Published since 2005. San Francisco is a city that belongs to the people of the world. Hence this blog has a global focus. The name "Sam Spade's San Francisco" refers to an exciting era in the City's history, the time of Dashiell Hammett's fictional gumshoe and San Francisco character, Sam Spade. My name is Tom Dunn and I edit the blog. I'm not as exciting as Sam Spade, but I am definitely a San Francisco character.Contact or on Twitter -- Search blog below.
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Monday, February 19, 2007
The Sydney Ducks and Poor C.J. Jansen
On February 19, 1851 ... 156 years ago today, a very angry group of three-piece-suited businessmen from the Financial District (which was not yet on land re-claimed from the bay) reached their collective boiling point. Earlier that month, C. J. Jansen, a fellow businessman who operated a store at the corner of Montgomery and Washington Street, was robbed of $2,000 (a very substantial sum at the time) and beaten mercilessly by two members of the Sydney Ducks.
In the San Francisco of 1851 there was a particularly ruthless gang of brutal thugs who roamed the streets of San Francisco in search of any lawlessness they could find. They raped, the robbed, they vandalized. The name of their gang came from their common point of origin. All of them had come over to San Francisco from Australia, and the majority of them from Sydney.
Australia at the time was used as a penal colony by England. Undesirables were simply shipped-off to Australia. Some were even sent money by relatives to stay there and not return home to England. Those were know as remittance men and were commonly known as the unwanted bastards of the British Empire.Others were true criminals who had been sentenced by British courts and ordered to be exiled in Australia. Sydney became the unfortunate City that was destined to house the dregs of British society.
As might be imagined, the exiled criminals soon became restless and when word of the Great Gold Rush in California reached them, they headed for the docks in droves and began their journey to San Francisco.Once here they formed one of the most notorious gangs in San Francisco history ... the Sydney Ducks.
It was the Sydney Ducks who had robbed and beaten poor Mr. Jansen and this time the business community of San Francisco had had enough! When they identified the suspects they wasted no time in angrily taking legal matters into their own hands. They dragged the defendants down to Portsmouth Square, which was the de-facto Civic Center at the time, and selected both judges and a jury from amidst their own crowd.
Surprisingly the businessmen did a pretty fair job of creating an instant juris prudence system. many of the businessmen were well educated and some of them were lawyers. The trial, which commenced on the spot, turned on to be more impartial than the angry crowd had hoped for. Three of the jury members agreed with the defense argument (the defense attorney was also recruited from the crowd of businessmen) that Mr. Jansen had not been able to clearly see his attackers.
The crowd-appointed judges ruled that the trial would end without a verdict as result of a locked-jury.Although many in the crowd wanted the hanging to proceed, the crowd-appointed court officers won the day and dispersed the crowd. The accused Sydney ducks were turned over to the Sheriff of San Francisco. They were jailed and eventually convicted in a real court of law.
The vigilante committees were just getting started. By 1856 there were 6,000 vigilante committee members in San Francisco. During the second-half of the 1800's thirty Sydney Ducks were thrown out of San Francisco by the vigilantes and four were publicly hanged.
What ever happened to the vigilantes?
Well, by the late 1850's the vigilantes in San Francisco were so well regarded that they literally took over the Democratic Party in San Francisco and some of their leaders became highly respected politicians and elected leaders.
2 comments:
Anonymous said...
Interesting, but woefully inaccurate. The Committee of Vigilance was in fact Republican. The 1856 Committee of Vigilance disbanded only after establishing the People's Party, which eventually was absorbed into the Republican Party. It's main object in SF politics was to drive out the Democratic Party machine.
Also, the "Sydney Ducks" were not a "gang," but simply the name for Australian immigrants in the city who lived in "Sydney Town." They may have been disproportionately criminal and gang-involved, but there is little truth that they were entirely criminal, as most pop-histories still assert. The largest proportion were Irish in origin, which undoubtedly provoked the view of them as undesirables. The vigilante terrorist campaign against them was supported by local newspapers, which explains their tarnished legacy since newspapers constitute the first draft of history. Note that "Sydney Town" became known as the "Barbary Coast" once the Ducks were lynched/deported/forced to flee, and thus entered its most infamous phase only after the Aussies were effectively out of the picture.
Thank you for your comments, but your corrections are not entirely accurate. While I sincerely appreciate corrections when I am wrong, this is a "wrong" correction.
----
While it is true the name "Sydney Ducks" originally referred to immigrants from Australia, it is also true that by 1851 the name "Sydney Ducks" was used exclusively to refer to a gang of thugs habituating the Barbary Coast area of San Francisco. From 1851 onwards the name referred almost exclusively to a violent gang.
----
Further: Some members of the Vigilance Committee formed a political party named the People's Party in 1857 or 1858. The People's Party remained active for tewn years and in 1867 the party was absorbed into the Republican Party. This should not suggest that the Vigilance Committee was ever associated in any way with the Republican Party. Nor should it suggest that all or even the majority of Vigilance Committee members were Republican. Such a claim is simply untrue. History should be retold, not rewritten.
2 comments:
Interesting, but woefully inaccurate. The Committee of Vigilance was in fact Republican. The 1856 Committee of Vigilance disbanded only after establishing the People's Party, which eventually was absorbed into the Republican Party. It's main object in SF politics was to drive out the Democratic Party machine.
Also, the "Sydney Ducks" were not a "gang," but simply the name for Australian immigrants in the city who lived in "Sydney Town." They may have been disproportionately criminal and gang-involved, but there is little truth that they were entirely criminal, as most pop-histories still assert. The largest proportion were Irish in origin, which undoubtedly provoked the view of them as undesirables. The vigilante terrorist campaign against them was supported by local newspapers, which explains their tarnished legacy since newspapers constitute the first draft of history. Note that "Sydney Town" became known as the "Barbary Coast" once the Ducks were lynched/deported/forced to flee, and thus entered its most infamous phase only after the Aussies were effectively out of the picture.
Thank you for your comments, but your corrections are not entirely accurate. While I sincerely appreciate corrections when I am wrong, this is a "wrong" correction.
----
While it is true the name "Sydney Ducks" originally referred to immigrants from Australia, it is also true that by 1851 the name "Sydney Ducks" was used exclusively to refer to a gang of thugs habituating the Barbary Coast area of San Francisco. From 1851 onwards the name referred almost exclusively to a violent gang.
----
Further: Some members of the Vigilance Committee formed a political party named the People's Party in 1857 or 1858. The People's Party remained active for tewn years and in 1867 the party was absorbed into the Republican Party. This should not suggest that the Vigilance Committee was ever associated in any way with the Republican Party. Nor should it suggest that all or even the majority of Vigilance Committee members were Republican. Such a claim is simply untrue. History should be retold, not rewritten.
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