Anti-alcohol campaigns were as old as the city and so too were their failures.
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There was very little “respectable” residents or municipal officials could do to limit vice in those early years except perhaps to express outrage. For one, the city “had hardly any government at all” in its first several years. And, actions municipal authorities took against vice did not usually survive long.
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The Barbary Coast was the first and most notorious vice district in the city, but it was by no means the only one. As they city grew so too did the number of neighborhoods that hosted saloons, dance halls, and brothels.
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For Progressive-era reformers, “vice” in a city represented a sickness, unhealthy habits antithetical to the dignity of modern American society, although ironically, seemingly woven into its very fabric. To many Americans of the period, vice meant anything that did not conform to expected–reformers would say “traditional”–middle-class values.
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An important part of the context underlying my project on resisting reform is the conflict San Franciscans faced when thinking about their Gold Rush roots. Many were proud, many were embarrassed, many wanted to maintain the “Spirit of ’49” in the city’s personality, while others thought it was unbefitting the leading city on the west coast.
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My 2018 dissertation, “Resisting Reform: San Francisco Vice in the Progressive Era,” has many problems. Unfortunately, the most significant problem is also the one preventing it from becoming anything more: a unifying and interesting story.
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One of the recurring and central themes of my project, “Resisting Reform,” is the bottomless well of optimism many reformers in San Francisco had anytime some form of reform was enacted. Most commonly this was in the context of a law by the local or state legislatures or an order by the police.
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Although I could tell pretty quickly that the 1911 report of the Dillingham Immigration Commission, “Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants,” did not have anything useful for me, I was immediately intrigued when I saw that its lead researcher and author was Franz Boas.
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My research on working women in San Francisco on occasion led me to stories such as the one below about Miss Viola Van Ornum. This particular case caught my attention because of what seems to have been an unusual twist to the story. The basis of the story in the San Francisco Call from June 27, 1901, was a coroner’s inquest.
I have decided to create this special segment–Short Stories–to write them up as I encounter them. I have been reading articles from the early twentieth century about the involvement of the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) at Ellis Island. One of them featured a photograph that caught my eye.
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What follows is a think piece of sorts of my involvement in a grant project led by Raquel E. Aldana (Professor of Law) and Patrick Marius Koga, (Professor of Psychiatry, Public Health Sciences; Director, Refugee Health Research). I have been tasked with researching the involvement of mental health professionals in immigration cases in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are preliminary observations, almost certainly based on an incomplete understanding of the source material and topic.
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That is the topic of a report, volume 15 of 19, concerned with “Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States,” published in 1911 by the United States Department of Commerce and Labor. The premise of the investigation was summed up in the opening sentence: “Is the trend of modern industry dangerous to the character of woman?”
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I have referenced this report once already in a reflection on the phrase “law and order” and quoted one of the more remarkable passages but here I attempt to summarize more of salient points of the report.
Of course, I do not expect to break any new ground. In fact, I expect my observations to be almost completely predictable. Not only in highlighting the racism of the period but also the specific form of its anti-Chinese language and ideas are well known both in the historical context and even in the current period as demonstrated by the xenophobic rhetoric surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. But, I want to write something about this report because it is good practice to write and I am working through my approach to incorporating Chinatown into my project (or not).
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As I was doom scrolling Twitter and browsing news headlines this evening, one oft-shouted phrase of the moment (the RNC), particularly salient in the current context, “LAW and ORDER!” kept appearing.
That is all some Republicans have to say to gain the support of many Americans. It is beyond cliche. My mind paused on that requirement of Republican politicians running for office, its ubiquity. (Of course, just to be clear, the headlines and pronouncements today are in the context of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.)
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I’ve said it often enough that it’ll sound all-too familiar, but historians of women’s history are often at a disadvantage due to a paucity of sources, especially ones written by women. This problem is multiplied when the women in question are working class and then multiplied further when those working women are sex workers.
Recently, I learned about the book Nell Kimball: Her Life As an American Madam. Somehow, unfortunately, in my years of researching my dissertation and writing a chapter on prostitution, I was unaware of its existence. I first read about it in another dissertation, “The Criminalization of Prostitution in the United States: The Case of San Francisco, 1854-1919” by Brenda Elaine Pillors (UC Berkeley, 1982), also a source I was unaware of or did not have the time to actual read while composing my dissertation.
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“Voters recall judge who sentenced Brock Turner to 6 months in jail for sexual assault.” I have had this article link in my email inbox for almost two years now with the plan to write something about it that relates to my own research. I’m on a writing roll thanks to my guest appearance on the California Historical Society’s blog. Aaron Persky was, of course, a Santa Clara County Superior Court judge that presided over the rape trial of disgraced, convicted, sex offender Brock Turner.
I have three motivations for writing about this case.
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I don’t especially identify with my Irish roots. I completely forgot this year to make corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick’s day. But, San Francisco can sometimes make me delight in my cultural heritage.
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It’s been nearly a year since I bothered to write anything. I am not necessarily lazy but that’s my only reasonable explanation for my lack of writing. I guess most days I don’t see the point in trying. I’d like to write more. I think I’m pretty good at it and I think the material I am investigating is interesting. I enjoy explaining to my friends during long runs what I am researching and writing about.
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As I noted last time, some residents viewed the earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco in 1906 as an opportunity. “It is well to consider,” editorialized the Los Angeles Herald just days after the city stopped shaking, “that acts of Providence–earthquake and fire–have destroyed the sore and sorry weak spots of San Francisco.” [1] In its place would be “a city that will stand in a class by itself among the great cities of the world. As the star of empire winds its way westward it will pause at the Golden Gate and there rest on San Francisco–the Twentieth Century city.”[2]
Take a look at this map of the burned areas (click on the image for a larger version):
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San Francisco is fallin, is fallin. At 5.30 this morning a terrific earthquake shook the city from its foundations by the Golden Gate–immense buildings crumbled and fell...and fire - fire - fire. Thus began the entry for Wednesday, April 18, 1906 in resident Anne (Fader) Haskell’s diary.
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