The following day, the mayor offered a $5,000 reward for the incendiary’s capture. The coordinates of the fire had now left everyone convinced that the blazes were the work of an arsonist. Within a year a claim would be made by a condemned Australian prisoner that the Lightkeeper was an Australian brigand named Billy Shears. No one could offer a motive for Shears to have set the fires and he had left the area before more fires were set. Only merchants had benefited by the fire. Sawyer turned his scrutiny on them. Before the blaze they had enough surplus lumber to rebuild the city thirty times. Afterward lumber prices quadrupled. Rich merchants like Brannan enhanced their social standing by contributing equipment, real estate, and funding to a specific engine company. William Howard, a prosperous merchant, had personally cosponsored Company Three, comprised entirely of Bostonians. A commanding figure—six feet tall with full ruddy cheeks; sparkling eyes; and a soft, musical voice—his most recognizable mannerism had been the habitual stroking of his full sandy beard in thought. Now he was clean-shaven. Unquestionably, he was the town’s first citizen. He had arrived as a cabin boy on the sailing ship California and immediately had become a collection agent in charge of hides and tallow and then formed the most active commercial firm in town with his partner, Henry Mellus, to buy the Hudson’s Bay Company’s property.
Company Three, having failed at being Company Number One by a few hours’ delay in filing, was still fighting over its name. One faction wanted it to be called the Howard in honor of their benefactor’s generosity. The other remained loyal to the company’s other angel, Sam Brannan. For a while both rivals sabotaged each other. The drawn-out battle ended only when the Brannan faction stole the company fire engine during the night and ran it into the bay. In the days it took for the Howard faction to extract the pumper and the week it took to restore its unsullied condition, both sides reached a truce. But the title that found favor with the public was not the Howard, the Brannan, or the more formal Eureka. A fire and an explosion inspired Three’s final name. Their first engine house, an old warehouse belonging to the Stanford brothers at Pacific and Front streets, stood so close to the water that one day half of it plunged into the bay. Company Three stored their gunpowder in the remaining half. When five thousand cases of coal oil in the basement ignited, the oil curled in a burning stream along Battery Street. Flames ran back along the same stream and detonated their stored explosives. As a replacement, Howard built a lavish and elegant brick-and-stone-fronted building on Merchant Street between Montgomery and Sansome streets. The upper story became a lavishly furnished meeting room. In their new posh surroundings Three became more convivial, ostentatious, and social than Broderick One and Manhattan Two combined. They threw glittering balls for the two thousand women who had arrived in town in January and February. On gala nights they moved their fire apparatus into the street to allow room for dancing. As the most congenial volunteer unit, folks dubbed them Social Three. They had the city’s finest singers in their glee club and their piano pumped music at all hours. Three’s men were dressed in full regimentals when raven-haired Lola Montez debuted the “Spider Dance” at a benefit. Sam Brannan, having forgotten he was married both in San Francisco and Utah, was smitten with the fiery dancer, but had quarreled with her and refused to attend. Social Three filled their leather helmets with flowers, showered the stage with them, and elected Lola as an honorary member. After her performance they carried her home on their shoulders. When they gave a banquet at the American Exchange, their bill of fare alone, printed on the richest of dark blue silk in pure gold ink, cost $5,000. They drank more champagne than all the water they ever poured on a fire and, impatient to drink, did not wait to draw the corks, but knocked the tops off with their axes and drank while they beat out flames with wet sacks and brooms. With 537 local drinking houses to choose from, the jolly comrades overindulged at every opportunity.
Three months earlier, when the Council had enlarged the San Francisco police force to fifty men, Brannan had reported a deficiency of funds in the city coffers and cut the force back to thirty members. It was then that the Council decided to inexpensively thank the new fire departments by channeling their recent animosity toward one another into peaceful public displays and decided to launch the annual Volunteer Fireman’s Day to show their gratitude to the men who had saved San Francisco. It would also give Broderick One, Manhattan Two, and Social something to occupy their time. The valiant volunteer companies could compete in a parade and calm their nerves while waiting for the city to burn again. Broderick agreed. He had earlier laid out a plan to confine competition among the three firehouses to the parade ground.
A recent Chicago parade had featured nine hundred firefighters carrying ornamental axes and elaborately engraved silver speaking trumpets while riding on stunning parade vehicles. When any firefighter died, his fellows deployed the company hose cart as a hearse and the entire city turned out to share their grief. The volunteers were not only heroes, but family members and an extension of the citizens themselves. The fledgling San Francisco companies kept two sets of uniforms—one for firefighting and a more ostentatious costume for ceremonial purposes. The volunteers pressed their dazzling full-dress uniforms and assembled a dazzling array of parade coats, belts, ties, suspenders, capes, gauntlets, shields, and decorative fire hats of felt and leather for the day. Coach and sign painters painted fire company names and heroic oil pictures on helmets and fire buckets. They depicted countless eagles, flags, and burning buildings on the sides and end panels of massive water wagons, a rolling, functional canvas for a magnificent parade. On parade day, the two-fisted fashion plates strode from their engine houses. “The chief interest … of the exhibition lay in the appearance of the men themselves,” the Annals reported. “They were of every class in the community and were a fine athletic set of fellows.” San Francisco might be the City of Gold, but silver dominated the volunteers’ parade. The men wore silver watches, jewelry, and capes; and their chiefs blew silver trumpets, all except Brannan’s personal company, Social Three. His volunteers, who cut dynamic figures in their formfitting black trousers and patent leather helmets, wore expensive gold jewelry and cloth-of-gold capes to their fires. Foreman Frank Whitney had a gold speaking trumpet, a priceless instrument he liked so much he megaphoned orders to men standing right next to him. “Their foreman was a figure of such worshipful splendor—an uncommon human being, that you would have thought he could have put out the world if it were burning,” commented William Dean Howells, the realist author and critic.
Swaggering and full of confidence, the volunteer companies in blue leggings, leather hats, silver- and gold-trimmed capes and gleaming boots presented a heroic sight, their freshly trimmed beards set off by high collars and elaborately decorated vests. The chiefs were known by their white helmets with gold lettering and long white coats with enormous side pockets to hold their trumpets. In every way their getups outshone the militia in the same parade. With luminous silver ropes, the firemen drew three gleaming engines through the muddy streets. Supporters decked them with ribbons and wreaths, and draped the fire engines with banners and bouquets while brass bands played firemen’s quadrilles and polkas.
As the opposing fire companies filed past one another, it was their practice to shout out slogans. Kohler, aware of the tense situation growing between rival units, ordered his men to keep a civil tongue. “No insult should be allowed to interrupt the good feeling and harmony among the three companies,” he said. That would change soon enough, but during that first parade, amid the throng cheering from the ruins, goodwill ruled. Now at the sound of any alarm, all Boomtown poured from their combustible houses to cheer on their favorite volunteers as they would a favored sports team. San Francisco had swiftly taken the new volunteers to its heart. “Almost without exception the firemen here are gentlemen and almost every gentleman in town is a fireman,” a local man wrote home. “I never saw any men work as well and as hard as they do at a fire, fearing nothing but failing to stop destruction.” Ea
ch night that the torch boys ran, carrying torches high, scanning the roads for debris, detours, and obstacles, they never ran alone. When on calls, they heard, mixed with the labored breath of the firemen pulling the heavy engine, the panting of other boys who thrived on the excitement. Behind them, drawn by panic and calamity, the populace, in bedclothes, followed the engines en masse as if they were sleeprunners—wide-eyed, features fixed, and faces white as paper.
FIRE OF MAY 4, 1850
SAN FRANCISCO AFTER THE FIRE OF MAY 4, 1850
Broderick’s Rogues
Davey Scannell, a ferociously gluttonous “toss-pot of homeric capacity,” performed some of his most Olympian gastronomic feats at the Parker House next door to the United States Restaurant. Obviously, though, Broderick’s rogue reserved his greatest marathon eating sessions for the fashionable Occidental Hotel on Washington Street. The ground-floor restaurant faced Jones Alley and the Bank Exchange. Because Scannell’s meals were so voluminous and time-consuming, Proprietor Sam Hall permanently reserved a huge round table in the front window for him to better showcase the spectacle. Huge crowds gathered on the street to applaud him and his trusted lieutenants, all of enormous physique, who always accompanied him.
Foremost among Scannell’s gang of voracious eaters and fighters was Charles P. “Dutch Charley” Duane, a former gunfighter, bare-knuckle boxer, and wagonmaker who, after Ira Cole, became Broderick’s closest friend. Broderick and Duane first met on April 14 when he was at Long Wharf to greet an old friend, Chris Lilly, arriving on the steamer Tennessee. Eight years earlier Lilly, a fight promoter and notorious pugilist, had killed Tom McCoy during a 119-round bout. Broderick noticed the big blond, cold-eyed, twenty-three-year-old New Yorker standing at Lilly’s side. The man’s superb physique was fashionably clad. He kept his trousers half tucked into high wrinkled boots and cinched at the waist by a belt bristling with an assortment of knives and pistols. Dutch Charley claimed to be a passenger but was really a stowaway.
Charles P. “Dutch Charley” Duane
Next to arrive at Scannell’s table were the Parker House’s own Sam Hall, a heavyset man with huge shoulders; then heavily mustached Judge John W. Dwinelle, who weighed more than 250 pounds. Wheezing, Dwinelle squeezed his enormous paunch between the table and chair. Attorney William Patterson, who weighed nearly as much, slid into his seat more gracefully. Also seated was John Felton, a great civil lawyer who suffered from gout and who had a lunch of three dozen oysters (in season) and a quart bottle of champagne messengered to him at the Bank Exchange each noon. Alexander Campbell, a rail-thin man who favored English fashions, rushed in and took the last chair. He ate as much as the others but never gained an ounce.
On holidays, when court was not in session, Scannell and his cronies assembled by 10:00 A.M. and ate until early afternoon. If court happened to be in session, and Patterson or Felton had cases before Judge Dwinelle, they met at the Occidental around 4:00 or 5:00 P.M. On those days, the moment Judge Dwinelle joined them they began a four- to five-hour feast that ended in a drinking marathon at 10:00 P.M. In early morning Scannell and Hall had made the rounds of the Washington Street markets running up through Merchant Street and picked out the choicest cuts of beef from beer-fed steers. Toward the pier they ferreted out delicacies like cockscomb oysters (for six bits), sweetbreads, and very small shad (five dollars each) and had them trucked to the Occidental for preparation by their chefs. The menu listed every variety of local bounty. Scannell licked his lips; his finger moved slowly along the menu, caressing the items—ham, curried sausages, lamb and green peas, venison in wine sauce, cheese and prunes, and stewed kidney in champagne sauce. He came to Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, brandied peaches, rum omelets, and canned tins of exotic foods from back east. He made his choices. So did Dutch Charley. So did all the rest. They wouldn’t necessarily finish it all, but it was great sport between fires because then they had all the time in the world.
That afternoon a gang of torch boys pressed their noses against the front window to watch. For the first hour, Scannell, napkin tucked under his chin, ate fowl—a partridge, a little quail, squab, wild goose, some snipe, a little curlew, and plover. His favorite was canvasback duck (fifty cents a brace). He was very particular about its preparation. The duck must be roasted exactly thirteen minutes and served underdone with blood oozing. He was as particular about his special punch, a conglomeration of sparkling burgundy, champagne, white and red wines in equal parts, and a quart of the finest cognac. Waiters with spotless white napkins over each arm hefted armloads of silver trays and covered dishes from the kitchen and ferried away dirty plates and glasses. Heated metal plates held quarter-inch-thick steaks; elaborate tankards contained beer and wine. Fruit and roasted nuts—filberts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and black walnuts from Mount Tamalpais—showered onto the table. They exchanged fire stories as they ate. “Remember when Mrs. Wallace’s kitchen stove set fire to the wall behind? She grabbed up her child and also snatched up a leg of lamb. She ran out of the house with the baby held by one leg and the leg of lamb cradled in her arm.” The second hour Scannell and his men reserved for mutton. The masticating and grinding of jaws went on—faces flushed, beads of sweat dotting their foreheads, cheeks as rosy as uncooked sirloin. Their features held benign expressions, like cows, though they bickered throughout the courses. The third hour was crowded with dozens of oysters, smoked eels, and Point Reyes shellfish. Hall swayed in his seat. Patterson gripped the arms of his chair. The chewing and popping of corks was audible through the glass window. Dutch Charley’s face grew redder. Perspiration clung to his upper lip. Even his gunsight eyes had lost their lethal coldness, but when he gazed at the muddy street outside, they flamed to malevolence again. He wiped his lips with the side of his hand, pushed back his chair, and heaved himself up. He had recognized a man tying up his horse outside who had turned in a false alarm. Charley shoved through the crowd on the street and advanced on the “false alarmer.” Catching sight of a bull-like juggernaut rolling his way, the man tried to remount his horse, but Dutch Charley grasped his arm, broke it like a twig, shot a booted foot into his ribs, and ground his face into the mud. Spectators stood fixed in horror as Dutch Charley reentered the Occidental, coolly sat back down, and began eating with increased vigor. He had worked up an appetite.
A fourth hour saw the appearance of pork dishes—loin chops, curried sausages, more cured meats, and country-style ribs. Dutch Charley’s cheeks were distended. The eating had slowed considerably. Some things he ate only a bite or two. The conversation had grown torpid. Heavy breathing filled in the gaps. No one was bickering now. During the fifth hour the crowd outside pressed against the steamy glass in expectation. The last of the dishes had gone, all but Scannell and Dutch Charley’s plates. Scannell ate on, the only man who had not unbuttoned his vest or loosened his belt. Could he stuff much more into his belly than Duane without bursting? He could. When Scannell finished, the waiters were lighting the lanterns against the evening. Over the years he was never known to have faltered in any of the marathon sessions that took up so many hours of his day. Only the clang of a fire alarm could dislodge him. Then he kicked over his chair and hurried through the streets to his firehouse. Dutch Charley, having gotten his second wind, was eating again. Scannell found him the most interesting of Broderick’s rogues. He had greatness inside him—if he could stay out of prison.
Born in Tipperary, Ireland, Dutch Charley as a boy had been called German Charley until he bested a Dutch boy in a fisticuffs match. The ladies had another nickname for him: “Handsome Charley.” He captivated women of every age and station. The press labeled him and the rest of Broderick’s rogues hired bullies, but Broderick’s “forty-niners” (forty-nine shoulder strikers) were fanatically devoted to him and, according to Dutch Charley, “more like lovers than friends.”
The waiting period between the great fires affected the most violent of Broderick’s rogues most violently, especially the diminutive gunfighter Bill
y Mulligan, another New York crony of Broderick’s. Lightning tempered, he was a fierce fighter, fiercer when drunk, and he was almost always drunk and spoiling for a showdown. When there was none, he seemed about to boil over. Troublesome, bandy-legged Mulligan was the quintessential gunfighter. His hands were scarred from fighting fire and his knuckles walnut size from fighting men. Yet those tortured, muscular hands could draw and fire a revolver with remarkable speed and deadly accuracy to protect the political interests and person of Broderick. Mulligan’s voice was a deadly whisper, razor edged as wind hissing through an Iowa four-pointed barbed-steel fence. Like fast guns Ty Hardin and Billy the Kid, his deep-set eyes were a neutral, meditative gray. Slender and small, he weighed scarcely more than his huge twin guns. He claimed to weigh 140 pounds and stand five and a half feet tall. Broderick had never known him to weigh more than 120 or stand any higher than five feet. His stovepipe hat added to his stature, and for that reason and because of his sparse hair, he was never without it. Trim, of good form, wiry and sinewy, quick as a cat in his movements, Mulligan had the pluck of a bull terrier and boundless energy. He staged prizefights, gambled, claim-jumped in Tuolumne County, got into gun battles, and once sold the office of mayor for $28,000. He had boxed and won his share of barroom brawls, but was more famous for the dozens of notches on his pistol grip.