PLEASE DON’T DYNAMITE THE FISH

Dear Abby: I’m a county game commissioner and my son was “acting out” by allegedly blowing up fish with dynamite in Austin Creek. Boys will be boys you know, but that would be pretty durn illegal if he done it! A policeman showed up at my door to arrest Fred, but I told ’em it was good enough that I ordered the boy to stay in his room. They took him away anyway, and it cost me $250 to bail him out after he confessed to the crime, although I says he didn’t. So while he’s waiting for trial, should I restrict his access to the family dynamite? Signed, Concerned in Cazadero

SEQUEL TO AN ARREST
Commissioner’s Son Charged With Dynamiting Fish

Game Warden John C. Ingalls and Constable Ben H. Barnes arrested Fred Quigley at Cazadero Tuesday and landed him at the county jail Tuesday evening. The young man is charged with having used dynamite in Austin Creek, near Cazadero, to kill fish. The case is an interesting one, and promises to develop other things equally as interesting.

Quigley is the son of a deputy game commissioner, and his offense was against the very laws his father is endeavoring to uphold. The father told the arresting officers Tuesday that he had arrested his son for the offense, had taken him before Justice E. E. Trosper at Cazadero, and the latter had informed the father that there was insufficient evidence against the boy. Quigley, Sr., said that since that time he had had his son under detention at Cazadero.

When Ingalls and Barnes attempted to take young Quigley and bring him to the county jail, the father interfered. He charges that Ingalls knocked him down when he sought to prevent the arrest of his son, and he threatened to have Ingalls arrested as soon as he reached home. He proposed to swear out the warrant before Justice Trosper. Ingalls admitted that he had pushed Quigley out of the way, but denies having struck him.

It is claimed here that after Fred Quigley was landed in the county jail he confessed to dynamiting the stream. The father claimed that his son had not confessed.

The examination of the young man was set for February 18, and he was released on two hundred and fifty dollars.

– Santa Rosa Republican, February 12, 1908

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HATE CRIME NOT SO FUNNY THE 2ND TIME

There were two nearly identical hate crimes in 1908, where a Chinese man was attacked without cause by a white man. Were the assaults connected? As these are the only similar incidents I’ve encountered in studying 5+ years of the Santa Rosa newspapers in that era, chances of a coincidence are low. Yet the attackers were in different towns and probably did not know one another; one was a “brawny iron worker,” and the other was apparently a farmhand. Look instead for a link in what they read; the newspapers that month were salted with anti-Chinese rhetoric that invited ridicule and hate and fear.

The first unprovoked attack happened in a Sebastopol restaurant. Johnny Poggie (who we know through the census was then a 25 year-old farm worker) and Tom Mason were arrested for smashing a brick into the head of Gee Chung. The next day, the Santa Rosa Republican turned it into a humor item, starting with the racist headline, “Men Hit Chink With Brick.” After noting the injury “may be serious,” what followed was in the colorful writing style usually reserved for describing the comical mishaps of drunks. “When the Celestial opened his purse to pay for the dainties he had consumed, Mason is alleged to have struck him on the head with a brick. Chung sank to the floor, and ‘subsequent proceedings interested him no more.'” Would the newspaper have treated this unprovoked attack so flippantly if the victim had been white? Of course not (read update here).

Then less than two weeks later, the scene of Chinese restaurant violence was in Santa Rosa. This time, a “most brutal beating” by an unknown construction worker was reported by the Republican newspaper with far more restraint (although the writer slipped in that the victim’s black eyes were the color of “a deep mourning”). Did the more straightforward tone on this story reflect editorial remorse that the paper might have had some role in inciting the earlier violence?

The Santa Rosa attack could have been a copycat inspired by the Sebastopol assault, but left hanging is the larger question of why Chinese men were now suddenly at risk of being beaten – even killed – while eating at a restaurant. For that answer, you only have to read the fearmongering that was appearing in the big city papers about the tong wars.

That month saw another flareup in the seven year feud between the Hop Sing and Ping Kung gangs. Before the first restaurant attack, two men had been gunned down in Oakland’s Chinatown; another pair were killed in San Francisco’s Chinatown before the second assault at a local restaurant. All four victims died while the gangs were supposedly under a truce, a violation of honor surely not lost on Chinese-hating bigots.

The frequent newspaper stories about Chinatown murders was enough to make anyone nervous about visiting those neighborhoods, but a lurid feature article in the January 5, 1908 San Francisco Sunday Call Magazine went further to warn that no place on the West Coast was safe from the “indiscriminate shooting” of the murderous gangs. “It looks now as if every tong on the coast will take a hand…they are all flocking back. The war is on. They struck at Los Angeles the other day and where they will be next is a mystery.”

(RIGHT: The sensationalist SF Call Magazine article, “The Bloodiest Tong War Ever Waged,” was widely reprinted, including in the Washington Post)


The greatest tong war ever witnessed on the continent, a war holding sway from the rain soaked josshouses of Vancouver, B. C., to the sunlit alleys of Los Angeles, and which already includes four tongs, is in full blast. Oakland felt its effects a few days ago, when the felted feet ran silently into the street and the flash from revolver barrels lit up the darkened Chinese quarter. The dying Chinese found on Webster street a short time previously was another victim to the war, which seems to have no ending, and the crack of the highbinder’s pistol is now disturbing the police of Los Angeles. From city to city along the coast has the word gone. From the south and the east, the gunmen of the contesting tongs are flocking to Chinatown of San Francisco. All Chinatown is agog with war and rumors of war, and though the hot blood of feud times is hidden behind the calm, placid exterior of the oriental, the red, red war is on again.

The Hop Sing-Ping Kung feud, which had caused scores of deaths, actually ended a few days later, just before the start of the Chinese New Year (a celebration that the Press Democrat described with condescension and mocking humor). Key to the settlement was the threat by San Francisco’s Chief of Police, W. J. Biggy, to prohibit New Year festivities and “turn loose” a special police squad on Chinatown to expel from the city anyone considered suspicious.

Although the tong wars sometimes reached into Sonoma county, there were no reports of violence upon local Chinese people in this period. Except for the two restaurant attacks by whites, of course.

SEBASTOPOL MEN HIT CHINK WITH BRICK

Tom Mason and Johnny Poggie, residents of Sebastopol, were landed in the county jail here Wednesday afternoon by City Marshal Fred R. Mathews of that city. The men are charged with an assault on Gee Chung, a Celestial of Sebastopol. The alleged offense occurred in a Chinese noodle joint in the Gold Ridge city on Tuesday evening and as a result Chung is laid up with a badly battered head. His injuries may be serious.

The two men under arrest are alleged to have gone into the restaurant to partake of noodles, and the Chinese were also feasting on the same dish. When the Celestial opened his purse to pay for the dainties he had consumed, Mason is alleged to have struck him on the head with a brick. Chung sank to the floor, and “subsequent proceedings interested him no more.”

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 15, 1908

CHINESE IS BADLY BEATEN
Tom Ling Assaulted by Burly Iron Worker

Tom Ling, a Chinese, was badly beaten Sunday evening by one of the iron workers employed on the construction of the new court house in this city. The assault occurred in a Chinese noodle joint, and the Celestial was given a most brutal beating by the brawny iron worker.

Ling swore to a warrant Monday morning for the arrest of his assailant whose name is unknown. Justice Atchinson issued a John Doe warrant for the arrest.

The Chinese had both eyes blackened, the color of each being a deep mourning, his head was severely cut and a large knot was raised on his forehead. The assault is declared to have been an unprovoked one.

– Santa Rosa Republican, January 27, 1908
DID YOU KNOW THAT IT IS NEW YEAR’S DAY?
Take “Mandarin Punch” for that Tired Feeling, and You’ll Forget All Your Other Troubles

Chinatown was busy yesterday, and later on there was a sound of revelry by night. The percussion band rendered a long list of the compositions of the Chinese Wagner, completely drowning the customary melody of Mr. Thomas Cat, who does solo work on the housetops of Chinatown.

It was the beginning of the New Year celebration; for this is New Year’s Day. The Chinaman begins his celebration the day before, and sometimes he makes it last a week. He has good reason; for it is the only holiday time he has. There is no Chinese Fourth of July; no Christmas; no Memorial Day; no Thanksgiving; no Admission Day–not even April Fool. So for several days the tintintabulation of the brass gong and the wooden drums will smite the ears, and the smell of gunpowder and punk-sticks will assail the nostrils of those who visit the Mongolian quarter.

If you have nothing to do today and time hands heavy, you might go down to Second street and see the celebration. The punch, “Manderin’s Delight,” has been brewed already, and you’ll be invited to drink. That will give you something to do and something to thing about for a long time. One man who went there and had some punch last New Year’s day sat up in a drug store all night, eating quinine with a tablespoon, trying to get the taste of the punch out of his mouth.

– Press Democrat, February 1, 1908

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NOTHING LIKE A GOOD EXPLODING CIGAR

There’s no better time than April Fool’s Day to remember Santa Rosans loved practical jokes around the turn of the last century, and nothing offered more bang for your buck than tricking some poor dupe into lighting up a 5ยข exploding cigar.

Until states began outlawing the explosive gag in the 1910s, “loaded” cigars and cigarettes could be purchased in probably every town in America. The trick, which had been around for decades, involved wrapping a tiny amount of gunpowder in tissue cutting the fuse off a small “lady fingers” firecracker and packing it about an inch from the lighted end, which would presumably give the perpetrator a few minutes to anticipate the hilarity that would soon come (or seek a safe distance). After the laughs, however, lawsuits sometimes followed; fingers were blown off, victims were scarred, and a pregnant woman sitting on her husband’s lap suffered a miscarriage from the fright. (Curiously, though, I found no accounts of cigar-related fatalities, except for a poor soul who puffed on a stogie packed with black pepper.)

According to an 1886 article from the New York Tribune, the suits forced the novelty cigar industry to switch to a (very slightly) less dangerous product. Gunpowder was substituted with “red fire” – a simple pyrotechnic mixture used today in road flares and sparklers – inside a little shaped cartridge. Now the joke was that the cigar became something like a roman candle. “There is no sudden explosion which shatters the wrappers and sends fragments of burning tobacco in all directions, but from the end of the cigar a stream of fire shoots out to a distance of about three feet in a direct line.” Well, that’s certainly a safety improvement.

Alas, the jokester’s need for explosive humor brought back the old techniques (or similar), as seen here in a couple of panels excerpted from a 1913 “Bunker Blinks” Sunday color comic. Worse, some pranksters were rolling their own hoax Havanas; in 1910 the Oakland police were searching for someone who was handing out cigars laced with dynamite caps.

The injurious era of joke-smokes mostly ended when dribble-glass and joy-buzzer mogul S. S. Adams began mass-producing a cigar containing a spring kept coiled by a bit of twine, which burned and caused the spring to “explode,” comically ripping up the end of the cigar as we’ve seen in so many old cartoons. But in reality, it was far less a heart-stopping BANG than a feeble pop. Oh, if they only had today’s NRA to advocate for the right of Americans to bear explosive tobacco products.

BOSWELL HAS AN EXPERIENCEPuffs an “El Stinko” Until It Explodes

Constable James Henry Boswell was the victim of a practical joke Friday afternoon that caused consternation to the officer of the law and merriment tot hose who witnessed the denouement. The constable was entertaining a large crowd of listeners with a good story, and just prior to starting in the narrative, he had been presented with a cigar by Sheriff Jack Smith.

Between sentences the conservator of the peace would puff on the El Stinko, and permit his mind to wander back over the scenes of the particular story he was engaged in telling. After having smoked for about ten minutes, and when his fears had all been allayed as to any suspicion he may have regarding the cigar being loaded, the “thing” went off with a bang.

Boswell turned many shades of color within the successive minutes and wound up with an ashy color foreign to his usual mobile countenance. For several minutes he was speechless and motionless, and then joined in the laughter that his predicament with the El Stinko had created.

It transpired that Sheriff Smith, who had presented the cigar to Boswell, had been the victim of a similar experience the night previous in Ukiah, and he was but playing even on the local constable.

Boswell reflected on the experience of one McNulty, alias Harriman, who had been presented with one of a similar variety and whose hair stood on end when the explosion came.

– Santa Rosa Republican, February 8, 1908

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