San Francisco - Alison Bing [8]
A tent city rose up along San Francisco’s waterfront comparable in size to the actual city. By 1850, the year California was fast-tracked for admission as the 31st state in the Union, San Francisco’s population had shot up from 800 a year earlier to an estimated 25,000. But for all the new money in town, it wasn’t exactly easy living. The fleas were still a problem and the rats were getting worse – but at least there were plenty of distractions.
Most of the early prospectors (called ’49ers, after their arrival date) were men under the age of 40, and to keep them entertained – and fleece the gullible out of their earnings – some 500 saloons, 20 theaters and numerous venues of ill repute opened in the space of just five years. Miners with dreams of a millionaire’s welcome back home usually had to wait for weeks in San Francisco for a departing ship, giving them plenty of time to blow all their earnings in the city’s casinos and bordellos.
A buck might procure whiskey, opium or one of the women frolicking on swings rigged from saloon ceilings – publicly revealing they weren’t wearing bloomers, 150 years before Britney Spears. At the gaming tables, luck literally was a lady: women card dealers were known to deal winning hands to those who engaged their back-room services. In 1851, visiting French journalist (and noted brothel expert) Albert Benard de Russailh reported, ‘There are also some honest women in San Francisco, but not very many.’
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OUTCASTS AMONG OUTCASTS
Con men, visionaries, crackpots, adventurers, fugitives and anyone with nothing to lose: there was a place for everyone in San Francisco in 1849. For a couple of flush years, Chinese, Peruvians, Hawaiians, Australians, Chileans, Native Americans, Irish and Mexicans panned for gold side by side, boozed together and slept in close quarters. But as gold became harder to find, backstabbing became more common – sometimes literally.
‘Gold fever’ was a malady with extreme symptoms. Take for example Joshua Norton: he arrived in 1849 from South Africa with $40,000, made a fortune, lost it all through speculation, and disappeared. In 1859 he returned to San Francisco a changed man, wearing theatrical gold-braided military attire and grandly proclaiming himself ‘Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.’ San Francisco newspapers published Emperor Norton’s proclamations over 21 years, including decrees dissolving the Democratic and Republican parties, commanding the building of suspension bridges spanning the bay (considered one of his craziest ideas), and outlawing use of the term ‘Frisco’ upon penalty of a $25 fine (payable to the Emperor, naturally). Police saluted him in the streets, and some local establishments accepted banknotes issued by the ‘Imperial Government of Norton.’ When the Emperor’s adopted stray dog Bummer departed for that great doghouse in the sky, Mark Twain wrote the epitaph: ‘He died full of years, and honor, and disease, and fleas.’
As Emperor Norton learned the hard way, prospectors who did best arrived early and got out quick. Those who stayed too long either lost fortunes searching for the next nugget or became targets of resentment. Successful Peruvians and Chileans were harassed and denied renewals to their mining claims, and most left California by 1855. Native Californian laborers who had helped the ’49ers strike it rich were also denied the right to hold claims.
Even though San Francisco earned its notoriety with freewheeling lawlessness, Australian newcomers were singled out as criminals, whether or not they actually hailed