farce in this business. We had enough of that 
eighteen months ago, when we allowed ourselves to be the tools of these 
judges.(*). . .We are the Mayor and the recorder, the hangman and the 
laws. The law and the courts never yet hung a man in California, and every 
morning we are reading fresh accounts of murders and robberies. I want no 
technicalities. Such things are devised to shield the guilty." 

(* Brannan referred to the affair of the Hounds, in July 1849. In his The 
Beginnings of San Francisco Zoeth Skinner Eldredge says that "in ridding 
San Francisco of the thieves, gamblers and desperadoes that infested it 
none were more active, outspoken and fearless than Brannan; and he lashed 
the malefactors and their official supporters with a vigor of vituperation 
that has rarely been equalled.")

Brannan urged the immediate lynching of both Berdue and Windred, but the 
other members of the committee were unwilling to act so precipitously, and 
they finally adjourned without preparing a definite program. Next 
afternoon between eight thousand and nine thousand men gathered in 
Portsmouth Square, and at the suggestion of William T. Coleman, a leader 
in both the Vigilance movements, another committee was named to consider 
the matter and recommend a course of action, subject to the approval of 
the mass meeting. This committee advised an immediate trial, and 
accordingly the hearing of evidence was begun at once in the Recorder's 
room of City Hall, before a judge and jury chosen from among the town's 
leading citizens. About dusk the jury retired to find a verdict, but at 
midnight reported that an agreement was apparently impossible. At that 
time the jurors stood nine for conviction, and three doubtful, but 
unwilling to acquit. Cries of "Hang them anyhow! The majority rules!" 
burst from the disappointed crowd, and it was with great difficulty that 
Coleman and others prevented an immediate assault upon the jail. Soon 
afterwards the main body of the crowd dispersed, although hundreds of 
excited men remained in Portsmouth Square throughout the night, and 
several times small bands of men tried to storm the jail and capture the 
prisoners. All such attempts were repulsed by a police force of two 
hundred and fifty men, who had been sworn in as special officers by Mayor 
John W. Geary. They guarded the building for several days. 

The politicians and lawyers who ordinarily would probably have procured 
the immediate release of Berdue and Windred on small bail were apparently 
frightened by the temper of the people, and the two men remained in jail 
for a week. They were then tried according to due process of law, found 
guilty of assaulting and robbing Jansen, and each sentenced to fourteen 
years' imprisonment, the maximum penalty under the statutes. Soon 
afterwards Windred escaped by cutting a hole in the floor of his cell, and 
he was never again seen in San Francisco. Little effort was ever made to 
find him, for both the authorities and the Vigilantes soon learned that he 
had nothing whatever to do with the crime of which he had been accused. 
Berdue was sent to Marysville, again identified as English Jim, and 
convicted of the murder of Sheriff Moore. He was sentenced to be hanged, 
but fortunately for him the execution was postponed for several months. 

* * * *

Even English Jim's followers among the Sydney Ducks were convinced that 
Berdue was their leader, and it soon became common talk among the dives of 
Sydney-Town that a suitable gesture of defiance would be made in revenge 
for the popular demonstration against their hero. Four of San Francisco's 
great fires had already occurred--on December 24, 1849; May 4, 1850; June 
14, 1850; and September 17, 1850. As the anniversary of the second fire 
approached in 1851, the city was filled with rumors, which clearly 
emanated from Sydney-Town, that it would be marked by an even more 
extensive conflagration, and several notorious Sydney Ducks openly boasted 
that they intended to destroy the town. Every possible precaution was 
taken by merchants and householders, but in vain. A few minutes before 
eleven o'clock on the night of May 4, 1851 a man recognized as an habitué 
of Sydney-Town was seen running from a paintshop on the southern side of 
Portsmouth Square, and a moment later the building burst into flames. At 
almost the same instant other fires started at various points in the 
downtown business district. Within ten hours the flames had consumed two 
thousand buildings, occupying twenty blocks and covering an area three-
fourths of a mile north and south and one-third of a mile east and west. 
Many ships which had been discharging or loading cargo were endangered, 
but gangs of volunteer firemen demolished the wharves and created a gap 
which the flames could not cross. There was, naturally, a shortage of 
water, and any sort of liquid was used that might serve to quench the 
fire. A large warehouse in Commercial Street, occupied by the firm of 
DeWitt & Harrison, was saved by the use of vinegar, eighty thousand 
gallons of which were splashed against the board walls or poured upon the 
shingle roof. 

While the fire raged, bands of plunderers swarmed out of Sydney-Town and 
reaped a rich harvest, carrying great quantities of valuable property into 
their dens. Several looters were shot by enraged citizens, and at least 
one innocent man was killed--a sailor who was fired upon as he picked up a 
burning brand with which to light his pipe. As on the previous occasions 
when San Francisco was well-nigh destroyed by fire, the incendiaries had 
chosen a night on which the wind blew from the east and the north. The 
flames were thus carried away from Sydney-Town, and that vicious quarter 
was almost the only section of the city left intact by the conflagration. 
Three-fourths of San Francisco lay in ruins when the fire finally burned 
itself out, but the task of rebuilding was begun with characteristic 
energy and dispatch. Within ten days the wreckage had been cleared away 
and three hundred buildings erected, while hundreds more were under 
construction. By June 1 business and life in general were proceeding 
almost as usual. 

The fire provided sufficient proof that the demonstration of February had 
neither terrorized the denizens of Sydney-Town nor appreciably checked 
their activities; they became, indeed, even bolder during the period of 
reconstruction, and murders and robberies were of nightly occurrence. 
Determined to find a remedy for a situation that instead of showing 
improvement was rapidly becoming unbearable, some two hundred prominent 
citizens held a secret meeting early in June 1851,  in a building at 
Battery and Pine streets, owned by Samuel Brannan. After many hours of 
discussion they formed the first Vigilance Committee. The following 
extracts from the committee's constitution sufficiently summarize its 
avowed aims: 

"WHEREAS, it has become apparent to the citizens of San Francisco, that 
there is no security for life and property, either under the regulations 
of society as it at present exists, or under the law as now administered: 

"THEREFORE, the citizens, whose names are hereunto attached, do unite 
themselves into an association for the maintenance of the peace and good 
order of society, and the preservation of the lives and property of the 
citizens of San Francisco, and do bind themselves, each unto the other, to 
do and perform every lawful act for the maintenance of law and order, and 
to sustain the laws when faithfully and properly administered; but we are 
determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary or assassin, shall escape 
punishment, either by the quibbles of the law, the insecurity of prisons, 
the carelessness or corruption of the police, or a laxity of those who 
pretend to administer justice. And to secure the objects of this 
association we do hereby agree: 

"1. That the name and style of the association shall be the COMMITTEE OF 
VIGILANCE, for the protection of the lives and property of the citizens 
and residents of the city of San Francisco. 

"2. That there shall be a room selected for the meeting and deliberation 
of the committee, at which there shall be one or more members of the 
committee appointed for that purpose, in constant attendance, at all hours 
of the day and night, to receive the report of any member of the 
association, or of any other person or persons whatsoever, of any act of 
violence done to the person or property of any citizen of San Francisco; 
and if in the judgment of the member or members of the committee present, 
it be such an act that justifies the interference of the committee, either 
in aiding in the execution of the laws, or the prompt and summary 
punishment of the offender, the committee shall be at once assembled for 
the purpose of taking such action as a majority of the committee when 
assembled shall determine upon. . . . 

"4. That when the committee have assembled for action, the decision of a 
majority present shall be binding upon the whole committee, and that those 
members of the committee whose names are hereunto attached, do pledge 
their honor, and hereby bind themselves to defend and sustain each other 
in carrying out the determined action of this committee at the hazard of 
their lives and their fortunes." 

Within a few days after the formal organization of the Vigilance Committee 
the first opportunity arose for the exercise of its functions. During the 
late afternoon of June 10, 1851 an Australian convict named John Jenkins, 
who was so thoroughly criminal that even in Sydney-Town he was known as 
the Miscreant, stole a small safe from George W. Virgin's shipping-office 
on Long Wharf, at the end of Commercial Street. The theft was soon 
discovered, and Virgin raised the alarm. A little while afterwards Jenkins 
was seen hurrying along the wharf with a heavy bundle on his shoulder. 
Pursued by a score of citizens, he clambered into a boat and rowed into 
the Bay, where he threw his burden overboard. It was promptly raised from 
the mud and found to be the missing safe. Jenkins was thereupon taken to 
the rooms of the Vigilance Committee, the members of which were summoned 
by an arranged signal upon the bell of the Monumental Engine Company. 

For several hours the full membership of the committee examined the 
evidence and questioned the Miscreant. There was no doubt of the man's 
guilt, although he offered to produce a witness who could testify that he 
was asleep in a Sydney-Town dive at the time of the robbery. This witness 
was heard, but, under questioning, at length admitted that he had not seen 
Jenkins for several days. He was, it appeared later, a professional alibi 
witness for a large group of Sydney Ducks. About midnight Samuel Brannan 
came out of the committee's rooms and addressed a large crowd which had 
assembled before the building. He reviewed the case and the evidence and 
said that Jenkins had been found guilty and would be hanged within two 
hours in Portsmouth Square. At two o'clock in the morning the members of 
the Vigilance Committee, heavily armed, filed out of the committee's rooms 
and marched in a body to the square. In their midst was Jenkins, his arms 
pinioned. A rope was tied around the Miscreant's neck, and the other end 
was thrown over a wide beam which projected from the old adobe house on 
the western side of the square. A few policemen now appeared and demanded 
custody of the prisoner, but were told by the Vigilantes that they would 
be fired upon if they attempted to interfere with the execution. They 
immediately withdrew. Two men seized Jenkins by the arms and walked with 
him along the front of the building. When they had gone a few feet, a 
score of Vigilantes seized the slack end of the rope and ran backwards, 
quickly dragging Jenkins off the ground and raising him to the beam. There 
he was held until he was strangled, members of the committee taking turns 
at the rope, and every man holding it at least once. Until he felt himself 
being lifted from the ground, Jenkins was surprisingly calm; he said 
nothing, but chewed vigorously and with evident pleasure upon a large 
piece of tobacco which a Vigilante had given him. Later it was learned 
that he had expected the denizens of Sydney-Town to swarm into the square 
in overwhelming force and rescue him. However, the criminals were 
apparently awed by the unexpected strength of the Vigilance Committee and 
by the obvious approval with which the crowd viewed the execution. 

Next day, June 11, the Coroner held an inquest upon the body of the 
Miscreant, and a verdict was returned that he "came to his death. . .at 
the hands of, and in pursuance of a preconcerted action on the part of an 
association of citizens, styling themselves the 'Committee of Vigilance.'" 
Samuel Brannan and eight other members of the committee were specially 
mentioned as having been implicated by direct testimony. Nothing more was 
done, or probably contemplated, but the Vigilance Committee promptly 
published its entire membership, numbering at that time almost two hundred 
prominent citizens, together with an announcement that all were equally 
responsible for the hanging of Jenkins. At the same time the committee 
took further action toward ridding San Francisco of the murderers and 
robbers who had several times burned the city and had committed other 
crimes almost without number. All known felons were waited upon and warned 
to leave the city within five days under penalty of forcible deportation 
or death, and a subcommittee of thirty was appointed to visit incoming 
vessels and examine all suspicious persons. Unless they could furnish 
proof of honesty and good character, they were to be reshipped immediately 
"to the places whence they came, and not be permitted to pollute our 
soil." Two weeks or so later the committee usurped still greater powers, 
announcing that "we the Vigilance Committee DO CLAIM to ourselves the 
right to enter any person or persons' premises where we have good reason 
to believe that we shall find evidence to substantiate and carry out the 
object of this body. And further, deeming ourselves engaged in a good and 
just cause--WE INTEND TO MAINTAIN IT." So far as the records show, the 
committee exercised this "right" with commendable restraint and 
discretion, and there was much less complaint about it than might 
naturally have been expected. 

For a few days after the hanging of the Miscreant the small steamers which 
made frequent voyages up the Sacramento River to the gold-fields were 
crowded with frightened rascals. But it soon became apparent that the 
exodus was confined almost entirely to the small fry; the really dangerous 
inhabitants of Sydney-Town remained under cover in San Francisco, 
confident that they could still depend upon their friends the politicians. 
On June 22, 1851 the Sydney Ducks made their final defiant gesture--they 
started a fire in a vacant house at Powell and Pacific streets and once 
more destroyed a large portion of the city. "There was no doubt that the 
fire was the work of an incendiary," says the Annals. "No fire had been 
used about the house in which it started for any purpose whatever. As it 
progressed, the flames would suddenly start up in advance, and in one or 
more instances persons were detected in applying fire."(*) These 
scoundrels, however, escaped and were never caught. Before the 
conflagration was brought under control, it had burned the greater part of 
eighteen blocks, from Powell Street east to Sansome Street, and from 
Broadway south to Clay Street. As usual, the wind blew from the north and 
the east, and Sydney-Town was practically untouched. 

(* The Annals of San Francisco, page 612)

* * * *

Early in July 1851 the real James Stuart, for whose crimes Thomas Berdue 
awaited execution in Marysville, returned to San Francisco from the 
interior and made a bold attempt to rob an English ship anchored in the 
harbor. The captain and his wife awoke to find the robber ransacking their 
cabin, and English Jim promptly struck each of them a terrific blow with a 
slung shot. The captain fell unconscious, but his wife was made of sterner 
stuff. She clutched Stuart's coat, and although he hit her several times, 
she succeeded in holding him until her cries had aroused the crew of the 
ship. The sailors disarmed Stuart, gave him a sound beating, and then 
delivered the battered burglar to the Vigilance Committee, which 
immediately began a thorough investigation of all his activities in San 
Francisco. 

At nine o'clock in the morning of July 11, 1851 the trial of English Jim 
was begun before the entire membership of the Vigilance Committee, which 
now numbered more than four hundred influential men. It was necessary to 
present very little evidence, for Stuart at once confessed to a long list 
of crimes, including the murder of Sheriff Moore at Auburn and the assault 
upon the storekeeper Jansen in the preceding February. He thus exonerated 
Berdue, and Windred also, for he said that his accomplice in the Jansen 
attack had left San Francisco soon afterwards. After English Jim's 
confession had been read, the committee decided, by a unanimous vote, to 
hang him immediately. Colonel Jonathan D. Stevenson was delegated to 
announce the proposed action to an enormous crowd which had gathered 
outside the meeting-rooms. He described what had occurred, and then asked 
the people whether they would confirm the sentence. A tremendous 
affirmative shout arose, with a few dissenting voices from the outskirts 
of the throng. The dissenters were recognized as Sydney Ducks, and several 
were severely beaten by the indignant citizens. 

While preparations were being made and while Colonel Stevenson was 
addressing the crowd, English Jim, heavily manacled, was held under a 
strong guard. He appeared to be quite indifferent to his fate. When asked 
if he wished to make a final statement, he replied: "This is a damned 
tiresome business. Get it over with." 

Two hours after the committee had decided to hang him, English Jim was led 
into the street, surrounded by armed Vigilantes. Behind this escort, in 
column of twos, marched the remaining members of the committee, and after 
them swarmed practically the entire population of San Francisco. A derrick 
had been erected upon the Market Street wharf, and as the procession came 
in sight of it, English Jim finally lost his nerve. He collapsed, and 
during the last few hundred feet he was supported by four of his guards. 
Within a few minutes a rope had been looped about his neck, and a score of 
men jerked him to the top of the derrick--and the earthly career of the 
most notorious of the Sydney Ducks was ended. The Coroner's jury returned 
a verdict similar to that in the case of John Jenkins, but soon afterwards 
a special grand jury, impaneled to report on the state of crime in San 
Francisco, virtually endorsed the work of the Vigilance Committee. In its 
presentment the jury said that in its opinion the "members of that 
association have been governed by a feeling of opposition to the manner in 
which the law has been administered and those who have administered it, 
rather than a determination to disregard the law itself." The jury also 
acknowledged that to the committee "we are indebted for much valuable 
information and many important witnesses." 

English Jim was scarcely dead before the Vigilance Committee had taken 
steps to right, as far as possible, the injustice which had been done to 
Thomas Berdue. A special committee rode to Marysville, informed the 
authorities there that the real James Stuart had been hanged, and procured 
Berdue's release. He was at once brought to San Francisco, where the 
sentence of imprisonment imposed upon him for his supposed share in the 
assault upon Jansen was officially annulled. He was, at last, a free man. 
The Vigilance Committee publicly announced that Berdue was innocent of any 
crime and gave him a purse of several thousand dollars. An hour after he 
received the money, he was seen operating a monte pitch on Long Wharf. 
That was his last appearance in San Francisco. What ultimately became of 
him is unknown. 

During the few weeks that followed the hanging of English Jim the 
Vigilance Committee arrested two more Sydney Ducks--Samuel Whittaker and 
Robert McKenzie--and speedily convicted them of robbery, arson, and 
burglary. They were sentenced to be hanged, but no date was set for the 
execution, although it was popularly believed that it would take place 
soon after the middle of August. On August 21, 1851 Governor John 
MacDougal issued a proclamation, addressed to the people of San Francisco, 
in which he denounced "the despotic control of a self-constituted 
association, unknown and acting in defiance of the laws." The Vigilance 
Committee promptly retorted with this statement, which was sworn to by 
several prominent members and published in all the newspapers: 

"We, the undersigned, do hereby aver that the present Governor, MacDougal, 
asked to be introduced to the Executive Committee of the Committee of 
Vigilance, which was allowed, and an hour fixed. The Governor, upon being 
introduced, stated that he approved of the acts of the Committee, and that 
much good had taken place. He hoped that they would go on, and endeavor to 
act in concert with the authorities, and in case any judge was guilty of 
mal-administration, to hang him, and he would appoint others. . . ." 

MacDougal made no direct reply to this accusatory document, but a few 
minutes before dawn on August 21 Sheriff Jack Hayes, accompanied by a 
large force of policemen, appeared at the headquarters of the Vigilance 
Committee with a writ of habeas corpus, signed by the Governor and calling 
for the surrender of both Whittaker and McKenzie. The Vigilantes then 
present were few in number, and they offered no resistance when Sheriff 
Hayes removed the prisoners to the town jail under City Hall. The Sheriff 
posted a strong guard about the prison, and the authorities announced that 
in due time the two Sydney Ducks would be tried by the regular courts. 

For two days the Vigilance Committee made no move, but on Sunday, August 
24, thirty-six heavily armed Vigilantes overpowered the Sheriff's guard 
and forcibly entered the jail. They seized Whittaker and McKenzie and 
rushed them in a carriage to the rooms of the committee, where the entire 
membership had assembled. Within twenty minutes after their arrival 
Whittaker and McKenzie were dangling from heavy redwood beams which had 
been run out of the windows of the main meeting-room. Outside, a crowd of 
several thousand citizens had gathered, and as the struggling bodies were 
swung from the windows, the multitude expressed its approval by a great 
shout of triumph and satisfaction. The two Sydney Ducks remained hanging 
for half an hour, while the crowd was addressed by Samuel Brannan and 
other leading members of the committee. They declared that the Vigilantes 
were not to be deterred in their purpose by the opposition of the 
Governor, and vigorously reiterated the committee's determination to hang 
with scant ceremony every felon who did not leave San Francisco. During 
the late afternoon the crowd quietly dispersed. Next day the Coroner's 
jury returned the usual verdict, and, as before, nothing further was done 
by the authorities. 

The execution of Whittaker and McKenzie was the last official action of 
the first Vigilance Committee, although the organization was never 
formally dissolved. The hanging of the two men, together with the 
committee's bold and successful defiance of Governor MacDougal, caused a 
veritable panic in Sydney-Town; its rascally inhabitants left San 
Francisco in droves, and within two weeks there remained in that vicious 
quarter only a few dance-halls, saloons, and houses of prostitution, all 
of which were carefully operated in strict accordance with the law. 



Chapter 4. The Second Cleansing 

During the two years that followed the hanging of Whittaker and McKenzie, 
San Francisco was as peaceful and law-abiding a city as could be found on 
the American continent. The gambling houses continued to operate wide open 
under a strict licensing system, but their clientele was constantly 
decreasing, and against them was rising a strong tide of adverse public 
opinion. Comparatively few murders were committed, no more devastating 
fires occurred, and hold-ups and robberies were the exception rather than 
the rule. What remained of the underworld was moribund, palsied by the 
knowledge that for the first, and almost the last, time in an American 
city punishment for crime was swift, certain, and severe. The activities 
of the first Vigilance Committee had frightened even the judges and other 
officeholders; for a brief period they displayed great diligence in law-
enforcement and discovered a new and absorbing interest in their proper 
duties. 

But such social and governmental purity could not long endure in a city 
ruled by graduates of Tammany Hall. In October 1854 came the flight and 
exposure of Henry Meiggs, an Assistant Alderman, who had forged thousands 
of dollars' worth of city warrants to finance an ambitious scheme for the 
development of North Beach, where he had constructed a two-thousand-foot 
wharf.(*) The immediate collapse of Meiggs's enterprises, with losses of 
approximately eight hundred thousand dollars to those who had purchased 
the fraudulent warrants or invested in his securities, was followed early 
in 1855 by the failure of several important financial institutions, and a 
paralyzing business depression which continued for almost a year and 
affected practically every line of commercial activity. A situation was 
thus created which necessarily focused the attention of San Francisco's 
leading citizens--the men who had performed such valiant service in the 
great popular uprising of 1851--upon their own affairs; and the 
politicians promptly took advantage of it to increase their dippings into 
the public treasury, soon driving the city into such serious financial 
difficulties that bankruptcy was averted only by wholesale repudiation of 
the municipality's bonds and warrants. The deficit for the single year 
ending March 12, 1855 was $840,000, and the annual message of the Mayor on 
that date showed that since the middle of 1851 obligations had been 
incurred amounting to $1,959,000, an enormous debt for a city with a 
population of less than fifty thousand. Later that same year a commission, 
appointed under an act of Legislature to fund the floating debt, 
recognized as valid indebtedness only a little more than $300,000. The 
remainder was repudiated. 

(* Meiggs fled to Peru, where he became a distinguished citizen and one of 
the wealthiest men in South America. In later years he repaid, in part, 
some of his creditors and attempted to return to San Francisco. The 
California Legislature passed an amnesty act, but it was vetoed by the 
Governor, and Meiggs was compelled to remain in Peru.)

By far the most powerful politician in early San Francisco was David C. 
Broderick, a New York saloon.keeper and Tammany henchman who became a 
United States Senator and was at length killed in a duel by Judge David S. 
Terry of the California Supreme Court. Partly because of the spectacular 
manner of his death, and partly because his career typified the 
traditional rise of the poor laborer's son to fame and riches, Broderick 
became, and remains, one of the great popular heroes of the state. There 
exists a vast literature about him, but for the most part it is a 
worthless mass of fulsome panegyric. Only two California historians of 
importance have been able to view Broderick and his activities with proper 
detachment. One declares that "the truth of history demands the statement 
that for a long period his methods were utterly vicious, and that he 
shrunk from no infamy which would promote his objects."(*) The other 
points out that throughout his political life Broderick "looked upon the 
state as an oyster to be opened as one might," that he accomplished no 
legislative work of lasting importance either in the state Legislature or 
in the United States Senate, and that his leadership in the struggle to 
prevent the extension of slavery to the Pacific Coast was more apparent 
than real.(**) And not even his most adoring worshippers have been able 
entirely to conceal the plain fact that in the final analysis he must, 
more than any one man, shoulder responsibility for the municipal 
corruption which was the basic cause of the second uprising of a tormented 
and enraged citizenry. He was the one man who could have halted the 
thievish officials and politicians and stopped the looting of the city 
treasury; since he failed to do so, it is only fair to assume that he was 
pretty well tarred by the same brush. From the middle of 1851 to his 
death, in 1859, Broderick was, for all practical purposes, in absolute 
control of San Francisco's political machinery. No man could be elected to 
office or even nominated unless he possessed Broderick's consent and 
endorsement and unless he agreed to share with the boss the proceeds of 
the post to which he aspired. As Broderick's most eulogistic biographer, 
Jeremiah Lynch, puts it: 

(* San Francisco, a History of the Pacific Coast Metropolis, by John P. 
Young; Volume 1, page 214)

(** California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance 
Committee in San Francisco, by Josiah Royce; page 497)

"In San Francisco he became the dictator of the municipality. His 
political lessons and observations in New York were priceless. He 
introduced a modification of the same organization in San Francisco with 
which Tammany has controlled New York for lo! these many years. It was 
briefly this. At a forthcoming election a number of offices were to be 
filled; those of sheriff, district attorney, alderman, and places in the 
legislature. Several of these positions were very lucrative, notably that 
of the sheriff, tax-collector, and assessor. The incumbents received no 
specified salaries, but were entitled to all or a certain proportion of 
the fees. These fees occasionally exceeded $50,000 per annum. Broderick 
would say to the most popular or the most desirable aspirant: 'This office 
is worth $50,000 a year. Keep half and give me the other half, which I 
require to keep up our organization in the state. Without intelligent, 
systematic discipline, neither you nor I can win, and our opponents will 
conquer, unless I have money enough to pay the men whom I may find 
necessary. If you agree to that arrangement, I will have you nominated 
when the convention assembles, and then we will all pull together until 
after the election.' Possibly this candidate dissented, but then someone 
else consented, and as the town was hugely Democratic, his selections were 
usually victorious. . . .When he came there was chaos, and he created 
order. There was no party system in the town, and he created one."(*)

(* A Senator of the Fifties, David C. Broderick of California, by Jeremiah 
Lynch; pages 68-9)

Broderick's political income from these and other sources was probably 
several hundred thousand dollars a year, and with such sums at his 
disposal he not only maintained his hold upon the city but furthered his 
ambition to be United States Senator, despite the slashing onslaughts of 
several of the newspapers. Particularly violent in its attacks upon 
Broderick and upon the corrupt political machine which Broderick had 
fathered was the Bulletin, which began publication in October 1855, under 
the editorship of James King of William, the martyr of the second 
Vigilance movement.(*) From the beginning of his journalistic career King 
was Broderick's implacable foe. He started his campaign against the boss 
in the first number of the Bulletin, and in subsequent issues named 
several men who had paid Broderick considerable sums of money in return 
for political nominations. He also accused Broderick of arranging the deal 
whereby the city purchased the old Jenny Lind Theatre at an exorbitant 
price, and of complicity in many other raids upon the public funds. "If we 
can only escape David C. Broderick's hired bullies a little longer," wrote 
King, "we will turn this city inside out, but what we will expose the 
corruption and malfeasance of her officiary." As John P. Young said in his 
history of California journalism, King had no fear of a libel suit, "for 
the object of his assault did not dare to tempt the proof which he knew 
would be forthcoming in a court, even one to which justice miscarried as 
often as it did in San Francisco about this time."(**) But the danger of 
physical injury to the embattled editor was very great, for enlisted under 
Broderick's banner were many former Tammany heelers and sluggers who 
successfully applied in San Francisco the same methods of intimidation, at 
the polls and elsewhere, which had always proved so efficacious in New 
York. Several of these bruisers held minor political posts, and those for 
whom Broderick was unable to find jobs were on his private pay-roll. 

(* King was born in Georgetown, Maryland, and was the son of William King. 
As a youth he worked in Washington, where he found thirteen other James 
Kings. To avoid confusion he called himself James King the son of William, 
which he soon shortened to James King of William.)

(** Journalism in California, by John P. Young; page 27)

One of Broderick's principal lieutenants was Charles P. Duane, better 
known as Dutch Charley, who for a brief period was Chief Engineer of the 
San Francisco Fire Department. A contemporary historian described Duane as 
"a born leader, ambitious, and a good mixer," and wrote that "he is 
usually to be found in one of the gambling houses. A notorious politician 
as well, he has one thousand votes at his command, to be disposed of at 
elections by the simple plan of having his adherents vote three times in 
different sections of the city. Although he has no visible means of 
support, he lives regally on credit." Duane narrowly escaped hanging by 
the Vigilance Committee in 1851 for shooting A. Fayole, manager of the 
French Theatre, because Fayole had refused to admit him free to the 
playhouse. Soon after the execution of James Stuart the nominal bail upon 
which Duane was at liberty was withdrawn at the insistence of the 
Vigilantes, but before he could be tried, Fayole suddenly decided to visit 
his old home in France--a decision which is said to have cost Broderick 
and other friends of Duane about fifty thousand dollars. The case against 
Dutch Charley was abandoned because of the absence of the prosecuting 
witness. 

Scarcely less prominent in Broderick's political ménage were such worthies 
as Bill Carr, Reuben Maloney, Mart Gallagher, Bill Lewis, Yankee Sullivan, 
a prize-fighter and at one time owner of a famous New York saloon, the 
Sawdust House in Walker Street; Woolley Kearney, equally notorious as a 
bar-room brawler and as the ugliest man in California; and Billy Mulligan, 
whom Warden Sutton of the Tombs called "a professional blackleg " and "as 
desperate a character as could be found among the rowdy element of New 
York."(*) Mulligan was very thin and slight, only a little more than five 
feet tall and never weighing more than a hundred and twenty pounds, but he 
was a fierce fighter, especially when drunk. Armed only with a billiard 
cue, he once chased John Morrissey, heavy-weight champion of the world and 
a two-hundred-pound giant, out of a poolroom and down a flight of stairs. 
In San Francisco this redoubtable little man was one of Broderick's pet 
sluggers and election workers, and he was amply rewarded for his services. 
For two years he held the lucrative job of collector for the county 
treasurer, and thereafter was keeper of the jail under Sheriff David S. 
Scannell, himself a Broderick man and another of the group of New York 
saloon-keepers who became prominent in early San Francisco. 

(* The New York Tombs, Its Secrets and Mysteries, by Charles Sutton, 
Warden; edited by James B. Mix and Samuel MacKeever; page 62)

Dutch Charley Duane, Kearney, Maloney, Mulligan, and Carr were among the 
criminals and trouble-makers expelled from San Francisco by the second 
Vigilance Committee, and Yankee Sullivan committed suicide while confined 
in the committee's headquarters, awaiting trial for various crimes. 
Sullivan became so panic-stricken when he heard a Vigilante say that he 
would probably be hanged on the morrow that he opened a vein in his wrist 
and bled to death before a physician could reach him. This was on May 31, 
1856, four days before Duane, Mulligan, Carr, Kearney, and several others 
were put aboard the ship Golden Age, bound for New York. Within a year 
after his arrival in the metropolis Mulligan tried to shoot the proprietor 
of a Manhattan gambling house and was sentenced to two years in Sing Sing 
Prison. He was pardoned in three months, however, and immediately returned 
to San Francisco, where he was not molested, the Vigilance Committee 
having long since completed its work and dissolved its organization. For 
several years Mulligan was a familiar figure around the saloons and 
gambling houses and was often in trouble with the police for fighting. It 
was his habit to go on protracted drinking sprees, which usually ended 
with an attack of delirium tremens. At such times he was very dangerous, 
and nothing would soothe him but a dose of valerian. Finally, during one 
of these debauches, he escaped his friends and barricaded himself in a 
room in the old St. Francis Hotel on Grant Avenue, where he began shooting 
from the window at passing pedestrians. He killed two men--one a stranger 
and the other a friend who tried to quiet him--before he was himself shot 
through the heart by Policeman Hopkins from a room across the street. 

* * * *

With an almost unbelievably corrupt political machine in the ascendancy, 
and with honest citizens distracted by business failures and the 
prospective loss of their money and property, the underworld of San 
Francisco naturally acquired a new lease on life. Under the protection of 
the politicians the dives, bagnios, and hide-aways of Sydney-Town began to 
reopen, and the Sydney Ducks and other criminals who had been deported or 
frightened away by the Vigilantes of 1851 gradually returned. By the 
middle of 1855 San Francisco was again a hell-roaring swirl of crime and 
debauchery; once more the city swarmed with murderers, thieves, burglars, 
gamblers, prostitutes, and swindlers of every degree. And within another 
six months conditions were at least as bad as they had ever been at any 
time during the early days of the gold rush. "Assassinations, murders, and 
hangings constitute the leading materials of the budget of news in San 
Francisco," said a New York newspaper in January 1856. "The papers devote 
large space to the particulars of these horrors, showing a state of 
things, especially in San Francisco, which carries one back to the days of 
vigilance." A recapitulation of California's crime statistics for the year 
ending January 1, 1856, published by this journal, showed that 489 murders 
had been committed, about two-thirds of them in San Francisco. In the then 
largest city of California no murderer had been punished, although in 
other parts of the state six had been legally executed and forty-six 
hanged by mobs. Another writer thus described the situation in San 
Francisco: 

"Masked men appeared openly in the streets and garrotted citizens, 
apparently defying law or resistance; the rough element had apparently 
banded together for the purpose of preying upon the wealth held by honest 
hands. . . .Politics was in fact accountable for this chaotic condition of 
city affairs. . . .Society was sore diseased. Villainy wielded the balance 
of power, and honesty was at a discount. 'The law's delay, the insolence 
of office,' became the chafing cause of much discomfort. Honest voters on 
election day felt that it was but ill-spent time to cast a vote. Ballot-
box stuffing, not vox populi, placed men in office. In short, the town was 
ruled by gamblers, rowdies, and state-prison convicts. Sydney Ducks again 
were cackling in the pond."(*)

(* Metropolitan Life Unveiled, or, The Mysteries and Miseries of America's 
Great Cities, by J. W. Buel; pages 258-9) 

On the evening of Thursday, November 15, 1855 Charles Cora, an Italian 
gambler, attended the performance at the American Theatre, where the 
Ravels were playing in Nicodemus, or, The Unfortunate Fisherman. He was 
accompanied by his mistress, variously known as Belle Cora and Arabella 
Ryan, who was the daughter of a Baltimore clergyman. She had long since 
abandoned the habits of the parsonage, however, and was notorious in San 
Francisco as the proprietor of a house of prostitution in Pike Street, now 
Waverly Place, which offered the handsomest and most skillful girls, at 
the highest prices, of any bagnio in the city. Also in the audience 
assembled to see the play were General W. H. Richardson, United States 
Marshal for the Northern District of California; his wife, and a woman 
friend of Mrs. Richardson. Righteously indignant that a woman of Belle 
Cora's character should display herself in public, General Richardson 
demanded that she be ejected from the theater. The manager of the house 
refused, and General Richardson and his party left after a heated exchange 
of words with Cora. 

Next day the gambler and General Richardson met in the Cosmopolitan 
Saloon. Under the mellowing influence of good whisky they agreed to forget 
the incident of the theater, and left the bar-room arm-in-arm. In the 
street, however, they resumed the quarrel, and General Richardson told 
Cora that if they met again, he would slap his face. Three days after 
their first encounter, on November 18, Cora was drinking in the Blue Wing 
Saloon when General Richardson entered. As the latter approached the bar, 
with the evident intention of carrying out his threat, Cora drew a 
derringer and shot him through the heart. The Coroner's jury, impaneled 
next day, reported that General Richardson had been "deprived of his life 
by Cora, and from the facts produced, the jury believe that the said act 
was premeditated, and that there was nothing to mitigate the same." The 
gambler was immediately arrested, and Belle Cora engaged for his defense a 
formidable array of lawyers, his chief of counsel being Colonel E. D. 
Baker, an Englishman who later became a United States Senator from Oregon 
and was killed during the Civil War while leading a Pacific Coast regiment 
at the battle of Ball's Bluff. The gambler's mistress agreed to pay 
Colonel Baker thirty thousand dollars for defending her lover, and as a 
retainer gave him immediately fifteen thousand dollars in gold, which the 
Colonel lost at faro that same night. Later he tried to withdraw from the 
case because of the pressure of public opinion, but since he was unable to 
repay the money he had already received from Belle Cora, he was compelled 
to continue. 

Although the killing of General Richardson aroused a storm of public 
indignation and resentment, it is quite likely that Cora would have gone 
unpunished had it not been for James King of William and his violent 
editorials in the Bulletin. No sooner had Cora been lodged in jail than 
King began calling for the infliction of the death-penalty, at the same 
time predicting that the gambler's political friends would never let him 
be convicted. Thereafter King daily called attention to the many wild 
rumors which swept through the town. It was reported that Cora was to be 
permitted to escape through the connivance of Billy Mulligan, then keeper 
of the county prison; or, if that scheme failed because of the vigilance 
of the people, the jury was to be bribed with a fund of forty thousand 
dollars which had been raised by Cora's friends." Look well to the jury," 
advised the Bulletin. "If the jury is packed, either hang the Sheriff or 
drive him out of town and make him resign. If Billy Mulligan lets his 
friend Cora escape, hang Billy Mulligan or drive him into banishment" 
Again, King wrote, "If Mr. Sheriff Scannell does not remove Billy Mulligan 
from his present post as keeper of the county jail and Mulligan lets Cora 
escape, hang Billy Mulligan; and if necessary to get rid of the Sheriff, 
hang him--hang the Sheriff!" 

Such extraordinary journalism so stirred up the town that Cora was brought 
to trial within two months after the murder--unprecedented speed for the 
San Francisco courts. The jury promptly justified King's fears, reporting 
a disagreement after forty-one hours of deliberation. Cora was remanded to 
jail to await a second trial, which no one had any idea would ever be 
held. Next day the Bulletin said: 

"Men were placed upon that jury who should never have been there. They 
went upon it to defeat the ends of justice, in other words, to 'tie' the 
jury. This they effectually did. It is not pleasant for us to comment upon 
the depravity which has been brought to light in the trial. It is not very 
agreeable to state that the conviction is almost universal, that crime 
cannot be punished in San Francisco. But it is, nevertheless, a duty which 
we owe to the public community, as journalists, to put the people upon 
their guard. It is well for every man to understand that life here is to 
be protected at the muzzle of the pistol. The best man in San Francisco 
may be shot down tomorrow by some ruffian who does not like what he has 
said or done; yet the chances are an hundred to one that that ruffian will 
escape punishment. He may go through the farce of a trial, but nothing 
more. Now, what is to be the end of this? Crime will become so frequent 
that it can no longer be endured. Then will come lynch law, then men even 
suspected of crime will be hung; for people cannot live as things are now 
running. No man's life is safe, in our opinion, for a single moment." 

One of James King's most indefatigable journalistic enemies, and by the 
same token one of the most rabid supporters of Broderick and the machine, 
was James P. Casey, editor of a weekly political paper and a member of the 
Board of Supervisors. Early in November 1855, at a court hearing which 
grew out of an election brawl the preceding August, Casey admitted that he 
had served eighteen months in Sing Sing Prison for larceny. All the 
newspapers published this admission, and the California Chronicle 
supplemented it with a denunciatory editorial accusing Casey, among other 
things, of having had the ballot-boxes stuffed and himself reported as 
elected Supervisor from a district in which he was not even a candidate. A 
few days later King reprinted this attack in the Bulletin, and thereafter 
for several months he and Casey took frequent editorial pot-shots at each 
other, Casey in particular berating King for his attitude toward Cora. 
Early in May 1856 Casey's paper declared that King's brother had been 
refused the appointment as United States Marshal to succeed General 
Richardson, and that King himself had tried unsuccessfully to make a deal 
with the political machine of which, ostensibly, he was such a bitter foe. 
Both King and his brother demanded a retraction, which Casey declined to 
make. On May 14 the Bulletin published the most violent of all King's 
onslaughts upon Casey, again referring to the latter's prison record and 
asserting that he deserved "having his neck stretched" for the fraudulent 
manner in which he had procured his post as Supervisor. Ordinarily Casey 
would have replied in kind even to an attack of this sort, but friends of 
Cora, anxious to create a diversion that would take the popular mind off 
the gambler, convinced him that only King's death would wipe out the 
affront to his honor. When King left his office to go home on the 
afternoon of the day upon which the editorial had appeared, Casey met him 
at the entrance to the Bulletin building, shoved a pistol against his 
chest, and fired the shot which precipitated the activities of the second 
Vigilance Committee. King fell to the sidewalk, mortally wounded, and 
Casey immediately surrendered to the police. He was lodged in the city 
prison, but two hours later was removed to the stronger county jail on 
Broadway. 

King was not the most popular man in San Francisco, but he was easily the 
most forthright and the most spectacular and perhaps the best-known. He 
was shot at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the streets were filled 
with people, and within an hour the news was all over the town, arousing a 
sensation such as San Francisco had not experienced since the turbulent 
days of 1851. By seven o'clock mobs had begun to form in various parts of 
the city, and soon thereafter the county jail was surrounded by a restless 
crowd of at least ten thousand men. Throughout the night they swarmed and 
howled before the stone walls. Lack of a leader alone prevented the 
immediate storming of the jail, which was guarded by the city's entire 
police force and two troops of militia, hastily called into service when 
the attitude of the mob became threatening. About dawn word was received 
that King's condition had improved, and the crowd gradually dispersed. 

Meanwhile a score of leading citizens, practically all of whom had been 
prominent in the work of the Vigilance Committee of 1851, had held a 
secret meeting and had decided once more to take matters into their own 
hands. The morning after King was shot the newspapers published a call for 
a mass meeting at No. 105½ Sacramento Street, in rooms previously occupied 
by the Native American party. There, under the leadership of William T. 
Coleman, the Vigilance Committee was reorganized, and a constitution 
adopted similar to that under which the earlier Vigilantes had operated. 
During the forenoon a thousand men enrolled for whatever service the 
committee might see fit to demand of them, and by nightfall as many more 
had joined the membership list. The militiamen on duty at the jail sent 
their resignations to the Governor, stacked their rifles in the State 
Armory in Grant Avenue, and marched in a body to join the committee. 
Horsemen carried the news into the rural and mining districts, and within 
a few days mass meetings at Sacramento, Placerville, Folsom, Nevada, and 
Marysville had denounced the shooting of King and offered to send armed 
assistance if the Vigilantes desired. 

The vast majority of San Franciscans greeted the formation of the 
Vigilance Committee with rejoicing and hailed it as the only possible cure 
for the evils which beset the city. The politicians, naturally enough, 
opposed it to a man, and with great vehemence, for it threatened their 
very existence; while a considerable number of respectable citizens 
sincerely believed that such an illegal usurpation of authority was a 
greater source of danger than a continuation of the corruption under which 
San Francisco was laboring. Among the latter was William T. Sherman, then 
engaged in the banking business, who later became General in the United 
States Army. The attitude and demeanor of David C. Broderick was exactly 
what might have been expected of so astute a politician. He recognized 
immediately the potential magnitude of the movement and realized that any 
hindrance he might offer to its operation would, in the long run, only 
lessen his hold upon the city and affect adversely his campaign to become 
United States Senator, always the goal of his ambition.(*) Throughout the 
life of the committee Broderick maintained an ostensibly neutral position; 
he neither assisted in the cleansing of San Francisco, nor was he active 
in the councils of the Law and Order party, as the opponents of the 
Vigilantes, with unconscious irony, called themselves. From the middle of 
May until the middle of August 1856, while the committee was supreme in 
San Francisco, Broderick was rarely seen in the city; most of that period 
he spent in other parts of the state, busily bringing the whole of 
California under his domination. When the Vigilantes at length disbanded, 
Broderick again appeared in San Francisco, only slightly less high in the 
estimation of its citizens, and an even greater political force than 
before, for he had gained almost complete control of the state 
Legislature. It was not until three years later that it became known, 
chiefly through his own admissions, that he had given money and advice to 
the Law and Order element; that he had done what he could, under cover, to 
hamper the Vigilantes; and that he had paid the San Francisco Herald two 
hundred dollars a week to publish editorials in defense of Judge David S. 
Terry, then his friend, after Terry had been arrested for stabbing an 
agent of the committee. The Herald, founded by John Nugent in 1850, and 
for several years San Francisco's leading newspaper, was the only journal 
which actively and outspokenly opposed the Vigilantes, and the enraged 
citizens promptly wreaked vengeance upon it. A great number of copies were 
publicly burned in Front Street, and then the merchants and other business 
men withdrew their advertising, despite the protests of William T. 
Coleman, who insisted that freedom of the press was one of the cardinal 
principles of the whole Vigilance movement. Almost overnight the Herald 
shrank from forty to sixteen columns, and within a month it had suspended 
publication. It was revived a year or so later, and struggled valiantly to 
regain its former position. It failed and in 1862 finally passed from the 
journalistic picture. 

(* According to Jeremiah Lynch, Broderick once said: "To sit in the Senate 
of the United States as a Senator for one day, I would consent to be 
roasted in a slow fire on the plaza.")

* * * *

For several days after the shooting of James King business in San 
Francisco was practically suspended while the entire city awaited the 
outcome of the editor's wounds. Great throngs continued to threaten the 
county jail, and thousands of men stood silent in the street before King's 
residence. Detachments of armed men sent out from the headquarters of the 
Vigilance Committee purchased every fire-arm to be found in the hardware-
stores and gun-shops, and seized the rifles, pistols, and swords in the 
State Armory, as well as two pieces of artillery and a large quantity of 
ammunition. During the afternoon of the second day the Vigilante leaders 
began organizing their forces, appointing a special troop to handle the 
confiscated guns and forming the remainder of the men into cavalry and 
infantry companies of one hundred each. They immediately began drilling 
under the command of former soldiers, who had offered their services. 
Alarmed by the seriousness of the situation and fearful of immediate 
trouble, Governor J. Neely Johnson hurried to San Francisco from 
Sacramento, but after a brief conference with the executive committee of 
the Vigilance organization he instructed Sheriff Scannell to permit a 
small body of Vigilantes to encamp within the prison walls, to make 
certain that Casey was not spirited away or permitted to escape. In an 
effort to enlist a strong guard for the jail, Sheriff Scannell went into 
the streets and served upon every man he met a court order to report at 
the jail and assist in repelling the attack which the Vigilance Committee 
was obviously planning. The Sheriff summoned several hundred men, but only 
fifty responded. Most of them were criminal lawyers and heelers of 
Broderick's political machine. Such was the temper of San Francisco's 
citizens that they were safer in jail than out. 

On the Saturday night following the shooting King's condition became 
worse, and his physicians said that he had no chance of recovery. The 
excitement engendered by this news was increased by persistent rumors that 
Casey was to be rescued by his political friends before the sun had set 
again. At nine o'clock the next morning, when it was expected that King 
might die any minute, a signal upon the bell of the Monumental Engine 
Company summoned the Vigilantes to their headquarters, where arms were 
distributed and each man reported to his company commander. At noon twenty-
six hundred well-armed, disciplined men, led by William T. Coleman as 
chairman of the committee. marched through the streets and surrounded the 
jail. The two pieces of artillery which had been taken from the Armory 
were loaded with powder and ball and trained upon the stone gates of the 
prison. Then Coleman and several other members of the committee rode 
forward and formally demanded the surrender of both Casey and Cora. With 
fewer than forty men under his command, Sheriff Scannell wisely offered no 
resistance. Heavily manacled, Casey and Cora were placed in carriages and 
taken to the headquarters of the committee, escorted by the whole force of 
Vigilantes and followed by almost the entire population of San Francisco, 
a howling mob which incessantly demanded that the two men be hanged at 
once. At the Sacramento Street rooms Casey and Cora were locked in hastily 
prepared cells, and three hundred men were assigned to guard them and 
prevent the rescue which their friends certainly contemplated. 

James King died on Tuesday, May 20, 1856, six days after Casey had fired 
the historic shot, and Casey was immediately placed on trial by the 
Vigilantes. The verdict called the shooting "premeditated and 
unjustifiable," and by a unanimous vote of the committee Casey was 
condemned to death. Cora was likewise tried, and sentenced to be hanged 
for the murder of General Richardson. Two days later King was buried. A 
vast crowd, estimated at from fifteen thousand to twenty thousand men and 
women, followed the editor to his grave, and before the last of them 
returned from the cemetery at Lone Mountain both Casey and Cora had been 
hanged from the windows of the Vigilante headquarters, on makeshift 
gallows such as had been used five years before in the execution of 
Whittaker and McKenzie. An hour before he stepped upon the beam from which 
he was to plunge to his death, Cora, with the consent of the Vigilance 
Committee and upon the advice of the priest who attended him in his last 
hours, married the woman on whose account the quarrel with General 
Richardson had started. After the gambler's death Belle Cora remained for 
a month locked in her room. When she emerged, she sold her house of 
prostitution and thereafter lived alone with her servants. She became 
widely known for her gifts to charity and had thus disposed of the bulk of 
her fortune when she died, on February 17, 1862. Casey was buried by his 
friends, and upon his tombstone in a San Francisco cemetery the curious 
tourist may still read the inscription: "May God Forgive My Persecutors." 

* * * *

On June 3, 1856 Governor Johnson issued a proclamation declaring San 
Francisco to be in a state of insurrection and ordering the Vigilance 
Committee to surrender its arms and disband its organization. The 
Vigilantes met this challenge with characteristic energy and 
determination. They immediately removed their headquarters to a small 
square near the waterfront, on which were a few buildings. In these 
structures they established cells, guard-houses, court-rooms, and a 
meeting-place for the executive committee, a large room profusely 
decorated with bunting and American flags. A stone wall was constructed, 
facing the open portion of the square, and twenty feet from the wall the 
Vigilantes built sand breastworks, ten feet high and six feet wide, 
through which a narrow, winding passage led to the interior. Upon the roof 
of the main building were placed a large alarm-bell and the committee's 
two field-pieces, which were kept loaded with powder and ball and manned 
day and night by a volunteer gun-crew. The place was officially called 
Fort Vigilance, but was popularly known as Fort Gunnybags. It was strong 
enough to resist successfully any attack not supported by artillery--and 
the Vigilantes possessed the only cannon in San Francisco, excepting those 
in the military and naval stores at the Presidio and on Mare Island. The 
officers in command of these stations had already been asked for 
assistance by the Governor and by the leaders of the Law and Order party, 
but had declined to interfere in the absence of instructions from the War 
and Navy departments. The President, at Washington, had also refused 
Governor Johnson's request for advice and aid. 

The Governor's proclamation had appointed William T. Sherman, who had 
gained considerable fame as a soldier during the Mexican War, as Major-
General of militia and had commanded the members of all volunteer 
companies and all other persons subject to military duty, to report to 
General Sherman and assist in subduing the insurgents. Fewer than a 
hundred men answered the summons. Equipped with whatever arms they 
happened to possess, they garrisoned the State Armory and other points 
about the city which General Sherman considered of strategic importance. 
In less than a week, however, General Sherman had resigned his commission 
and withdrawn from active participation in the fight against the 
Vigilantes. He was disgusted with the Governor's vacillating course, and 
particularly by his refusal to order companies from other parts of the 
state to proceed to San Francisco. To succeed him Governor Johnson 
appointed Volney E. Howard, a former Texas Congressman who had been in San 
Francisco about two years. About the middle of June 1856 the Governor sent 
Reuben Maloney, one of Broderick's political henchmen, from Sacramento in 
charge of a large quantity of arms and ammunition for the use of General 
Howard's troops and the adherents of the Law and Order party. The 
munitions were carried down the Sacramento River aboard a flat-boat, but 
the Vigilantes, learning of the shipment, boarded the vessel in the Bay of 
San Francisco and confiscated the entire cargo, which was stored in the 
arsenal at Fort Gunnybags. Next day the Vigilantes seized another shipment 
of rifles and pistols, which agents of the Governor were attempting to 
smuggle into San Francisco. They were found hidden beneath a cargo of 
bricks aboard a small schooner. 

Sterling A. Hopkins, a Vigilante policeman, was ordered to arrest Maloney 
and bring him before the executive committee for questioning. Accompanied 
by two assistants, Hopkins went to the office of Doctor H. P. Ashe, United 
States Naval Agent, where he found Maloney, Judge David S. Terry, and 
Doctor Ashe. Judge Terry and Doctor Ashe told Hopkins that they would not 
permit him to arrest Maloney, and Hopkins returned to Fort Gunnybags for 
reinforcements, while Maloney, Terry, and Ashe started for the State 
Armory on Grant Avenue to seek the protection of the Law and Order troops. 
About a block away from this refuge they were overtaken by Hopkins and 
several other Vigilantes, and a street fight occurred, in which Judge 
Terry stabbed Hopkins in the throat. During the excitement Judge Terry and 
Maloney escaped and made their way to the Armory, while Doctor Ashe 
returned to his office. Hopkins was carried into a physician's residence 
for treatment, and the entire membership of the Vigilance Committee was 
immediately summoned by a signal upon the alarm-bell at Fort Gunnybags. 
Within an hour after the stabbing several thousand Vigilantes had 
surrounded the Armory, which was promptly surrendered by the few Law and 
Order men who comprised the garrison. The arms and ammunition found in the 
Armory were seized, but all the captives were released excepting Maloney 
and Judge Terry, who were confined in Fort Gunnybags to await the outcome 
of the wound Judge Terry had inflicted upon Hopkins. During the same 
afternoon the Vigilantes captured, in rapid succession, every building in 
the city that housed a detachment of Law and Order adherents or state 
militia, and by nightfall the committee was in unquestioned control of San 
Francisco. Not a shot had been fired. 

Maloney was deported by the Vigilance Committee within the next few days, 
but the trial of Judge Terry was delayed for a week, until Hopkins had 
recovered. Judge Terry was then accused not only of stabbing Hopkins but 
of participation in several other affrays. The Vigilance court continued 
in session for seven weeks, during which time one hundred and fifty 
witnesses were examined. Judge Terry was finally found guilty on three 
counts of the indictment, and not guilty on three, but, "the usual 
punishments in their power to inflict not being applicable in the present 
instance," the committee voted to discharge him from custody. The 
Vigilantes further expressed the opinion that "the interests of the state 
imperatively demand that the said David S. Terry should resign his 
position as Judge of the Supreme Court." Not for three years, however, did 
Terry do so, and then only after his duel with Broderick. 

During the two months that followed the hanging of Cora and Casey not a 
single murder was committed in San Francisco, and not more than half a 
dozen robberies or holdups of importance were reported. No action by the 
Vigilance Committee was necessary until July 24, when one Joseph 
Heatherington shot and killed Doctor Andrew Randall, who was trying to 
collect a court judgment for twenty thousand dollars. That same day the 
Vigilante police captured a man named Brace, who had killed another man 
two years before and escaped and who had also been involved in several 
other crimes. Heatherington and Brace were hanged together, after trial, 
on July 29, 1856, on a gallows erected in the center of Davis Street, near 
Sacramento Street. Heatherington tried to make a speech from the scaffold, 
but was constantly interrupted by Brace, who had been screaming in his 
cell for two days. Brace's head was at length tightly covered by a large 
cloth, but until the trap was sprung he continued to mutter curses and 
blasphemy. 

The hanging of Brace and Heatherington completed the work of the second 
Vigilance Committee. Besides instilling a wholesome fear into the corrupt 
politicians and city officials, the Vigilantes had hanged four men and 
banished twenty-six, while the number of criminals and other undesirable 
characters who had been frightened away has been variously estimated at 
from five hundred to eight hundred. By August 12, 1856 the last captive 
malefactor had been placed aboard an out-bound vessel, and the cells of 
Fort Gunnybags were empty. With San Francisco basking in the glow of 
municipal righteousness, the Vigilance Committee decided to disband and 
transfer the command of the city to the duly elected representatives of 
the people. On Monday, August 18, the entire population gathered to watch 
the final parade of the Vigilante Army, an impressive display of 
preparedness and power. More than eight thousand well-equipped men marched 
through the city, deposited their weapons in the arsenal at Fort 
Gunnybags, and returned without disorder to their respective vocations. A 
few guards remained on duty at the Vigilance headquarters until September 
1, when they were withdrawn, the flags of the committee lowered, and the 
sandbag breastworks removed. On November 3 the arms and ammunition which 
had been captured from the militia and the Law and Order party were 
formally surrendered to the Governor, who withdrew his proclamation of 
insurrection.