USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > San Francisco, a history of the Pacific coast metropolis, Volume I > Part 61
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Amateur theatricals flourished during the Sixties, and there were several pri- vate organizations whose members considered themselves competent to produce ambitious plays. Not infrequently this unprofessional talent came to the fore. This usually happened when some quasi-public institution needed money. This was often the case with the Mercantile library, an institution whose precarious existence suggests that the reading habit was not very pronounced, or that its management was bad, for other libraries flourished while it languished. In 1865 an amateur benefit was given in which R. B. Swain and Wm. H. L. Barnes took part. The piece performed was "Rosedale," Barnes personating the leading char- acter. The proceeds of the entertainment exceeded five thousand dollars, and for the time being relieved the embarrassment of the library, which, however, was soon again in trouble. Barnes was a prominent lawyer and a finished orator and reckoned among his other gifts that of literary composition. He was the author of a play "Solid Silver," which was staged by John Mccullough. It was well received in San Francisco and in Eastern cities and earned for the writer several thousand dollars in royalties.
Outdoor sports during the Sixties were deprived of some of their attractiveness by the reaction which followed the exciting conditions of the first decade, and to some extent by the increased facilities for betting which the stock exchange offered. There was still great interest taken in horse racing, but the business was not yet organized as in later days. Running races were the principal attraction, but trot- ting was growing in favor. The reference made to "buggy time" in a circular describing the delights of the Cliff house points to the predilection for that vehicle. The lovers of fast horses were numerous and there were many animals owned in the City whose performances excited general interest. Their owners were often their own drivers and they enjoyed no greater pleasure than a brush on the road with a rival. The road to the Cliff during the period was not infrequently the scene of spirited races which were usually impromptu, but none the less exciting on that account. Many of these races were between teams and the skill of the drivers was as much the admiration of those who witnessed them as the swiftness of the horses.
Outdoor Sports Suffer from Competition
Public Celebrations of School Children
Amateur Theatricals Flourish
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PORTSMOUTH SQUARE IN 1865 The building on the right is the old Jenny Lind Theater which was converted into a city hall
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Baseball became popular at an early date in San Francisco. In 1861 games were played on the sand lots which were afterward converted into Union square, at the Presidio Reservation at Twenty-fifth and Folsom and later at Seventh and Folsom streets. In 1868 the first league was formed with the Wide Awakes, the Pacifics and the Eagles making up the teams. The Wide Awakes were members of a club formed by the students of the college which afterward became the Uni- versity of California. The first ball park in the City was started in 1867 by an Australian named Hatfield, a professional promoter, who furnished the capital to lay out a diamond at Twenty-fifth and Folsom streets. In the same year the Red Sox of Cincinnati visited the City, being the first Eastern team to invade San Francisco. In those days the pitcher stood forty-five feet from the plate and tossed the ball underhanded; the catcher was stationed twenty feet distant from the plate and the batsman was put out if the ball was caught on the first bound. The batter was also given three strikes and three balls, and then a warning which made four strikes for him before he was out. The game began to lose its interest for San Franciscans in 1870 and it was several years before it experienced a revival.
Pugilism which excited an interest in California during the Fifties, suffered a decline during the ensuing decade. There were exhibitions of boxing with the gloves, but to a generation which had been accustomed to witnessing bare knuckle combats between heavyweights they proved tame. Toward the end of the Sixties there was a recrudescence of interest stimulated by the stock brokers, whose good fortune on the board usually exhibited itself in a desire for exciting diversions. The renewal of popularity enjoyed by "the manly sport" was only temporary, and interest subsided with the sagging of the stock market, but revived again when the bonanza excitement began in the early Seventies, and the contests became so serious an offense to the community that a law was passed absolutely prohibiting boxing.
During the Sixties the exhibitions under the auspices of the Mechanics' insti- tute were extremely popular and furnished a common meeting ground for people. The fairs were usually continued during several weeks, and as a band furnished good music every afternoon and evening the pavilion was well filled. The practice of buying season tickets was very general and the purchasers made good use of them. The socially inclined San Franciscan could attend in the certain assurance that he would meet his friends. Toward the close of the decade in 1869 the insti- tute was reincorporated, and in the article stating the purpose of the society the idea of cultivating "a social feeling of friendship among the members" was given prominence. This object was diligently pursued for many years, but with the growth of the City was finally lost sight of, and the institute has devoted itself almost entirely to the creation of a great library of circulation and reference.
In the Sixties politics were not wholly divorced from amusement. San Fran- cisco in common with the rest of the country insisted on combining pleasure with instruction during a political campaign. Processions, chiefly after nightfall, were in great vogue, and the participants endeavored to make them interesting with the view of impressing the spectators. In the earlier years of the decade transparen- cies with mottoes were the principal features of these night parades. They were made by stretching muslin over frames of wood, and were illuminated by candles. Small ones borne by the individual members usually had the name of the favored candidate with pithy mottoes painted on the cloth on the four sides. Larger ones
Baseball in the Sixties
Interest in Pugilism Declines
Popularity of Mechanic's Institute Fairs
Political Meetings and Torchlight Processions
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carried by several men, and sometimes mounted on wheels, were more elaborate and often contained long extracts from platforms, or expressions of the candidate. The torch came into use later in the decade when coal oil had worked its way into favor. With its advent came a nearer approach to organization. During the transparency era the processions were in a measure spontaneous, but when the torch was adopted uniformed clubs were formed, and much attention was paid to securing applause by exhibitions of proficiency in marching, which was achieved by steady drilling to which more attention was paid by members, as a rule, than to the expounders of the principles of the organizations to which they adhered.
Old Time Parade Ronte
The route of these parades in the Sixties was not long enough to detract from their popularity, although they had an offset for their shortness in the in- equalities of the street pavements traversed by the participants. The course traveled over was a little longer usually than that of the Pioneer parade of September 9, 1867, which headed by "Chris" Andrus' band marched down Montgomery street to Clay, along Clay to Sansome, thence to Maguire's opera house on Washington street, where the exercises of the day set aside for the celebration of the admission of the state to the Union consisted of a poem and an oration, the poet of this particular occasion being Charles Warren Stoddard, who enjoyed the distinction of himself being a pioneer. The appreciation of the privilege of forming part of the great federal Union was regularly exhibited by San Franciscans on each recurring anniversary, but there were great changes in the mode of celebration, and that of the eventful occasion in Delmonico's when the news was received and oceans of champagne flowed was never repeated.
Flourishing Fraternal Organizations
The flourishing condition of the Pioneer society mirrored that of other organi- zations. The Odd Fellows and Masons had gained largely in numbers during the Fifties, and the latter in 1860 began the construction of the temple on the corner of Post and Montgomery streets, a building which served the purposes of the order until it was destroyed in the great conflagration of 1906. During the decade the various charities of the City through their needs contributed greatly to the promo- tion of social intercourse, a fact readily inferred from the frequency of announce- ments in the newspapers of concerts, balls, amateur theatricals and other diversions provided for the purpose of raising funds for their maintenance. The responses to these calls were liberal, testifying alike to the generosity and amusement-loving propensities of the people who were never called upon in vain for aid.
Whole Souled Enjoyment of Spectacles
In the amusements of San Franciscans during the Sixties there was nothing par- ticularly characteristic, but there was a whole souledness about their way of enjoy- ing themselves which advertised the fact that the City, although it aspired to metropolitan greatness was not as yet disposed to affect sophistication. When Rosa Celeste in 1866 walked a tight rope from the Cliff house to Seal rock the whole town poured out to see her; and in 1864, on the occasion of a sham battle in which the militia displayed their valor on Washington's birthday of that year, the vantage places of Hayes valley were all occupied by eager spectators who were quite ready to extol the occasion as a great one, and to proclaim that the conduct of the citizen soldiery "reflected great credit on their military knowledge and bear- ing and inspired confidence in the defenders of our great country."
CHAPTER XLV
INCREASING INTEREST IN CIVICS AND A MORAL AWAKENING
PRECAUTIONS NEGLECTED IN PIONEER DAYS-RESTRAINT UPON EXTRAVAGANCE-THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN-ABATEMENT OF THE DRINK HABIT-INCREASING RESPECT FOR LAW-BANDIT VASQUEZ-CRIME IN SAN FRANCISCO-KILLING OF CRITTENDEN BY LAURA D. FAIR-A MORAL AWAKENING FOLLOWS-THOMAS STARR KING'S CHURCH -ERECTION OF TEMPLE EL EMANUEL-GRACE CATHEDRAL-TEMPERANCE AND CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS-EDUCATIONAL WORK-GROWTH OF PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM-MODE OF SELECTING TEACHERS-COURSE OF STUDIES-MODERN LAN- GUAGES TAUGHT-NIGHT SCHOOLS-PRIVATE AND PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS THE HIGHER EDUCATION-THE STATE UNIVERSITY-LITERATURE-HIGHLY SEASONED WRITING- LITERATURE AS A CALLING-JOURNALISM IN THE SIXTIES-WOMEN REPORTERS- NEWS GATHERING IN THE SIXTIES-ART AND ARTISTS IN THE SIXTIES-INTERIOR DECORATION-HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS THE HOME FEELING BEGINNING TO DEVELOP.
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HE drastic smoothing process adopted by the Vigilance Com- mittee did something towards making the seamy side of life in San Francisco less obtrusively conspicuous than it was during the Fifties, but part of the bettered condition of the community must be apportioned to the Consolidation " SEAL OF OF SAN Act which provided for a larger police force and a better system of management. Swift and condign punishment has its value but the criminal element has a short memory and the force of awful example is soon weakened. The only really efficacious check is the constant watchfulness exercised by a well organized force especially created to guard the peace. The pioneers were singularly negligent in this regard, and the fact that they permitted the rapidly growing City to depend upon village methods for the prevention of crimes of violence and the security of property was largely responsible for the necessity imposed upon them of resorting to extra legal methods to accom- plish what might have been more easily effected by living up to the motto that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Horace Hawes sought to remedy the defect of inadequate guardianship of the peace by providing for an increase of the police force to 150 and the machinery for its management. His measure called the Consolidation Act, which went into effect in 1856 created a Police Commission consisting of the mayor and police judge and a chief of police, which latter position was made elective. This body was en- dowed with full power to appoint, promote, disrate or dismiss members of the force. At the first election under the new act James Curtiss, who had served as chief of
Neglect of Preventive Measures
Increase of Police Force
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the Vigilance Committee's force was elected, and held office until 1858, when he was succeeded by Martin Burke, who was followed by Patrick Crowley who held the position until 1874. The Consolidation Act, however, had a general defect which extended to that portion of it creating the Police Department. The latter was a vast improvement over the lack of system which it superseded, but the pro- visions of the act creating it were utterly destitute of flexibility, and had later to be remodeled to meet the growing needs of a city whose population was increasing with extraordinary rapidity.
The illiberality of the framer of the Consolidation Act caused more or less trouble in the Sixties, and until a charter framed more in accordance with the modern spirit was adopted in its stead; but its shortcomings, some of which a. man of different temperament would have avoided, and others which no ordinary prescience could have detected, were outweighed by the benefits it conferred. As already noted it effectually put an end to extravagance and "graft," and its method of dealing with the police problem made impossible a repetition of the awful criminal record of 1855, during which year 489 men were killed in San Francisco.
When the Sixties opened "times were changed and men had changed with them." But the modifying influences were those of restraint rather than tempera- ment. The determination to minimize the temptation to commit crime was pro- nounced, and for a while the tide ran strongly towards puritanism. "Wide open" gambling was no longer tolerated, and there was a great deal of talk about Sunday laws. The salutary effect of the restraining clauses in the Consolidation Act af- fecting expenditure were dwelt on with pride, and there was a strong disposition manifested by the city press to extend the benefits of the reformation to the rest of the state. Something of the kind was needed, for the state officials were com- placently allowing such abuses as the payment of 75 cents per mile for the transportation of prisoners from the place where convicted to the state prison and similar extravagances.
But the most important change noted in the Sixties was the improved dis- position of citizens to perform jury duty. Before the Vigilante uprising of 1856 there was a pronounced unwillingness on the part of business men to serve on juries. Every conceivable mode of evasion was resorted to by those engrossed in their private affairs to avoid sitting, and to this cause, as much as any other, is attributed the disrepute into which the courts fell in pioneer days. From edi- torials in the daily press the fact is gathered that until nearly the close of the Sixties there was not much shirking, but about that time there must have been something like a recrudescence of the bad habit as the papers contain frequent diatribes on the failure to secure the right sort of juries.
Concerning the efficiency of restraint there can be no dispute, but there was a new factor operating to diminish crime far more potent than police or law. It is the fashion to cynically account for the troubles of man by assuming that there is usually a woman at the bottom of them, and it is undoubtedly true that there is much crime inspired by unbridled sexual passion and by feminine folly. But on the other hand the influence of family ties, and the presence of good women avert an immeasurably greater amount of criminality and folly than the bad provoke. No one who has attentively inquired into the causes of so many crimes of violence in the early Fifties in California will seriously contend that they were not largely due to the absence of self restraint which men impose on themselves
Influence of Women
Defects of Consolidation Act
Restraints upon Extravagance
Increased Attention to Civic Duty
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JUNCTION OF MARKET, POST AND MONTGOMERY STREETS AS IT APPEARED IN 1868, BEFORE THE GRAND AND PALACE HOTELS WERE ERECTED
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in a society in which observance of the conventionalities is demanded by the presence of women. The free and easy manners of men easily degenerate into rudeness and quarrelsomeness. When the latter became tempered by the necessity of pay- ing deference to woman there was a decided abatement of the tendency to fight at "the drop of the hat." When good women became numerous in San Francisco men began to lay aside the offensive weapons they had been ostentatiously car- rying, and when it became possible for men to find society in other places than the bar room, drinking and gambling ceased to be the chief pleasures of life.
That San Francisco became a moral town and shook off all its earlier vices in the Sixties is not true, but there was a visible diminution of what may be termed the brazenness of evil. The free and easy spirit was not wholly obliterated; men still gambled and drank, but they no longer did so after the fashion of the cowboy who resents as an insult a declination to do as he does. Instead of attempting to force all to a common level, there was a growing disposition to respect the man who avoided drinking places and refused to gamble, and the num- ber of the latter was soon great enough to deprive respectability of the singularity which attached to it in the days when to refuse to be "a hale fellow well met" stamped the objector as a person to be avoided.
Nothing can more pertinently illustrate the great change that came over San Francisco after the last Vigilante affair than the patient attitude of the community towards the delays and technicalities of the law than the case of Horace Smith, who in January, 1861, killed a man named Samuel T. Newell. The circumstances of the murder were such that a few years earlier Smith would in all probability have received short shrift, but despite the fact that feeling ran high, his friends were permitted, after a change of venue had been denied by the court, to procure the passage of an act by the legislature which transferred the case to Placer county for trial. And when the San Francisco trial judge denied the right of the legislature to pass such an act and the supreme court affirmed its constitu- tionality, and the murderer secured an acquittal in the Placer county court, although there was a profound conviction that there was a miscarriage of justice and great disappointment, the public accepted the verdict.
There was much other evidence that a great change in sentiment had taken place in San Francisco and that a disposition to let bygones be bygones existed. The fact that the legislature in 1861 caused the resolutions of censure directed against Broderick in 1859 to be expunged from the records has already been men- tioned, but the step was doubtless taken as a recognition of his services to the Union cause and there was a sharp division respecting the propriety of the action. But three years later when the proposition to appropriate $5,000 to aid in the completion of the monument to his memory in Lone Mountain cemetery in San Francisco was put forward it met with practically no opposition, and the little which exhibited itself was in no wise influenced by local considerations. There were still some echoes of Vigilante days; indeed they were heard in the legislature as late as 1877-78 when a bill was passed over the governor's veto authorizing the payment to Alfred A. Green a sum not exceeding $20,000 for services ren- dered in 1856 in establishing the Pueblo claim; but in San Francisco all the ani- mosities engendered by the upheaval had practically disappeared. The proscribed, against whom no other offense had been urged than their sympathy with the Law Vol. 1-29
Abatement of the Drinking Habit
Respect for Law
A Monu- ment to Broderick
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and Order party, who had returned to the City, mingled with their fellow citizens and freely participated in public affairs.
Satisfaction over the results achieved unquestionably had a part in producing this practical amnesty. San Francisco from the wickedest had suddenly been converted into the most orderly place in the state. The seat of criminal operations seems to have been transferred to the interior counties where the bandits became so bold that Governor Downey in 1860 recommended that highway robbery should be made a capital offense. The legislature, however, refused to act on his sug- gestion, and for a long period the state was infested with an organized band of robbers whose depredations extended over a wide area. The leader was one Tihurcio Vasquez, who was born in Monterey in 1835 of respectable parents. He commenced his criminal career in a quarrel in which a constable was killed. One of the men who was in the difficulty with him was summarily dealt with by the Monterey Vigilance Committee, the other escaped to Los Angeles where he was subsequently hanged for committing a murder.
Vasquez and his Band
In some manner Vasquez escaped prosecution on this occasion, but in 1857 he was convicted of horse stealing and sent to San Quentin prison from whence he escaped in June, 1859, by joining in an uprising of prisoners who succeeded in overpowering the guard. He was again arrested, and imprisoned for horse stealing, and remained in San Quentin until 1863. In 1867 he was again in San Quentin having been convicted of cattle stealing. After his release in 1871 he organized the band which during the early Seventies terrorized the state to such an extent that great rewards were offered for his capture. Meantime, however. he had committed crimes as daring and as cruel as those charged against the Murietta gang, and he and those with whom he associated succeeded in producing a feeling of insecurity which endured until tempted by the hope of gaining the offered reward for his capture experienced men engaged in the work of hunting him down which they successfully accomplished, killing him and dispersing the band in 1875.
Abuse of Pardoning Power
In a message to the legislature sent to that body in December, 1865, Gov- ernor Low called attention to an increase in the number of prisoners in San Quentin, which, however, he attributed to the greater security of the prison and not to more crime. Prior to that year the prisoners were not as carefully guarded as they were later, and escapes were frequent. The governor also intimated that the pardoning power had been too freely used, a criticism which the records show was fully deserved. His animadversions and the comments of the press indicate that the pardoning propensity was not as much due to the prevalence of the sentiment which moves the modern penologist to action as the exertion of what is known as the political "pull," and the pressure of influential persons in private life.
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Crime Committed for a Bauble
Although the criminal records of the Sixties indicate that the entire decade was destitute of abnormal features viewed from the police standpoint there were at least two cases which fell in this period which were classed by them as "cele- brated," and one of which was the outcome of a mode of life regarded with too much leniency by San Franciscans in pioneer days. The first of these is more remarkable because of the folly and cupidity of the criminal than for any other reason. A young man named Hill who had inherited a small fortune managed to get rid of it very quickly through gambling and dissipation. While he had money he dressed in a showy fashion, and wore a cluster pin in his shirt front
Most Orderly Place in the State
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which was reputed to be worth $1,500. On the 15th of February, 1865, he dis- appeared from his lodgings in the Mansion house on Dupont street near Sacra- mento, but as he frequently absented himself without explanation no comment was excited. Some weeks later a dog belonging to a gardener in the San Souci valley in the vicinity of Fulton and Baker streets was observed tugging at a rope which protruded from the sand. Investigation disclosed the body of a man who had apparently been killed with a blunt instrument of some sort, as there was a large jagged hole in his forehead. Inquiry developed that it was that of Hill. He had been despoiled of all his valuables, including the cluster pin. The police in work- ing up the case discovered that Hill had gone out with a man named Thomas Byrnes, the son of a roadhouse keeper, on the night of his disappearance, and that the horses drawing the buggy had returned to the stable without any occupants in the vehicle. It was recalled that Byrnes had taken a monkey wrench saying that it might be needed. The explanation that the horses had run away was easily accepted by the stable keeper as no damage had been caused by the alleged run- away, and the occurrence passed unnoticed. Byrnes had originally planned to make it appear that Hill had been killed by being thrown out of the buggy, but he became afraid and buried the body after killing his victim. His crime was subsequently exposed when he attempted to pawn the cluster pin which he learned was a cheap imitation and worth about three dollars. Byrnes was tried and exe- cuted on September 3d of the following year.
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