Saturday, August 1, 2020
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
1931 Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, infects human subjects with cancer cells. He later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. While there, he begins a series of radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients.
1932 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated.
1935 The Pellagra Incident. After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occured within poverty-striken black populations.
1940 Four hundred prisoners in Chicago are infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new and experimental drugs to combat the disease. Nazi doctors later on trial at Nuremberg cite this American study to defend their own actions during the Holocaust.
1942 Chemical Warfare Services begins mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen. The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.
1943 In response to Japan’s full-scale germ warfare program, the U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.
1944 U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.
1945 Project Paperclip is initiated. The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence, and the CIA recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret government projects in the United States.
1945 “Program F” is implemented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.
1946 Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word “experiments” to “investigations” or “observations” whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation’s veteran’s hospitals.
1947 Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Comission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.
1947 The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.
1950 Department of Defense begins plans to detonate nuclear weapons in desert areas and monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates.
1950 I n an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.
1951 Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.
1953 U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.
1953 Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.
1953 CIA initiates Project MKULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.
1955 The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army’s biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.
1955 Army Chemical Corps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.
1956 U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.
1958 LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army’s Chemical Warfare Laboratories for its effect on intelligence.
1960 The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) authorizes field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East. Testing of the european population is code named Project THIRD CHANCE; testing of the Asian population is code named Project DERBY HAT.
1965 Project CIA and Department of Defense begin Project MKSEARCH, a program to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs.
1965 Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.
1966 CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.
1966 U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.
1967 CIA and Department of Defense implement Project MKNAOMI, successor to MKULTRA and designed to maintain, stockpile and test biological and chemical weapons.
1968 CIA experiments with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting chemicals into the water supply of the FDA in Washington, D.C.
1969 Dr. Robert MacMahan of the Department of Defense requests from congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exists.
1970 Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the army’s top secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biology techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.
1970 United States intensifies its development of “ethnic weapons” (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.
1975 The virus section of Fort Detrick’s Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).
1977 Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirm that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
1978 Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.
1981 First cases of AIDS are confirmed in homosexual men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, triggering speculation that AIDS may have been introduced via the Hepatitis B vaccine
1985 According to the journal Science (227:173-177), HTLV and VISNA, a fatal sheep virus, are very similar, indicating a close taxonomic and evolutionary relationship.
1986 According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (83:4007-4011), HIV and VISNA are highly similar and share all structural elements, except for a small segment which is nearly identical to HTLV. This leads to speculation that HTLV and VISNA may have been linked to produce a new retrovirus to which no natural immunity exists.
1986 A report to Congress reveals that the U.S. Government’s current generation of biological agents includes: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.
1987 Department of Defense admits that, despite a treaty banning research and development of biological agents, it continues to operate research facilities at 127 facilities and universities around the nation.
1990 More than 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an “experimental” measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental.
1994 With a technique called “gene tracking,” Dr. Garth Nicolson at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX discovers that many returning Desert Storm veterans are infected with an altered strain of Mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons. Incorporated into its molecular structure is 40 percent of the HIV protein coat, indicating that it had been man-made.
1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War .
1995 U.S. Government admits that it had offered Japanese war criminals and scientists who had performed human medical experiments salaries and immunity from prosecution in exchange for data on biological warfare research.
1995 Dr. Garth Nicolson, uncovers evidence that the biological agents used during the Gulf War had been manufactured in Houston, TX and Boca Raton, Fl and tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections.
1996 Department of Defense admits that Desert Storm soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.
1997 Eighty-eight members of Congress sign a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.
I met Dr. Garth Nicholson and his wife (also an MD) once here in Houston. Their daughter was an Army officer and a Gulf War veteran, and she came home from Iraq with Gulf #War Syndrome and her kids caught it from her. The Drs. Nicholson were research doctors and worked for M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital in Houston, in the Texas Medical Center. They decided to research GWS. They did, and they found out it could be cured with large doses of a common antibiotic called doxycycline. They sucessfully treated their daughter and her children, but when they went public, the U.S. Government sent word to them to "Shut Up. about Gulf War Syndrome" Instead, they went on a Houston radio station and told the truth, but they were worried enough about being arrested by the Federal government that they asked the Texcas Constitutional Militia to provide security for them, which it did.
1932 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated.
1935 The Pellagra Incident. After millions of individuals die from Pellagra over a span of two decades, the U.S. Public Health Service finally acts to stem the disease. The director of the agency admits it had known for at least 20 years that Pellagra is caused by a niacin deficiency but failed to act since most of the deaths occured within poverty-striken black populations.
1940 Four hundred prisoners in Chicago are infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new and experimental drugs to combat the disease. Nazi doctors later on trial at Nuremberg cite this American study to defend their own actions during the Holocaust.
1942 Chemical Warfare Services begins mustard gas experiments on approximately 4,000 servicemen. The experiments continue until 1945 and made use of Seventh Day Adventists who chose to become human guinea pigs rather than serve on active duty.
1943 In response to Japan’s full-scale germ warfare program, the U.S. begins research on biological weapons at Fort Detrick, MD.
1944 U.S. Navy uses human subjects to test gas masks and clothing. Individuals were locked in a gas chamber and exposed to mustard gas and lewisite.
1945 Project Paperclip is initiated. The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence, and the CIA recruit Nazi scientists and offer them immunity and secret identities in exchange for work on top secret government projects in the United States.
1945 “Program F” is implemented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.
1946 Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word “experiments” to “investigations” or “observations” whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation’s veteran’s hospitals.
1947 Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Atomic Energy Comission issues a secret document (Document 07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects.
1947 The CIA begins its study of LSD as a potential weapon for use by American intelligence. Human subjects (both civilian and military) are used with and without their knowledge.
1950 Department of Defense begins plans to detonate nuclear weapons in desert areas and monitor downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates.
1950 I n an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.
1951 Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.
1953 U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.
1953 Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.
1953 CIA initiates Project MKULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.
1955 The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army’s biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.
1955 Army Chemical Corps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.
1956 U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects.
1958 LSD is tested on 95 volunteers at the Army’s Chemical Warfare Laboratories for its effect on intelligence.
1960 The Army Assistant Chief-of-Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) authorizes field testing of LSD in Europe and the Far East. Testing of the european population is code named Project THIRD CHANCE; testing of the Asian population is code named Project DERBY HAT.
1965 Project CIA and Department of Defense begin Project MKSEARCH, a program to develop a capability to manipulate human behavior through the use of mind-altering drugs.
1965 Prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia are subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic chemical component of Agent Orange used in Viet Nam. The men are later studied for development of cancer, which indicates that Agent Orange had been a suspected carcinogen all along.
1966 CIA initiates Project MKOFTEN, a program to test the toxicological effects of certain drugs on humans and animals.
1966 U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.
1967 CIA and Department of Defense implement Project MKNAOMI, successor to MKULTRA and designed to maintain, stockpile and test biological and chemical weapons.
1968 CIA experiments with the possibility of poisoning drinking water by injecting chemicals into the water supply of the FDA in Washington, D.C.
1969 Dr. Robert MacMahan of the Department of Defense requests from congress $10 million to develop, within 5 to 10 years, a synthetic biological agent to which no natural immunity exists.
1970 Funding for the synthetic biological agent is obtained under H.R. 15090. The project, under the supervision of the CIA, is carried out by the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, the army’s top secret biological weapons facility. Speculation is raised that molecular biology techniques are used to produce AIDS-like retroviruses.
1970 United States intensifies its development of “ethnic weapons” (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.
1975 The virus section of Fort Detrick’s Center for Biological Warfare Research is renamed the Fredrick Cancer Research Facilities and placed under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) . It is here that a special virus cancer program is initiated by the U.S. Navy, purportedly to develop cancer-causing viruses. It is also here that retrovirologists isolate a virus to which no immunity exists. It is later named HTLV (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus).
1977 Senate hearings on Health and Scientific Research confirm that 239 populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.
1978 Experimental Hepatitis B vaccine trials, conducted by the CDC, begin in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.
1981 First cases of AIDS are confirmed in homosexual men in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, triggering speculation that AIDS may have been introduced via the Hepatitis B vaccine
1985 According to the journal Science (227:173-177), HTLV and VISNA, a fatal sheep virus, are very similar, indicating a close taxonomic and evolutionary relationship.
1986 According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (83:4007-4011), HIV and VISNA are highly similar and share all structural elements, except for a small segment which is nearly identical to HTLV. This leads to speculation that HTLV and VISNA may have been linked to produce a new retrovirus to which no natural immunity exists.
1986 A report to Congress reveals that the U.S. Government’s current generation of biological agents includes: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.
1987 Department of Defense admits that, despite a treaty banning research and development of biological agents, it continues to operate research facilities at 127 facilities and universities around the nation.
1990 More than 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles are given an “experimental” measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected to their children was experimental.
1994 With a technique called “gene tracking,” Dr. Garth Nicolson at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX discovers that many returning Desert Storm veterans are infected with an altered strain of Mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe commonly used in the production of biological weapons. Incorporated into its molecular structure is 40 percent of the HIV protein coat, indicating that it had been man-made.
1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War .
1995 U.S. Government admits that it had offered Japanese war criminals and scientists who had performed human medical experiments salaries and immunity from prosecution in exchange for data on biological warfare research.
1995 Dr. Garth Nicolson, uncovers evidence that the biological agents used during the Gulf War had been manufactured in Houston, TX and Boca Raton, Fl and tested on prisoners in the Texas Department of Corrections.
1996 Department of Defense admits that Desert Storm soldiers were exposed to chemical agents.
1997 Eighty-eight members of Congress sign a letter demanding an investigation into bioweapons use & Gulf War Syndrome.
I met Dr. Garth Nicholson and his wife (also an MD) once here in Houston. Their daughter was an Army officer and a Gulf War veteran, and she came home from Iraq with Gulf #War Syndrome and her kids caught it from her. The Drs. Nicholson were research doctors and worked for M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital in Houston, in the Texas Medical Center. They decided to research GWS. They did, and they found out it could be cured with large doses of a common antibiotic called doxycycline. They sucessfully treated their daughter and her children, but when they went public, the U.S. Government sent word to them to "Shut Up. about Gulf War Syndrome" Instead, they went on a Houston radio station and told the truth, but they were worried enough about being arrested by the Federal government that they asked the Texcas Constitutional Militia to provide security for them, which it did.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
SPOKANE, Wash. — F-Trooper died as he had lived, with a cigarette in one hand and a can of Schmidt's Ice beer in the other. They found him when the Montana Rail Link pulled into the repair shop. F-Trooper was sitting there in one of the boxcars as he so often had before — except this time he had five bullets in his head.
Police had little to go on: A blood-spattered cardboard 12-pack between Tracks 3 and 4. Bloody footprints in the boxcar. Some spent shell casings. A tattoo on F-Trooper that said "F.T.R.A."
It is a symbol that has become an unnerving part of the railroad landscape across the West, where the mysterious brotherhood known as the Freight Train Riders of America has gained a foothold in the world of switching yards, bridge underpasses and boxcars — the realm of the American hobo for more than a century.
Concentrated in the Northwest along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe's 1,500-mile High Line between Seattle and Minneapolis, the FTRA claims at least 1,000 itinerant train riders who police believe could be responsible for hundreds of deaths, assaults and thefts along American rail lines over the past two decades.
Police say F-Trooper, a rail-riding nickname for 30-year-old hobo Joseph Perrigo, died when a fellow FTRA member exacted revenge for an earlier confrontation. The list of potential witnesses for the upcoming trial reads like a Who's Who of the modern American rails: Moose. Hotshot. Desert Rat. Muskrat. Pennsylvania Pollack.
The fact that there's going to be a trial at all in the May 1996 slaying represents something of an exception in law enforcement's long-running battle with the gang, whose exploits usually produce witnesses who disappear on the next train, a crime scene that travels from Spokane to Klamath Falls, a victim found dead in the middle of the prairie next to a set of railroad tracks, leaving no known address and an age-old question: Did he jump or was he pushed?
"They're a criminal element that can do just about anything," said Spokane Police Detective Bob Grandinetti, who has compiled an exhaustive data base on the FTRA. "You get two or three of them together, they'll roll a guy over and push him off the train. You're moving at 50 or 60 miles an hour, what do you think your chances are? We're finding bodies like that all over the country."
Law enforcement officials say the group, launched by a cadre of Vietnam War veterans in a Montana bar in the 1980s, is composed primarily of white men, many with racist sympathies symbolized in the swastikas and lightning bolts that often accompany FTRA graffiti. The group, authorities say, has terrorized other train tramps, set up rail lines out of Texas as drug-running corridors and run a massive food stamp scam by filing thousands of fraudulent welfare applications at cities along virtually every train stop in the nation.
"There are 70 to 90 deaths a year (along the rail lines) all over the country," Grandinetti says. "Sure, some are natural causes. Some are accidents. But some aren't. And the problem is, the suspects and all the witnesses disappear."
"Everybody in the country's in the same spot," said Saginaw, Texas, police detective James Neale. He has unsuccessfully pursued a suspected FTRA member who he believes tortured and murdered a transient at knifepoint, stuffing the body on a train.
"These people, they fall through the cracks. They don't live in houses like we do, they don't have cars. ... Our system is not designed for these kinds of people, so they can just ride the rails, they can commit murder and mayhem almost at will."
The fact that a growing number of college students and young professionals are riding the rails for sport has heightened concern about potential conflict with a network of loners — some FTRA, some simply train tramps — who count their possessions as an extra shirt, a sleeping roll and a dog. What, police ask, will happen as weekend "hoppers" pick their way through lonely switching yards into an underground network of the deliberately dispossessed?
"I can see where more Joe Blow Citizen people are going to get injured and hurt," said Salem, Ore., police detective Mike Quakenbush. "Because this riding the trains thing is increasing in popularity, and it's pissing these guys off. They don't like you, they don't like you riding their trains, and if you're not willing to make that whole transition over, then get the hell out."
Their calling cards can be found at almost any railway bridge or overpass in the West, the trademark scrawl of "F.T.R.A.," often accompanied by swastikas or lightning bolts and other common slogans: "STP" for "start the party," "FTW" for "---- the world."
Grandinetti, who started documenting the emergence of the FTRA in the 1980s, said it began with the railroads reporting bodies along the High Line between Spokane and Sandpoint, Idaho, and as far west as Cheney, Wash.
The bodies had their shirts and jackets pulled up around their heads, and their pants pulled down, he recalls. "The first one or two, the railroad was saying, well, he fell off a train and cut his leg and he bled to death," Grandinetti said. "I could buy off on one or two of them. But after the sixth, I said, my God, wait a minute."
About the same time, he said, a freight train derailed west of Spokane after the air line to the rear cars' brakes was cut off. The suspect, who was killed in the crash, was wearing a black bandanna around his neck fastened with a silver ring.
Later, the bandanna would become the trademark of the FTRA — a black one for the original High Line riders, red for the southern corridor, blue for the central United States.
Suddenly, bandannas began figuring in a series of stabbings and beatings.
Railroad officials tend to play down the impact of the FTRA, saying it has not had a major role in official incident reports along rail lines.
"We are aware that this organization exists. We have had minimal encounters with anybody who claims to be a part of this group. We've probably heard more about them than we've actually heard from them," said Jim Sabourin, spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
"Some of these people (arrested as transients) sometimes identify themselves as members of this organization, but they don't do anything different than anybody else that takes chances and gets on trains," said Edward Trandahl of Union Pacific.
In a camp near the old rendering plant in Spokane, a thin, weathered man wearing a black bandanna shrugs. "It's just a bunch of guys who ride trains," says the man, who identifies himself as "Sideline."
"It started out as a family thing. It was a brotherhood. They call us racist, but I get on white people same as I do anyone else." The bandanna, he says, is a symbol. "It just means I earned my place. I proved myself. I wasn't a user. I wasn't a taker. I gave. I was a brother.
"Me," he said, "I just don't like people. I prefer to be off by myself. It's hard for me to deal with a job, because I don't take orders well. I don't got a job, but I got what I need. I got a tent, a sleeping bag, a dog. I'm good to go. What do I need with a house, a mortgage, 12 kids running around? I'm not bothering anybody. My camp's clean."
A summary of Runaway Laws in the state of Washington
Under the 1974 federal law, juveniles who are not criminals but have run away or are skipping school can be held for no more than 24 hours. The law also requires that the youths be held in a separate facility out of "sight and sound" of adult prisoners. Although this law is held as a standard in most states there has been a sloping towards a harder stance as shown by the semi-recent 1995 innovation of the “Becca Bill” sponsored by State Representative Mike Carrell and drafted by enraged father Dennis Hedman..."Becca Hedman’s tragic story provided the political impetus to pass sweeping legislation that gives the juvenile court the power to jail children who have not been convicted of a crime. Becca was subject to abuse at the hands of her biological parents and her adoptive brother. She suffered from addiction and even lived on the streets after running away from home. When Becca was only 13 a man who had paid her for sex murdered her. The state legislature responded to this tragedy by enacting the "Becca Bill" in July 1995.
The intent of the bill was to "empower parents" by giving them power to deal with their runaway, disobedient children or truant children by having them locked up in juvenile detention. The bill provides juvenile court judges and commissioners with the power to jail "At-Risk Youth," "Children in Need of Services," and truant children for "civil contempt" if they violate a court order.
An examination of the bill and its implementation show that the cure provided by the "Becca Bill" may not adequately address the problems that these children face. Indeed, in some instances the solution created by the "Becca Bill" may exacerbate these problems.
--As stated by Catherine Chaney & Anne Kysar
Besides making the reporting of runaways a legal requirement, the Becca Law also called for a set up of statewide secure crisis residential centers (CRC’s) to hold runaways for up to five days. In a dramatic turnaround, the law also scrapped provisions in juvenile law that required the consent of teenagers before they were put into mental health, drug, or alcohol therapy. Under the new law, parents do not require consent before committing their children.
The following are excerpts from an Article entitled "Is the Cure worse than the Disease". Many of my own ideas are mashed in some places so I would just like to acknowledge that the following is not a completely original piece. If I had more time I would like to have written a reflective article on this Bill but seeing as I don't this paper will have to suffice. Needless to say, I agree strongly with many / all the points made in the following, and I have also written a final summary at the end on how this relates to us as hitchhikers and the concerns we should have when traveling in the company of minors (Under the age of 18 through the state of Washington.)
The Petition
The statute allows a parent to petition juvenile court to have his or her child declared an "At-Risk Youth" (ARY) or a "Child in Need of Services" (CHINS). Another part of the Becca Bill authorizes a school district to petition juvenile court to have a student declared a truant. Because these proceedings are ostensibly civil, children are not afforded the due process protections that apply in criminal proceedings.
A court must grant an "At-Risk Youth" petition if the allegations in the petition are established by a preponderance of the evidence. The legislature defined an "at-risk youth" as a runaway, a child who is beyond parental control, or a child who has a substance abuse problem. In practice, courts rarely deny ARY petitions (or CHINS or truancy petitions, for that matter). For example, if a child is engaging in behaviors such as staying out after curfew or spending time with friends the parent disapproves of or consuming alcohol without parental permission, a court may grant an ARY petition on the basis that the child is "beyond parental control."
Before an ARY petition is granted, the law requires that parents attempt some alternative to court intervention or show "good cause why such alternatives have not been attempted." In practice, courts construe this requirement loosely: a counseling appointment will generally satisfy the requirement.
The legislature defined a "child in need of services" as a child who is beyond parental control or a runaway and is in need of services. When a CHINS petition is granted, the child may be placed outside of the home by the Department of Social and Family Services.
While a child or a parent can file this petition, the court may not grant a child’s request to be placed out of the home unless the child proves by "clear, cogent, and convincing evidence" that placement outside the home is in the best interests of the family and the child, that the child has tried to resolve the problem, and that the parents are unavailable or the parent’s actions cause an imminent threat to the child. Again, in practice, a parent’s petition to have his or her child declared a CHINS is rarely denied while a child's petition is more likely to be denied.
A "truant child" is defined as a child who has had unexcused absences in a school year. Additionally, the statute requires that the school take steps to reduce or eliminate the child’s absences from school. The school district or the parent may bring a truancy petition. A child appears at a truancy fact-finding hearing without the benefit of counsel under the statute. As a result, the school district is rarely tested on its statutory obligation of taking steps to reduce or eliminate a child’s absences from school. In most cases, the school district reports that it cannot carry out this task because the student does not attend school regularly, or the school submits that they have carried out this statutory requirement by scheduling a conference with the child and his or her parent.
In one case, a juvenile court commissioner found a 12-year-old girl truant even though the girl and her family are homeless and live in the family car. The child had difficulty sleeping and had trouble getting up for school in the morning. The court found that the school had met its statutory burden to take steps to reduce or eliminate this child’s absences by scheduling a meeting with her at school registration.
The Court's Disposition Order
Once a court grants an "At-Risk Youth" or CHINS petition, the court assumes broad authority in writing "conditions of supervision" for the child. The statute authorizes a court to order a child to attend school, counseling, and substance abuse treatment or "any other condition the court deems an appropriate condition of supervision." In practice, the "conditions of supervision" are long lists of rules for the child to follow.
The orders "often end up being extensive lists of what the parents want from the child…. The focus is more on ordering the child to follow the rules than on providing services to remedy the problem." The court typically orders that a child do the following:
- attend school regularly with no unexcused absences, tardies or behavior problems;
obtain a drug and alcohol evaluation and follow treatment recommendations;
obtain a mental health evaluation;
submit to random urinalysis;
neither use nor possess non-prescribed drugs or alcohol;
obey a curfew;
enroll in and attend individual and family counseling;
reside with parents or in another court-approved placement;
have no contact with people the parent disapproves of;
refrain from physical or verbal abuse;
and refrain from the use of profanity.
In some instances the court literally micromanages the child’s day. In one case, the commissioner ordered a child to be in his room and in bed by 9 p.m. or risk incarceration.
The statute provides that the court "may order the parent to participate in counseling services or any other services for the child requiring parental participation." Parents are rarely ordered to do more than attend family counseling (and sometimes the court does not require this), enroll the child in school, and refrain from physically or verbally abusing the child.
Perhaps because the statute requires the parents to pay for services, the court is usually reluctant to order the parent to attend parenting classes. Thus a commissioner refused to order a father to attend anger management classes even though he admitted to getting so angry at his child that he knew he frightened the child and he had indicated his willingness to attend the classes.
In truancy proceedings, the court may order a child to attend school or drug and alcohol treatment. While the statute provides that the court may punish a child or parent who fails to comply with the court order (evidence of which the school district must present), the statute does not give the court authority to order the school to provide services to the child.
Instead, the statute authorizes the court to order the child to attend the same or a different school, or alternative school program. Thus, if a school has suspended a child, the court can order the child to attend school but cannot order the school to reinstate the child.
Some ARY, CHINS and truant children receive no services even when they are court-ordered to participate in them, as the statute does not entitle children or parents to any services. While the court may order psychological assessments, drug and alcohol treatment or other services, the court cannot provide these services to a child. Thus, the child is dependent on the parent to pay for and arrange services.
If a parent is indigent or unable to access services, the child may not receive the help he or she needs. If resources are available, the state may provide a family with up to 15 free hours of Family Reconciliation Services counseling. This is a very valuable resource according to many families, and is sometimes effective in helping families work through problems.
Contempt Provisions
If a child violates a court order, the court can jail the child for contempt. In truancies, as well as ARYs and CHINS, the court may jail the child for up to seven days for failing to follow the court order. Neither RCW 13.32A.250(1) nor RCW 28A.225.090(2) provides for the standard of proof, but both simply use the language "failure to comply with court order." The statute does not explicitly provide that the school should bring the contempt motion, but the practice is that the school does so. In ARY and CHINS cases, the statute provides that "a parent, a child" (among other parties) may bring a motion for contempt for failure to comply with the terms of the court order.
Although the language of the statute clearly limits the incarceration of a child to seven days, it is the practice of some juvenile court commissioners to jail children "indefinitely" until the child "convinces the court" that he or she will comply with the court order. Because the "conditions of supervision" are broad and often include extensive rules for a child to follow, a child may be jailed frequently and for minor infractions. For example, children have been jailed for swearing at their parents or being late for curfew.
Although the statute authorizes the court to hold a parent in contempt for failure to follow the court order, parents are rarely held in contempt. Children often are reluctant to ask that their parent be held in contempt or even to provide negative information to the court about their parents.
The ARY and CHINS proceedings have been established to "empower parents." As a result, the process disempowers children, sometimes even providing a means for their further victimization. A child who knows that his or her parent may jail him or her for violation of a rule is especially reluctant to disclose information of abuse because the child fears retribution from the parent. For example, a child who was jailed for running away from home in an ARY matter confided in her attorney that her parent was physically abusive — beating both her and her mother.
This child refused, however, to allow her attorney to provide the court with this information or to file a contempt motion because she was distrustful of a court that had previously jailed her for running away from home.
In a truancy case, only after a child was jailed for failing to comply with the order to attend school did she reveal to her attorney that the mother’s boyfriend battered her mother. The boyfriend, who apparently had beaten the mother so severely that her eyes were swollen shut for a week, had attended the school truancy conference at which school personnel wondered why the child was reportedly staying out so late at night that she could not wake up in time to take the hour-long bus ride across town to get to school. This child naturally enough felt unable to tell anyone at the conference that she was not comfortable staying home because of her mother’s live-in abusive boyfriend.
Although the statute states that children and parents should be treated equally for the purposes of contempt, parents are rarely held in contempt. In the rare instance that a parent is held in contempt, the parent is asked to pay a small fine. In the authors’ experience, the court has never jailed the parent for contempt in one of these cases.
Problems Children Face
Although some children who are subject to ARY, CHINS and truancy orders may simply be engaging in expected and obnoxious teenage behaviors because they are struggling to find their identity as individuals, other children in this group are in need of help because of inadequate parenting and unhealthy family dynamics. Many of the children who are in dire need of help have been sexually and/or physically abused.
Indeed, "young people who are in the juvenile justice system, in runaway or homeless shelters, or in foster care all report having experienced extremely high rates of sexual or physical abuse during their childhood years." Children who run away from home are often trying to escape this abuse.
A survey reported in 1994 by Seattle’s Coalition for Kids and Families (now Youthcare) showed that 35 percent of runaways in King County reported that they ran from physical abuse and would return home if the abuse stopped. Twenty-six percent of the children in the survey reported that their parents had kicked them out. Twenty-five percent reported sexual abuse either by a parent or by someone else. According to Dr. Robert Dysher, former director of Adolescent Medicine at the University of Washington, "I’ve been working with street kids for 30 years, and I have seen very, very few of these kids who come from really good homes with care and affection run away… these are homes and kids who’ve grown up in situations which most of us would feel were absolutely intolerable."
In addition to abuse, inadequate parenting is the cause of many problems that affect these youth. The ARY or CHINS cases in which parents allege that their children are "[beyond parental control] often reflect unreasonable rules and demands made by parents who themselves need counseling more than the youngsters…and even more reflect inadequate skills in parenting." Indeed, studies indicate that youth who are engaged in risky behaviors such as skipping school, substance abuse, or other acting-out behaviors often have parents who lack nurturance, attention, supervision, understanding and caring.
In one case, a young girl who is the subject of an ARY petition returned to her mother’s home one year ago after spending most of her life in foster care. This child’s mother is a recovering alcoholic who abused and neglected the child for most of her life. The child suffers from the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome as a result of her mother’s drinking. The mother continues to abuse the child by calling her names, hitting her and kicking her. The child now is faced with incarceration for running away from home.
The problems of parental abuse and inadequate parenting also affect truant children in some instances. Additionally, many of these children do not attend school because school is not meeting their needs. "Few youths are habitually truant just for the fun of it…they are truant because they can no longer endure the frustration, the criticism, the humiliation of sitting day after day in classes where they can’t possibly succeed, can’t understand what is being discussed and probably can’t even read the assignment."
Incarceration Increases Children’s Problems
The problems of ARY, CHINS and truant children are often exacerbated by incarceration. "The child who repeatedly runs away from an unhappy home situation, though having committed no offense, is all too easily sent to jail by a frustrated judge who has no other resources at hand…the very policies meant for the protection of these children sometimes hurt these children."
First, ARY, CHINS and truant children are jailed alongside children who have committed offenses (the equivalent of crimes in the adult world) or who are awaiting trial for alleged offenses. Most runaways and truant children do not commit crimes. While some parents and school officials think that the experience of jailing their children with criminal children will "scare them straight," incarceration often exacerbates the problems children face rather than alleviates them. ARY, CHINS and truant children who are incarcerated form relationships with offender youth and sometimes learn patterns of criminal behavior while in jail. For example, one 13-year-old girl who was jailed for running away from home met her boyfriend in detention, a 16-year-old boy who was awaiting trial for a felony charge.
Second, while incarcerated, ARY, CHINS and truant children may not have access to education. When ARY, CHINS and truant children in King County are jailed, they first go into an intake unit and are not sent to classes. Children frequently miss one or two days of school when they are incarcerated. Even if these children eventually leave the intake unit and receive access to education during their incarceration, their special-education needs are usually not met. Generally, detention staff does not receive a child’s special-education records before they are released.
Third, incarceration is often stigmatizing and negatively affects a child’s view of him- or herself. "Being treated like a prisoner reinforces a child’s negative self-image. Even after release, a juvenile may be labeled as a criminal in his [or her] community as a result of his or her jailing, a stigma which can continue for a long period." For a child who has already suffered from abuse, this stigmatization can be especially debilitating.
Concerns for Hitchhikers
With the Becca Bill’s demands for all people coming into contact with runaways to report them immediately, a new under the table policy was born. This policy deemed "don't ask, don't tell" was constructed as a backdoor way for youth service workers as well as street workers to continue to work with vagrant adolescents without having to report them. Basically, you don’t ask if they ran away and they don’t tell you that they ran away. This "loophole" has yet to be contested in court and is thus quite reliable.
If you wind up hitching around Washington with a runaway in tow and you get mixed up with the police, your simple plea of ignorance should get you through, just be polite and courteous and say the following: "Yah know I just wanted to help the kid out, I had no idea he / she ran away from home, I didn’t ask and he / she didn’t tell me."
Unfortunately its not going to be a nice road for your young companion. They will probably be detained immediately if their family or the state has reported them as "runaway" and they will be sent to the nearest CRC with a big Becca welcome wagon waiting for them at the entrance. The system is not a pretty one, and it could take years before they finally work there way through the maze.
Unfortunately this is the sad reality hundreds of Washington's young and troubled have to deal with everyday. Whatever happened to American Civil Rights? Oh, I forgot, those don't matter unless your over 18 and part of the groove that is conformed obedience.
SPOKANE, Wash. — F-Trooper died as he had lived, with a cigarette in one hand and a can of Schmidt's Ice beer in the other. They found him when the Montana Rail Link pulled into the repair shop. F-Trooper was sitting there in one of the boxcars as he so often had before — except this time he had five bullets in his head.
Police had little to go on: A blood-spattered cardboard 12-pack between Tracks 3 and 4. Bloody footprints in the boxcar. Some spent shell casings. A tattoo on F-Trooper that said "F.T.R.A."
It is a symbol that has become an unnerving part of the railroad landscape across the West, where the mysterious brotherhood known as the Freight Train Riders of America has gained a foothold in the world of switching yards, bridge underpasses and boxcars — the realm of the American hobo for more than a century.
Concentrated in the Northwest along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe's 1,500-mile High Line between Seattle and Minneapolis, the FTRA claims at least 1,000 itinerant train riders who police believe could be responsible for hundreds of deaths, assaults and thefts along American rail lines over the past two decades.
Police say F-Trooper, a rail-riding nickname for 30-year-old hobo Joseph Perrigo, died when a fellow FTRA member exacted revenge for an earlier confrontation. The list of potential witnesses for the upcoming trial reads like a Who's Who of the modern American rails: Moose. Hotshot. Desert Rat. Muskrat. Pennsylvania Pollack.
The fact that there's going to be a trial at all in the May 1996 slaying represents something of an exception in law enforcement's long-running battle with the gang, whose exploits usually produce witnesses who disappear on the next train, a crime scene that travels from Spokane to Klamath Falls, a victim found dead in the middle of the prairie next to a set of railroad tracks, leaving no known address and an age-old question: Did he jump or was he pushed?
"They're a criminal element that can do just about anything," said Spokane Police Detective Bob Grandinetti, who has compiled an exhaustive data base on the FTRA. "You get two or three of them together, they'll roll a guy over and push him off the train. You're moving at 50 or 60 miles an hour, what do you think your chances are? We're finding bodies like that all over the country."
Law enforcement officials say the group, launched by a cadre of Vietnam War veterans in a Montana bar in the 1980s, is composed primarily of white men, many with racist sympathies symbolized in the swastikas and lightning bolts that often accompany FTRA graffiti. The group, authorities say, has terrorized other train tramps, set up rail lines out of Texas as drug-running corridors and run a massive food stamp scam by filing thousands of fraudulent welfare applications at cities along virtually every train stop in the nation.
"There are 70 to 90 deaths a year (along the rail lines) all over the country," Grandinetti says. "Sure, some are natural causes. Some are accidents. But some aren't. And the problem is, the suspects and all the witnesses disappear."
"Everybody in the country's in the same spot," said Saginaw, Texas, police detective James Neale. He has unsuccessfully pursued a suspected FTRA member who he believes tortured and murdered a transient at knifepoint, stuffing the body on a train.
"These people, they fall through the cracks. They don't live in houses like we do, they don't have cars. ... Our system is not designed for these kinds of people, so they can just ride the rails, they can commit murder and mayhem almost at will."
The fact that a growing number of college students and young professionals are riding the rails for sport has heightened concern about potential conflict with a network of loners — some FTRA, some simply train tramps — who count their possessions as an extra shirt, a sleeping roll and a dog. What, police ask, will happen as weekend "hoppers" pick their way through lonely switching yards into an underground network of the deliberately dispossessed?
"I can see where more Joe Blow Citizen people are going to get injured and hurt," said Salem, Ore., police detective Mike Quakenbush. "Because this riding the trains thing is increasing in popularity, and it's pissing these guys off. They don't like you, they don't like you riding their trains, and if you're not willing to make that whole transition over, then get the hell out."
Their calling cards can be found at almost any railway bridge or overpass in the West, the trademark scrawl of "F.T.R.A.," often accompanied by swastikas or lightning bolts and other common slogans: "STP" for "start the party," "FTW" for "---- the world."
Grandinetti, who started documenting the emergence of the FTRA in the 1980s, said it began with the railroads reporting bodies along the High Line between Spokane and Sandpoint, Idaho, and as far west as Cheney, Wash.
The bodies had their shirts and jackets pulled up around their heads, and their pants pulled down, he recalls. "The first one or two, the railroad was saying, well, he fell off a train and cut his leg and he bled to death," Grandinetti said. "I could buy off on one or two of them. But after the sixth, I said, my God, wait a minute."
About the same time, he said, a freight train derailed west of Spokane after the air line to the rear cars' brakes was cut off. The suspect, who was killed in the crash, was wearing a black bandanna around his neck fastened with a silver ring.
Later, the bandanna would become the trademark of the FTRA — a black one for the original High Line riders, red for the southern corridor, blue for the central United States.
Suddenly, bandannas began figuring in a series of stabbings and beatings.
Railroad officials tend to play down the impact of the FTRA, saying it has not had a major role in official incident reports along rail lines.
"We are aware that this organization exists. We have had minimal encounters with anybody who claims to be a part of this group. We've probably heard more about them than we've actually heard from them," said Jim Sabourin, spokesman for Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
"Some of these people (arrested as transients) sometimes identify themselves as members of this organization, but they don't do anything different than anybody else that takes chances and gets on trains," said Edward Trandahl of Union Pacific.
In a camp near the old rendering plant in Spokane, a thin, weathered man wearing a black bandanna shrugs. "It's just a bunch of guys who ride trains," says the man, who identifies himself as "Sideline."
"It started out as a family thing. It was a brotherhood. They call us racist, but I get on white people same as I do anyone else." The bandanna, he says, is a symbol. "It just means I earned my place. I proved myself. I wasn't a user. I wasn't a taker. I gave. I was a brother.
"Me," he said, "I just don't like people. I prefer to be off by myself. It's hard for me to deal with a job, because I don't take orders well. I don't got a job, but I got what I need. I got a tent, a sleeping bag, a dog. I'm good to go. What do I need with a house, a mortgage, 12 kids running around? I'm not bothering anybody. My camp's clean."
Saturday, September 17, 2011
County still fighting rancher who helps homeless
County still fighting rancher who helps homeless
Friday, September 16, 2011
(09-16) 08:16 PDT San Luis Obispo, Calif. (AP) --
A California rancher who takes in the homeless could lose control of his 72-acre Sunny Acres property because authorities say he's violating health and safety laws.
But 68-year-old Dan De Vaul, who operates a nonprofit sober living program on the ranch, insists he has met terms of a San Luis Obispo County court order requiring him to move tenants out of illegal buildings and supply safe drinking water.
The San Luis Obispo County Tribune ( http://bit.ly/qBF1ya) says a judge on Thursday scheduled an Oct. 20 hearing. The county is expected to argue for a court-appointed receiver.
De Vaul says he is working to get permits for a new 14-room housing unit and he fears receivership could lead to a lien and eventual sale of the ranch.
___
Information from: The Tribune, www.sanluisobispo.com
Friday, September 16, 2011
(09-16) 08:16 PDT San Luis Obispo, Calif. (AP) --
A California rancher who takes in the homeless could lose control of his 72-acre Sunny Acres property because authorities say he's violating health and safety laws.
But 68-year-old Dan De Vaul, who operates a nonprofit sober living program on the ranch, insists he has met terms of a San Luis Obispo County court order requiring him to move tenants out of illegal buildings and supply safe drinking water.
The San Luis Obispo County Tribune ( http://bit.ly/qBF1ya) says a judge on Thursday scheduled an Oct. 20 hearing. The county is expected to argue for a court-appointed receiver.
De Vaul says he is working to get permits for a new 14-room housing unit and he fears receivership could lead to a lien and eventual sale of the ranch.
___
Information from: The Tribune, www.sanluisobispo.com
Emperor Norton,
Emperor Norton, zaniest S.F. street character
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Emperor Norton proclaimed himself thus 150 years ago today. Emperor Norton reigned in San Francisco 21 years.
(09-16) 19:43 PDT -- Today marks the 150th anniversary of the accession of Norton I, emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico, unquestioned monarch of all the zany characters who have inhabited the streets of San Francisco.
On Sept. 17, 1859, the San Francisco Bulletin published a notice on an inside page announcing that Joshua Norton, formerly a prominent San Francisco businessman, had proclaimed himself Norton I, "Emperor of these United States." He had acted, he said, "at the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens."
The newspaper notice was the work of an unhinged mind, printed in a moment of caprice by Bulletin Editor George Fitch, but it marked the beginning of the 21-year reign of San Francisco's most beloved character.
Norton followed his first notice with a second proclamation, abolishing Congress because there was too much fraud and corruption. Later, he abolished political parties for the same reason, ordered a bridge to be built from San Francisco to Oakland and carried on a correspondence with other crowned heads.
He reigned over San Francisco as a benign despot, honored everywhere he went.
"Newspapers accepted him as part of the fun of living in San Francisco," wrote John Bruce in "Gaudy Century," a book about San Francisco journalism.
Wined and dined
The emperor dined in any restaurant he chose and was never presented with a bill; the best seats in the theater were reserved for him; he occasionally reviewed the corps of cadets at the University of California; he visited the state Legislature in Sacramento. A general at the Presidio of San Francisco presented him with a uniform and when it wore out, the city supervisors bought him another.
The emperor levied taxes (usually 50 cents) and issued currency and "governmental bonds," all printed by the city's finest printers. Once, he was arrested and nearly packed off to the state insane asylum in Stockton, but he was released with a formal apology and all San Francisco police officers were advised to salute whenever they encountered his majesty.
He had two mutt dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, who followed him about. When Bummer died in 1865, Mark Twain wrote the dog's obituary.
"In what other city," Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "would a harmless madman who supposed himself emperor ... been so fostered and encouraged?"
The emperor's palace was a rooming house at 624 Commercial St., where he paid 50 cents a night for a modest room. He was duly listed in the city directory and in the U.S. census, where his occupation was listed as "emperor."
Norton was not the only street character in San Francisco in the 19th century. There was George Washington II, who wore a Revolutionary War costume; Oofty Goofty, a strange little man who made his living by allowing gents to hit him with a pool cue for 50 cents; the Money King, a celebrated miser; and a mysterious street character who called himself the Great Unknown.
Fortune won and lost
But Norton was the king, the emperor of them all. His story was known to all San Franciscans. He was born in England, came to California in the Gold Rush in 1849 from South Africa, and arrived in San Francisco, where he made a fortune in real estate and business deals and lost it all in an ill-advised attempt to corner the market in imported rice.
Joshua Abraham Norton disappeared for a few years after that to reappear as Norton I.
The emperor dropped dead at the age of 61 one rainy January night in 1880 in front of Old St. Mary's Church on California Street. His funeral cortege was 2 miles long. He was buried at the old Masonic Cemetery and reburied in 1934 at Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma.
Every January, on the Saturday nearest the anniversary of his death, members of E Clampus Vitus, a society that combines a love of drinking with a love of history, makes a pilgrimage to the emperor's grave.
Norton's legacy lives on: There is an Emperor Norton Inn on Post Street and the Emperor Norton Restaurant and Pizza parlor, which features "Bummer's favorite pizza" as its signature dish.
One of the few artifacts of the emperor to survive his reign is his cane, now the property of the California Historical Society. It will be displayed as part of a larger exhibition starting Sept. 25.
Emperor Norton on exhibit
Emperor Norton will be featured in an exhibit by the California Historical Society beginning Sept. 25. The exhibit is called "Think California" and will include seven themes, one of which will spotlight people who migrated to California during the Gold Rush, including Norton, and later.
Where: California Historical Society, 678 Mission St., San Francisco
When: Starts Sept. 25
Admission: $3 adults; $1 seniors, children younger than 6 and students with student identification; free to members.
Hours: Noon to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays
E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/17/MNA019NGBL.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc. | Privacy Policy | Feedback | RSS Feeds | FAQ | Site Index | Contact
Carl Nolte, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Emperor Norton proclaimed himself thus 150 years ago today. Emperor Norton reigned in San Francisco 21 years.
(09-16) 19:43 PDT -- Today marks the 150th anniversary of the accession of Norton I, emperor of the United States and protector of Mexico, unquestioned monarch of all the zany characters who have inhabited the streets of San Francisco.
On Sept. 17, 1859, the San Francisco Bulletin published a notice on an inside page announcing that Joshua Norton, formerly a prominent San Francisco businessman, had proclaimed himself Norton I, "Emperor of these United States." He had acted, he said, "at the peremptory request of a large majority of the citizens."
The newspaper notice was the work of an unhinged mind, printed in a moment of caprice by Bulletin Editor George Fitch, but it marked the beginning of the 21-year reign of San Francisco's most beloved character.
Norton followed his first notice with a second proclamation, abolishing Congress because there was too much fraud and corruption. Later, he abolished political parties for the same reason, ordered a bridge to be built from San Francisco to Oakland and carried on a correspondence with other crowned heads.
He reigned over San Francisco as a benign despot, honored everywhere he went.
"Newspapers accepted him as part of the fun of living in San Francisco," wrote John Bruce in "Gaudy Century," a book about San Francisco journalism.
Wined and dined
The emperor dined in any restaurant he chose and was never presented with a bill; the best seats in the theater were reserved for him; he occasionally reviewed the corps of cadets at the University of California; he visited the state Legislature in Sacramento. A general at the Presidio of San Francisco presented him with a uniform and when it wore out, the city supervisors bought him another.
The emperor levied taxes (usually 50 cents) and issued currency and "governmental bonds," all printed by the city's finest printers. Once, he was arrested and nearly packed off to the state insane asylum in Stockton, but he was released with a formal apology and all San Francisco police officers were advised to salute whenever they encountered his majesty.
He had two mutt dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, who followed him about. When Bummer died in 1865, Mark Twain wrote the dog's obituary.
"In what other city," Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, "would a harmless madman who supposed himself emperor ... been so fostered and encouraged?"
The emperor's palace was a rooming house at 624 Commercial St., where he paid 50 cents a night for a modest room. He was duly listed in the city directory and in the U.S. census, where his occupation was listed as "emperor."
Norton was not the only street character in San Francisco in the 19th century. There was George Washington II, who wore a Revolutionary War costume; Oofty Goofty, a strange little man who made his living by allowing gents to hit him with a pool cue for 50 cents; the Money King, a celebrated miser; and a mysterious street character who called himself the Great Unknown.
Fortune won and lost
But Norton was the king, the emperor of them all. His story was known to all San Franciscans. He was born in England, came to California in the Gold Rush in 1849 from South Africa, and arrived in San Francisco, where he made a fortune in real estate and business deals and lost it all in an ill-advised attempt to corner the market in imported rice.
Joshua Abraham Norton disappeared for a few years after that to reappear as Norton I.
The emperor dropped dead at the age of 61 one rainy January night in 1880 in front of Old St. Mary's Church on California Street. His funeral cortege was 2 miles long. He was buried at the old Masonic Cemetery and reburied in 1934 at Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma.
Every January, on the Saturday nearest the anniversary of his death, members of E Clampus Vitus, a society that combines a love of drinking with a love of history, makes a pilgrimage to the emperor's grave.
Norton's legacy lives on: There is an Emperor Norton Inn on Post Street and the Emperor Norton Restaurant and Pizza parlor, which features "Bummer's favorite pizza" as its signature dish.
One of the few artifacts of the emperor to survive his reign is his cane, now the property of the California Historical Society. It will be displayed as part of a larger exhibition starting Sept. 25.
Emperor Norton on exhibit
Emperor Norton will be featured in an exhibit by the California Historical Society beginning Sept. 25. The exhibit is called "Think California" and will include seven themes, one of which will spotlight people who migrated to California during the Gold Rush, including Norton, and later.
Where: California Historical Society, 678 Mission St., San Francisco
When: Starts Sept. 25
Admission: $3 adults; $1 seniors, children younger than 6 and students with student identification; free to members.
Hours: Noon to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays
E-mail Carl Nolte at cnolte@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/17/MNA019NGBL.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
© 2011 Hearst Communications Inc. | Privacy Policy | Feedback | RSS Feeds | FAQ | Site Index | Contact
The Emporer Norton Part 2
The Madness of Joshua Norton
Part Two
by Joel GAzis-SAx
Copyright 1997 by Joel GAzis-SAx
Emperor of the United States
The Emperor is naked and, for the moment, minus a skull cap and a brain. Dr. William A. Douglass examines the blood-clotted organ and concludes that the cause of death is "sanguineous apoplexy". He reads the measurement off his medical scale -- fifty one ounces -- a bit on the heavy side -- and then carefully removes the organ for replacement in the gaping cranial cavity. His magic saw heals the cuts through the skin and the bone. The disappearing seam sucks up all the blood. He stands back, savoring the moment that is to come: here at last he has on his table the derelict he has been waiting for, Joshua Norton, the man beloved by the City as the democratic nation's absolute monarch. Dr. Douglass plans to keep this brain.
Nineteenth century physicians pulled brains for study whenever they could, straining to explain madness or genius. Earlier in the century, phrenologists studied skulls, giving each bump a meaning. Sometimes they stole an especially coveted specimen.(1) Doctors could only rarely get their hands on a brain and then only if it belonged to a bummer or someone who died under suspect conditions. They weighed, calculated the volume, and evaluated the shape of each prized acquisition. Sloppy thinkers equated brain size and intelligence. Honest souls looked for obvious cracks across the wrinkles or wild growths sprouting from the grey matter. These explained speech impediments, tics, uncontrolled rages, and other behaviors collectively called "madness".
Dr. Douglass, an honest man, would search in vain for clues about why Joshua Norton thought he was an benevolent despot.
In the absence of pathological evidence (this being before the days of electron microscopes, biochemistry, and personality psychology), some would conclude that Norton's madness had been an act. One day, these reasoned, the man decided to pull a little prank and thanks to the gullibility of the populace, got away with it for many years. Norton, they said, found a way to support himself in luxury. USENET Discordians made him a saint for this. Others scorned him as a parasite.
The Emperor Norton died a poor man's death. He'd collapsed at the corner of California and Dupont (now Grant Avenue), dropping his favorite bamboo umbrella into the gutter. He expired on the spot. The date was January 8, 1880. The Saint Mary's clock, just across the street, said eight fifteen. Beneath the dial was the legend "Observe the time and fly away from evil." And so Joshua Norton fled the world.
When the coroners stripped his body of the wrinkled uniform and emptied the pockets, they discovered some telegrams, a coin purse, a two and half dollar gold piece, three dollars in silver, an 1828 French Franc, and a handful of the Imperial bonds he used to sell to tourists at a fictitious 7% interest. The telegrams purported to be from Czar Alexander II, who congratulated him on his forthcoming marriage to Queen Victoria, and from the President of France, who told him that such a union would be disastrous to world peace.
The reporters who sacked his room found several frayed uniforms and hats hanging from tenpenny nails. Lithographs of other royalty, including Queen Victoria, the Empress Eugenie, and Queen Emma of the Sandwich Isles (Hawaii) watched the rape of the Emperor's privacy. The reporters observed his sabre with its silk sash and tassels swinging pendulously from another nail. His Majesty's collection of walking sticks, twisted or carved into fantastic shapes, stood in a corner. The iron cot creaked under them as they sat on it to make notes. Doubtless one smudged his nose as he poked it against the filthy window to gawk at the pedestrians passing below. They rifled through his bedstand, finding letters, telegrams and newspaper clippings. The minutia of the Emperor's secret life was public knowledge once the journalists were finished. They gave the city a last laugh before it sobbed.
The City liked to watch Norton, but few truly knew him. Mark Twain suspected Norton to be deeper than the caricatures of him which appeared in lithographs and postcards. He pitied the man and excoriated Colonel Mustard for ridiculing the Emperor in his syndicated columns. Some who took the time to talk to him discovered him extremely well-read, knowledgeable, and sane, except in the matter of his identity. Most, though, saw him as Amelia Neville, a society woman who never went near the Emperor's fifty-cents a night lodging or the local public libraries, did:
'Emperor' Norton was a favored ward of the town who could dine in any restaurant and imperially ignore the cost, buy theater tickets in any box office with no more than an imperial nod of thanks, and draw checks on San Francisco banks, although he owned not a dollar on earth. By common consent in the banking fraternity, his checks were honored, and he never drew one for more than twenty-five cents through some canny sense of restraint that preserved the imperial privilege. During shopping hours one saw him in Kearney or Montgomery Street, walking toward some destination which I fancy was never reached, his old army uniform and military cap with its rakish feather worn with an air. A sword hung from his sword-belt and he sometimes carried a short, knotted stick which might have been a scepter. The whole town knew him.(2)
Legends about the pauper emperor abound. Chief among these is one repeated by sentimental San Francisco historians: the acceptance of Norton I shows a long history of toleration in the Misty City.
Emperor Norton was just one of the enchanting madmen let to entertain the masses. Professor Willie Coombs, the King of Pain, the Great Unknown, and the Little Drummer Boy all attracted the attention of journalists, cartoonists, and diarists during his lifetime. The people preferred to love rather than incarcerate these crackpots. Once, when the police did detain Norton for lunacy, the whole city rebelled and it was only the Emperor's quick release by Chief Patrick Crowley that quieted the public ire.(3)
What optimistic San Franciscan historians say about the metropolis' legacy of sufferance is nearly true as far as harmless male lunatics are concerned. The same public had no trouble putting away Sarah Althea Hill, who'd claimed she'd secretly married Senator William Sharon and then married her quick-tempered lawyer, David S. Terry(4). Nor did it refrain from speaking ill of African-American businesswoman Mary Pleasants. ("Colonel Mustard" once tried to defame Mark Twain by saying that he'd been seen walking arm in arm with Peter Anderson, a prominent African American newspaperman.) San Francisco was a place where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews lived without religious strife from the time of the Civil War to World War II. And in the infamous Barbary Coast, you could get it just about any way you wanted it, free of petty interruptions by civic authorities. But as Robert W. Cherny observes, its record of attacks against the Chinese and the Japanese and its ruthless suppression of the Workingman's Party, the Communists, and maritime unions, do not make for a city founded on brotherly love and allowance for differences.(5) To his list, we should also add the activities of the 1856 Vigilantes against Irish-American politicians.
Norton, himself, was not universally privileged. He petitioned the city's fine hotels for suitable accomodations. They ignored him. He lived in a rudely furnished room that cost him fifty cents a night which he paid for out of the proceeds from his begging. Railroads, steamships, and cable cars gave him free passage, but tailors refused his commands to make him a wardrobe and banks would not give him money. You could hardly expect to find him at High Society functions, though cultured ladies might giggle about him behind their fans and gentlemen might banter about his latest proclamation. A few clubs allowed him use of their reading rooms and some saloons let him eat at their free lunch counters. The city made money off him as a tourist attraction, but gave him very little in return. His lot was little better than those of any other derelict.
People laughed at the Emperor Norton. His later life in the city reads like one long joke punctuated by champagne-choked laughter. Much of the town was in on the jest and played along with Norton's madness as long as it did not indebt them. Cheap gifts like the day-old carnation boutinierre he received from a flower vendor each morning bought the givers the right to mirthful indulgence and a little extra business.(6)
The stories people still tell about him emphasize his unpredictableness. While his proclamations betray a complex, analytical man (though still mad), Norton's biographers (who often merely string together anecdotes -- William Drury is the notable exception) make pointed efforts to make us smile at him. For some, like David Warren Ryder, he is at once the model of far-sighted tolerance and comic intolerance, a predecessor of the USENET "anti-politically correct" hero who nevertheless loves all humanity. These stories confound the search for truth about the Emperor, creating a life story for the man based mostly on jokes and other bits of folk lore. When we look at Norton, we must recall the role that journalists had in creating the myth. His proclamations were published in newspapers. Newspapermen made up some of the stories and rumors about him. A caricaturist gave him a pair of dogs which he depised in real life. Sometimes, they made him say things he had never intended. Looking back at his literary achievements -- the proclamations -- we sometimes suspect that a hand other than that of Joshua Norton of using the mad King for his own purposes. To this day, his champions are the puppetmasters and Norton the marionette.
Mark Twain hated those -- especially "Colonel Mustard" (Arthur Evans) -- who belittled Norton. Twain worked next door to Norton's pathetic flophouse and saw the man nearly every day. Later in life, Twain hinted to others something of the torment that Joshua Norton suffered Bummer and Lazarusand the cruelty others showed him. Upon hearing of the Emperor's death, Twain wrote to his editor, William Howells, suggesting that the Emperor would make a fine subject for a book. And a fit of writer's block removed itself and Twain was able to complete two novels: Huckleberry Finn which featured a lost Dauphin and The Prince and the Pauper, a story of confused identities. Through these, he paid homage to the man he'd known.
But most who remember and love the Emperor post-mortemly, love a myth.
Ryder shares two stories illustrating two popularly fashioned poles of Norton's character. In the first, Norton comes across a meeting of Sand-Lotters while walking "his dogs" near Chinatown. The speaker breaks his racist tirade against the Chinese to allow a bit of comic relief: he lets the Emperor say a few words:
There was a roar of laughter from the crowd as Emperor Norton, with some difficulty, got up on the big box. But the laughter was short-lived. The Emperor, steadying himself with his heavy cane, closed his eyes and commenced reciting the Lord's Prayer. Even the hoodlums were silent, and when he asked the audience to repeat the Prayer with him, some of them joined in. For a moment or two after the final "Amen," the Emperor stood silent before a hushed audience. Then he made a little speech of his own -- about the virtue of brotherly love; and the necessity of men living amicably together. Meantime, the sand-lot orator, sensing the changed temper of the crowd, had...slipped away. And when the Emperor ended with the declaration that "we are all God's children," and requested the crowd to disperse, it did so quickly and without dissent.(7)
Ryder's parable leaves out what motivated the Sand-Lotters. During the 1850s and 1860s, San Francisco had been a working man's paradise. Everyone enjoyed a good wage. Then as the labor pool increased, wages fell and robber barons like Leland Stanford (whom Ambrose Bierce called Stealin' Landford or £eland $tanford) and his three partners found cheaper sources of labor in China. The Sandlotters displaced their hatred of the Big Four onto the Chinese. The Chinese suffered doubly from white racism: they died, maimed themselves, or broke their health in the capitalists' tunnels and were beaten by white rowdies who wanted their jobs at a better wage. In their defense, the Sandlotters turned on the Chinese only after it proved impossible to dislodge their employers. Racism was a tool the Sand-Lotters exploited to advance the aim of bringing back the workingman's paradise that had once existed. As told by Ryder, Norton's call for brotherly love omits the need for the Nabobs -- those who hire others -- to show a little brotherly love themselves and to give their employees a fair share of the profits which will allow them, white, yellow or black, to realize their dreams.
The other story shows the Emperor as a guardian of the sexual social order and a foil to progressives. Ryder has Norton invited by the chairman of a meeting on Women's Suffrage to speak on the topic of the day. The Emperor proceeds to deliver a three-minute oration against women's suffrage. Ryder, prefiguring anti-political correctness, pokes male chauvinist fun at the speaker (who he names "Miss Bland from Boston") and invents a predictable scene of wild havoc in which the chairman is humiliated, the speaker is not amused, and the audience hostile because she does not respect the Emperor.(8)
Undoubtably, the Emperor was capable of innocent disruption. Many details, however, sound as if they came out of the minds of bored reporters or men who'd had a few drinks. Norton's written legacy can also set us to wondering what is the work of the Emperor and what was written for him.
Let us go back to the beginning of Norton's lunacy and reverse the wheels of our consideration. The date is September 17, 1859, a day of mourning in the City. The town has hung black crepe and gathered in Portsmouth Square to listen to E.D. Baker's eulogy of Senator David Broderick, felled by the bullet of David S. Terry. Slavery and states rights have led to bloodshed. The odd man who many have seen walking the streets mounts the stairs of the Bulletin and announces to the reporter he finds there that he has a solution for the nation's troubles: he will be its Emperor. How very simple! Just say the words and it is done! Many wished for the power to right the nation's wrongs and set it back on the course of peace again. The reporter knows that it is not so easy, but Lord knows this town -- battered as it was through the 1850s by the fires, the riots, the lynchings, and now this assassination -- needs a laugh. The next day the Bulletin prints the Emperor's first proclamation under the question "Have We an Emperor Among Us?"
The Emperor proceeds to abolish Congress, call on the Army to enforce his edicts, and assert his absolute authority over the country. In 1862, after the Fredericksburg disaster and the Emancipation Proclamation, he fires Abraham Lincoln.(9) It is easy to imagine other men, themselves frustrated by events in the east where men are slaughtering men in the cornfields, who dream their own dreams of peace and resolution of the nation's impasses. Joshua Norton empitomizes a desire to set things right during the nation's most violent period. He thinks that somehow we have to come up with a way for both the free North and the slaveholding South to be right. The idea is lunacy because, as Lincoln observed, a house divided against itself cannot stand and a nation in which some states use free labor and some use slaves, free men could not rest easy as long as a leisure class "earned" its living through coerced, wageless labor. Oblivious to the political reality and the necessity of ending slavery for the sake of free commerce and a clear democratic conscience, the Emperor makes a point of alternatively wearing Union blue and rebel gray, to symbolize his reconciling dominion over all Americans.
African-Americans win the franchise in 1865, so Norton accepts their citizenship. He designates Peter Anderson's Pacific Appeal, an African-American owned weekly, as his royal gazette. Norton spends the post Civil War years hawking his bonds, railing against forgers, demanding the treatment due to a man of his rank, proposing technical innovations, championing a national religion, and bludgeoning titans of California commerce and politics like Leland Stanford. Not all the proclamations that appear in his name come from the Emperor's pen. He complains about this, but the power to stop it eludes him. His name and his image are in the public domain. Some use him as a butt of jokes. Others employ him to advance their own ideas. We cannot be sure, for example, which of the many Bay Bridge proclamations he authored. One has the clear interests of the City of Oakland at heart: he evinces the wish that the cities of San Francisco and Oakland "shall be neighborly, but view each other afar off." This proposes a landfill halfway across the Bay, keeping Oakland in the chips as the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. Another is sheer lunacy: Norton wants bridges to Goat Island, Sausalito and the Farallons! Both these 1869 proclamations, which appeared in Oakland papers, may have been the work of Oakland boosters, expropriating the cherished pen of San Francisco's leading derelict for a little civic hazing. In 1872, a new command calls for a bridge linking Goat Island to Oakland and to Telegraph Hill. (10) After he libels a land developer, Anderson drops him from the pages of the Appeal and he is reduced to badgering tourists to buy his bonds until he suffers a stroke in Chinatown.
Having arrived again at the figure of the Emperor collapsing on the sidewalk, our historical engine squeals to a stop and beats a hasty retreat back to the beginning of Emperor Norton's story, when a ruined businessman decides his is royal blood and proceeds to solve the nation's problems. If Emperor Norton ever regains his sanity during our third passage over this ground; if he's sane and the thought ever occurs to him to give him his Imperial charade, doubtless he finds he cannot! The town accepts him only as a madman and a dupe. It would not take him back as a Mason, allow him to run for office, or conduct business. Mad or not, Joshua Norton finds himself the prisoner of the town. The pauper king can do nothing in life to prevent himself from being used without profit to himself any more than he can prevent Dr. Douglass from stealing his brain in death.
Notes:
(1)Josef Haydn's head was separated from his body by an eager gravedigger and remained so until 1954. The expert declared that the "bumps of music" were especially well-developed on the composer's skull. [Return]
(2)Neville, Amelia Ransome, The Fantastic City,1932, p.155. [Return]
(3)Drury, p. 125. Norton I ran afoul of a hotel bouncer at an early version of the Palace where he naturally presumed he was entitled to service. A local police officer (one paid by neighborhood property owners to keep the peace, not a civic authority) arrested the Emperor and hauled him down to Portsmouth Square on charges of vagrancy. The booking officer pointed out that Norton I lived in a lodging house and had $4.75 in his pocket: technically, he was not a vagrant. The special, one Armand Barbier, scratched his cheek and then resounding declared a new reason for arresting his Imperial Majesty: the Emperor was of unsound mind and therefore a danger to himself and to others. Officer William Martin had no reply to this. He booked Norton pending examination by the Commissioner of Lunacy. Chief Patrick Crowley saw to it that the hearing was never held. [Return]
(4)The same David S. Terry who shot Senator David Broderick in 1859. [Return]
(5)Cherny, Robert W., "Patterns of Toleration and Discrimination in San Francisco", California History, Summer 1994, p. 133. [Return]
(6)Not everyone went along with the joke. Norton's Chinese laundryman refused to do his Imperial Highness' wash for free. (A friend secretly paid for it.) And the great hotels even had the effrontery to throw him out of their dining rooms and refuse him lodging. Norton did not have his way with everything. [Return]
(7)David Warren Ryder, Emperor Norton, pp. 28-29. Incidentally, the sand lot riots did not take place until 1877. Bummer, the last of the two mutts to have passed to the great beyond, died in 1865. [Return]
(8)Ryder, pp. 31-2. Ryder does not footnote either of his stories. [Return]
(9)Drury, p. 89 thinks that this particular proclamation may have been a hoax "perpetrated not by Albert Evans, who stoutly supported Lincoln, but by a Democrat...or a Southerner who thought that a Democrat in the White House might be more sympathetic to the South's economic needs." Drury forgets, however, Norton's proclamation scolding Governor Wise for hanging John Brown. Norton's beef is that Wise made Brown a martyr instead of a lunatic. And when he announces Wise's retirement, he chooses John Breckenridge, the 1860 Whig alternative to Abraham Lincoln as Wise's replacement. [Return]
(10)Norton's most sympathetic boosters want this to be the one and only genuine article. If so, they run into the problem that the credit for the Bay Bridge idea belongs to some unknown poet in Oakland. [Return]
Proceed to the Third Part: Back into the Womb
Return to the First Part: Remembering Norton
Consult the Bibliography
Click on the inlined images for additional text and pictures
Part Two
by Joel GAzis-SAx
Copyright 1997 by Joel GAzis-SAx
Emperor of the United States
The Emperor is naked and, for the moment, minus a skull cap and a brain. Dr. William A. Douglass examines the blood-clotted organ and concludes that the cause of death is "sanguineous apoplexy". He reads the measurement off his medical scale -- fifty one ounces -- a bit on the heavy side -- and then carefully removes the organ for replacement in the gaping cranial cavity. His magic saw heals the cuts through the skin and the bone. The disappearing seam sucks up all the blood. He stands back, savoring the moment that is to come: here at last he has on his table the derelict he has been waiting for, Joshua Norton, the man beloved by the City as the democratic nation's absolute monarch. Dr. Douglass plans to keep this brain.
Nineteenth century physicians pulled brains for study whenever they could, straining to explain madness or genius. Earlier in the century, phrenologists studied skulls, giving each bump a meaning. Sometimes they stole an especially coveted specimen.(1) Doctors could only rarely get their hands on a brain and then only if it belonged to a bummer or someone who died under suspect conditions. They weighed, calculated the volume, and evaluated the shape of each prized acquisition. Sloppy thinkers equated brain size and intelligence. Honest souls looked for obvious cracks across the wrinkles or wild growths sprouting from the grey matter. These explained speech impediments, tics, uncontrolled rages, and other behaviors collectively called "madness".
Dr. Douglass, an honest man, would search in vain for clues about why Joshua Norton thought he was an benevolent despot.
In the absence of pathological evidence (this being before the days of electron microscopes, biochemistry, and personality psychology), some would conclude that Norton's madness had been an act. One day, these reasoned, the man decided to pull a little prank and thanks to the gullibility of the populace, got away with it for many years. Norton, they said, found a way to support himself in luxury. USENET Discordians made him a saint for this. Others scorned him as a parasite.
The Emperor Norton died a poor man's death. He'd collapsed at the corner of California and Dupont (now Grant Avenue), dropping his favorite bamboo umbrella into the gutter. He expired on the spot. The date was January 8, 1880. The Saint Mary's clock, just across the street, said eight fifteen. Beneath the dial was the legend "Observe the time and fly away from evil." And so Joshua Norton fled the world.
When the coroners stripped his body of the wrinkled uniform and emptied the pockets, they discovered some telegrams, a coin purse, a two and half dollar gold piece, three dollars in silver, an 1828 French Franc, and a handful of the Imperial bonds he used to sell to tourists at a fictitious 7% interest. The telegrams purported to be from Czar Alexander II, who congratulated him on his forthcoming marriage to Queen Victoria, and from the President of France, who told him that such a union would be disastrous to world peace.
The reporters who sacked his room found several frayed uniforms and hats hanging from tenpenny nails. Lithographs of other royalty, including Queen Victoria, the Empress Eugenie, and Queen Emma of the Sandwich Isles (Hawaii) watched the rape of the Emperor's privacy. The reporters observed his sabre with its silk sash and tassels swinging pendulously from another nail. His Majesty's collection of walking sticks, twisted or carved into fantastic shapes, stood in a corner. The iron cot creaked under them as they sat on it to make notes. Doubtless one smudged his nose as he poked it against the filthy window to gawk at the pedestrians passing below. They rifled through his bedstand, finding letters, telegrams and newspaper clippings. The minutia of the Emperor's secret life was public knowledge once the journalists were finished. They gave the city a last laugh before it sobbed.
The City liked to watch Norton, but few truly knew him. Mark Twain suspected Norton to be deeper than the caricatures of him which appeared in lithographs and postcards. He pitied the man and excoriated Colonel Mustard for ridiculing the Emperor in his syndicated columns. Some who took the time to talk to him discovered him extremely well-read, knowledgeable, and sane, except in the matter of his identity. Most, though, saw him as Amelia Neville, a society woman who never went near the Emperor's fifty-cents a night lodging or the local public libraries, did:
'Emperor' Norton was a favored ward of the town who could dine in any restaurant and imperially ignore the cost, buy theater tickets in any box office with no more than an imperial nod of thanks, and draw checks on San Francisco banks, although he owned not a dollar on earth. By common consent in the banking fraternity, his checks were honored, and he never drew one for more than twenty-five cents through some canny sense of restraint that preserved the imperial privilege. During shopping hours one saw him in Kearney or Montgomery Street, walking toward some destination which I fancy was never reached, his old army uniform and military cap with its rakish feather worn with an air. A sword hung from his sword-belt and he sometimes carried a short, knotted stick which might have been a scepter. The whole town knew him.(2)
Legends about the pauper emperor abound. Chief among these is one repeated by sentimental San Francisco historians: the acceptance of Norton I shows a long history of toleration in the Misty City.
Emperor Norton was just one of the enchanting madmen let to entertain the masses. Professor Willie Coombs, the King of Pain, the Great Unknown, and the Little Drummer Boy all attracted the attention of journalists, cartoonists, and diarists during his lifetime. The people preferred to love rather than incarcerate these crackpots. Once, when the police did detain Norton for lunacy, the whole city rebelled and it was only the Emperor's quick release by Chief Patrick Crowley that quieted the public ire.(3)
What optimistic San Franciscan historians say about the metropolis' legacy of sufferance is nearly true as far as harmless male lunatics are concerned. The same public had no trouble putting away Sarah Althea Hill, who'd claimed she'd secretly married Senator William Sharon and then married her quick-tempered lawyer, David S. Terry(4). Nor did it refrain from speaking ill of African-American businesswoman Mary Pleasants. ("Colonel Mustard" once tried to defame Mark Twain by saying that he'd been seen walking arm in arm with Peter Anderson, a prominent African American newspaperman.) San Francisco was a place where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews lived without religious strife from the time of the Civil War to World War II. And in the infamous Barbary Coast, you could get it just about any way you wanted it, free of petty interruptions by civic authorities. But as Robert W. Cherny observes, its record of attacks against the Chinese and the Japanese and its ruthless suppression of the Workingman's Party, the Communists, and maritime unions, do not make for a city founded on brotherly love and allowance for differences.(5) To his list, we should also add the activities of the 1856 Vigilantes against Irish-American politicians.
Norton, himself, was not universally privileged. He petitioned the city's fine hotels for suitable accomodations. They ignored him. He lived in a rudely furnished room that cost him fifty cents a night which he paid for out of the proceeds from his begging. Railroads, steamships, and cable cars gave him free passage, but tailors refused his commands to make him a wardrobe and banks would not give him money. You could hardly expect to find him at High Society functions, though cultured ladies might giggle about him behind their fans and gentlemen might banter about his latest proclamation. A few clubs allowed him use of their reading rooms and some saloons let him eat at their free lunch counters. The city made money off him as a tourist attraction, but gave him very little in return. His lot was little better than those of any other derelict.
People laughed at the Emperor Norton. His later life in the city reads like one long joke punctuated by champagne-choked laughter. Much of the town was in on the jest and played along with Norton's madness as long as it did not indebt them. Cheap gifts like the day-old carnation boutinierre he received from a flower vendor each morning bought the givers the right to mirthful indulgence and a little extra business.(6)
The stories people still tell about him emphasize his unpredictableness. While his proclamations betray a complex, analytical man (though still mad), Norton's biographers (who often merely string together anecdotes -- William Drury is the notable exception) make pointed efforts to make us smile at him. For some, like David Warren Ryder, he is at once the model of far-sighted tolerance and comic intolerance, a predecessor of the USENET "anti-politically correct" hero who nevertheless loves all humanity. These stories confound the search for truth about the Emperor, creating a life story for the man based mostly on jokes and other bits of folk lore. When we look at Norton, we must recall the role that journalists had in creating the myth. His proclamations were published in newspapers. Newspapermen made up some of the stories and rumors about him. A caricaturist gave him a pair of dogs which he depised in real life. Sometimes, they made him say things he had never intended. Looking back at his literary achievements -- the proclamations -- we sometimes suspect that a hand other than that of Joshua Norton of using the mad King for his own purposes. To this day, his champions are the puppetmasters and Norton the marionette.
Mark Twain hated those -- especially "Colonel Mustard" (Arthur Evans) -- who belittled Norton. Twain worked next door to Norton's pathetic flophouse and saw the man nearly every day. Later in life, Twain hinted to others something of the torment that Joshua Norton suffered Bummer and Lazarusand the cruelty others showed him. Upon hearing of the Emperor's death, Twain wrote to his editor, William Howells, suggesting that the Emperor would make a fine subject for a book. And a fit of writer's block removed itself and Twain was able to complete two novels: Huckleberry Finn which featured a lost Dauphin and The Prince and the Pauper, a story of confused identities. Through these, he paid homage to the man he'd known.
But most who remember and love the Emperor post-mortemly, love a myth.
Ryder shares two stories illustrating two popularly fashioned poles of Norton's character. In the first, Norton comes across a meeting of Sand-Lotters while walking "his dogs" near Chinatown. The speaker breaks his racist tirade against the Chinese to allow a bit of comic relief: he lets the Emperor say a few words:
There was a roar of laughter from the crowd as Emperor Norton, with some difficulty, got up on the big box. But the laughter was short-lived. The Emperor, steadying himself with his heavy cane, closed his eyes and commenced reciting the Lord's Prayer. Even the hoodlums were silent, and when he asked the audience to repeat the Prayer with him, some of them joined in. For a moment or two after the final "Amen," the Emperor stood silent before a hushed audience. Then he made a little speech of his own -- about the virtue of brotherly love; and the necessity of men living amicably together. Meantime, the sand-lot orator, sensing the changed temper of the crowd, had...slipped away. And when the Emperor ended with the declaration that "we are all God's children," and requested the crowd to disperse, it did so quickly and without dissent.(7)
Ryder's parable leaves out what motivated the Sand-Lotters. During the 1850s and 1860s, San Francisco had been a working man's paradise. Everyone enjoyed a good wage. Then as the labor pool increased, wages fell and robber barons like Leland Stanford (whom Ambrose Bierce called Stealin' Landford or £eland $tanford) and his three partners found cheaper sources of labor in China. The Sandlotters displaced their hatred of the Big Four onto the Chinese. The Chinese suffered doubly from white racism: they died, maimed themselves, or broke their health in the capitalists' tunnels and were beaten by white rowdies who wanted their jobs at a better wage. In their defense, the Sandlotters turned on the Chinese only after it proved impossible to dislodge their employers. Racism was a tool the Sand-Lotters exploited to advance the aim of bringing back the workingman's paradise that had once existed. As told by Ryder, Norton's call for brotherly love omits the need for the Nabobs -- those who hire others -- to show a little brotherly love themselves and to give their employees a fair share of the profits which will allow them, white, yellow or black, to realize their dreams.
The other story shows the Emperor as a guardian of the sexual social order and a foil to progressives. Ryder has Norton invited by the chairman of a meeting on Women's Suffrage to speak on the topic of the day. The Emperor proceeds to deliver a three-minute oration against women's suffrage. Ryder, prefiguring anti-political correctness, pokes male chauvinist fun at the speaker (who he names "Miss Bland from Boston") and invents a predictable scene of wild havoc in which the chairman is humiliated, the speaker is not amused, and the audience hostile because she does not respect the Emperor.(8)
Undoubtably, the Emperor was capable of innocent disruption. Many details, however, sound as if they came out of the minds of bored reporters or men who'd had a few drinks. Norton's written legacy can also set us to wondering what is the work of the Emperor and what was written for him.
Let us go back to the beginning of Norton's lunacy and reverse the wheels of our consideration. The date is September 17, 1859, a day of mourning in the City. The town has hung black crepe and gathered in Portsmouth Square to listen to E.D. Baker's eulogy of Senator David Broderick, felled by the bullet of David S. Terry. Slavery and states rights have led to bloodshed. The odd man who many have seen walking the streets mounts the stairs of the Bulletin and announces to the reporter he finds there that he has a solution for the nation's troubles: he will be its Emperor. How very simple! Just say the words and it is done! Many wished for the power to right the nation's wrongs and set it back on the course of peace again. The reporter knows that it is not so easy, but Lord knows this town -- battered as it was through the 1850s by the fires, the riots, the lynchings, and now this assassination -- needs a laugh. The next day the Bulletin prints the Emperor's first proclamation under the question "Have We an Emperor Among Us?"
The Emperor proceeds to abolish Congress, call on the Army to enforce his edicts, and assert his absolute authority over the country. In 1862, after the Fredericksburg disaster and the Emancipation Proclamation, he fires Abraham Lincoln.(9) It is easy to imagine other men, themselves frustrated by events in the east where men are slaughtering men in the cornfields, who dream their own dreams of peace and resolution of the nation's impasses. Joshua Norton empitomizes a desire to set things right during the nation's most violent period. He thinks that somehow we have to come up with a way for both the free North and the slaveholding South to be right. The idea is lunacy because, as Lincoln observed, a house divided against itself cannot stand and a nation in which some states use free labor and some use slaves, free men could not rest easy as long as a leisure class "earned" its living through coerced, wageless labor. Oblivious to the political reality and the necessity of ending slavery for the sake of free commerce and a clear democratic conscience, the Emperor makes a point of alternatively wearing Union blue and rebel gray, to symbolize his reconciling dominion over all Americans.
African-Americans win the franchise in 1865, so Norton accepts their citizenship. He designates Peter Anderson's Pacific Appeal, an African-American owned weekly, as his royal gazette. Norton spends the post Civil War years hawking his bonds, railing against forgers, demanding the treatment due to a man of his rank, proposing technical innovations, championing a national religion, and bludgeoning titans of California commerce and politics like Leland Stanford. Not all the proclamations that appear in his name come from the Emperor's pen. He complains about this, but the power to stop it eludes him. His name and his image are in the public domain. Some use him as a butt of jokes. Others employ him to advance their own ideas. We cannot be sure, for example, which of the many Bay Bridge proclamations he authored. One has the clear interests of the City of Oakland at heart: he evinces the wish that the cities of San Francisco and Oakland "shall be neighborly, but view each other afar off." This proposes a landfill halfway across the Bay, keeping Oakland in the chips as the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. Another is sheer lunacy: Norton wants bridges to Goat Island, Sausalito and the Farallons! Both these 1869 proclamations, which appeared in Oakland papers, may have been the work of Oakland boosters, expropriating the cherished pen of San Francisco's leading derelict for a little civic hazing. In 1872, a new command calls for a bridge linking Goat Island to Oakland and to Telegraph Hill. (10) After he libels a land developer, Anderson drops him from the pages of the Appeal and he is reduced to badgering tourists to buy his bonds until he suffers a stroke in Chinatown.
Having arrived again at the figure of the Emperor collapsing on the sidewalk, our historical engine squeals to a stop and beats a hasty retreat back to the beginning of Emperor Norton's story, when a ruined businessman decides his is royal blood and proceeds to solve the nation's problems. If Emperor Norton ever regains his sanity during our third passage over this ground; if he's sane and the thought ever occurs to him to give him his Imperial charade, doubtless he finds he cannot! The town accepts him only as a madman and a dupe. It would not take him back as a Mason, allow him to run for office, or conduct business. Mad or not, Joshua Norton finds himself the prisoner of the town. The pauper king can do nothing in life to prevent himself from being used without profit to himself any more than he can prevent Dr. Douglass from stealing his brain in death.
Notes:
(1)Josef Haydn's head was separated from his body by an eager gravedigger and remained so until 1954. The expert declared that the "bumps of music" were especially well-developed on the composer's skull. [Return]
(2)Neville, Amelia Ransome, The Fantastic City,1932, p.155. [Return]
(3)Drury, p. 125. Norton I ran afoul of a hotel bouncer at an early version of the Palace where he naturally presumed he was entitled to service. A local police officer (one paid by neighborhood property owners to keep the peace, not a civic authority) arrested the Emperor and hauled him down to Portsmouth Square on charges of vagrancy. The booking officer pointed out that Norton I lived in a lodging house and had $4.75 in his pocket: technically, he was not a vagrant. The special, one Armand Barbier, scratched his cheek and then resounding declared a new reason for arresting his Imperial Majesty: the Emperor was of unsound mind and therefore a danger to himself and to others. Officer William Martin had no reply to this. He booked Norton pending examination by the Commissioner of Lunacy. Chief Patrick Crowley saw to it that the hearing was never held. [Return]
(4)The same David S. Terry who shot Senator David Broderick in 1859. [Return]
(5)Cherny, Robert W., "Patterns of Toleration and Discrimination in San Francisco", California History, Summer 1994, p. 133. [Return]
(6)Not everyone went along with the joke. Norton's Chinese laundryman refused to do his Imperial Highness' wash for free. (A friend secretly paid for it.) And the great hotels even had the effrontery to throw him out of their dining rooms and refuse him lodging. Norton did not have his way with everything. [Return]
(7)David Warren Ryder, Emperor Norton, pp. 28-29. Incidentally, the sand lot riots did not take place until 1877. Bummer, the last of the two mutts to have passed to the great beyond, died in 1865. [Return]
(8)Ryder, pp. 31-2. Ryder does not footnote either of his stories. [Return]
(9)Drury, p. 89 thinks that this particular proclamation may have been a hoax "perpetrated not by Albert Evans, who stoutly supported Lincoln, but by a Democrat...or a Southerner who thought that a Democrat in the White House might be more sympathetic to the South's economic needs." Drury forgets, however, Norton's proclamation scolding Governor Wise for hanging John Brown. Norton's beef is that Wise made Brown a martyr instead of a lunatic. And when he announces Wise's retirement, he chooses John Breckenridge, the 1860 Whig alternative to Abraham Lincoln as Wise's replacement. [Return]
(10)Norton's most sympathetic boosters want this to be the one and only genuine article. If so, they run into the problem that the credit for the Bay Bridge idea belongs to some unknown poet in Oakland. [Return]
Proceed to the Third Part: Back into the Womb
Return to the First Part: Remembering Norton
Consult the Bibliography
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