Behind San Quentin's Walls: The History of California’s Legendary Prison and Its Inmates, 1851-1900

By William B. Secrest

San Quentin is one of the most famous prisons in American history, featured in countless movies and novels, yet few know its colorful early history. In Behind San Quentin’s Walls, noted Old West historian William B. Secrest reveals the beginning of San Quentin, from its unlikely start as a real estate scheme to its essential role in taming the lawless California of the Gold Rush era. Featuring numerous citations from contemporary accounts, plus period photos, illustrations, newspaper clippings, and maps, Behind San Quentin’s Walls chronicles the political calculations that created San Quentin; the outsize egos of the men who built it; the mismanagement and frequent escapes that marred San Quentin’s early years; and the notorious ruffians and cutthroats who were housed there. Filled with exciting true stories of gunfights, brawls, prison riots, daring escapes, and intrepid manhunts, Behind San Quentin’s Walls is a rip-roaring Wild West tale of how men and women with immense talent for both good and evil tamed a new state and each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Linden Publishing
• Release date: Mar 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781610352673

Book preview

Introduction

Prisons are one of the nastier aspects of civilization. They have always been with us in one form or another, something we do not want to know or care about, yet something that cannot be ignored. Prisons are where the bad guys are deposited so they will not be able to plunder or assault their neighbors. But no matter how many prisons we have and how many criminals are locked up, crime never seems to change much. We try to ignore these things, but we can’t because we are the ones paying the bills. Meanwhile, the convicts use the prison’s muscle-building exercise equipment to prepare for another assault on the public upon their release. It is a situation that never changes and seems to have no answer. The only thing we can be sure of is that the prison system will cost more next year.

And yet, despite all the frustration, the public seems to have a fascination for prisons. Is it the concept of the power involved to put people behind bars? Or is it simply the fact that we all feel safer knowing so many bad guys are locked up? Whatever the mystique of prisons may be, the drama of the convict props up and surrounds some of our most powerful literature. Such classics as The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo come to mind. On some level we also relate to true prison memoirs. Perhaps we wonder at the horror of surviving in such an atmosphere, although we also instinctively know that we are not capable of painting ourselves into such a corner. Or are we?

While waiting in prison to hang in 1791, Whiting Sweeting wrote a seventy-two page narrative that went through eleven editions in eight years. Since then, there has accumulated a long list of other cathartic prison memoirs, few of which were written by people who thought they could ever wind up in a prison cell.

In the nineteenth century, the United States was a young country, originally forged in the image of Mother England. Seventeenth century Europe punished minor crimes and misdemeanors with the stocks, whippings, dunking, branding, and the cropping of ears. More serious crimes, including murder, rape, robbery, treason, burglary, forgery, and counterfeiting were punishable by hanging. The reason for such stiff penalties was simply that in many countries police forces had not yet been established. In England, there was no effective constabulary until Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act of June 1829. Also, hangings were usually attended by huge crowds and were thought to be a deterrent to crime. They were considered as entertainment as well—never mind that pickpockets in the crowds, mused one historian, probably stole more than the victim had purloined during his whole lifetime.

Local gaols and dungeons were utilized as holding cells and to hold political prisoners. The new American colonies mirrored their European origins, but as early as 1764, Italy’s Cesare Beccaria was promoting new thinking in his An Essay on Crimes and Punishment. Beccaria had concluded that indiscriminate severity and inconsistency in the application of criminal laws in Europe hampered law and order. He concluded that harsh laws promoted disrespect for authority and the public was thereby hesitant in cooperating with authority to bring petty thieves to the gallows. Failure to differentiate degrees in wrongdoing, he argued, was an invitation to more serious crime. Laws must be clear and simple while the entire force of a nation is united in their defense.

It was a start, but then as now, the public just wanted lawbreakers out of the way. Except for prisoners’ relatives and friends, most people cared little for what was done with criminals.

England had long suffered from a lack of gaols to contain her criminals. For years, the English had used out-of-service naval or merchant ships to house convicts, anchoring these hulks, as they called them, in bays or rivers. The prisoners were then put to work on nearby public works projects. But there were complaints; the hulks were unsightly and escapes were frequent. Parliament did not want to spend any more money on criminals, but the politicians finally came up with a solution.

An eighteenth century British ship converted into a convict hulk to house prisoners. Author’s Collection.

In 1597, an act was passed whereby Britain’s Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars be banished beyond the seas. To obviate the increasingly noxious hangings of felons, in 1618 the authorities began transporting a growing flood of prisoners to the New World to be employed as workers in the colonies from Massachusetts to New York and further south. As in England, unseaworthy British warships had been fitted up as housing for these prisoners and anchored in bays along the East Coast. The labor of the convicts was sold to local farmers and plantation owners. These European convicts, for many foreigners were in English jails, were among the early, first settlers in America’s New World colonies.

But storm clouds were gathering over the villages and broad fields of the New World—and they were not of the climate variety.

If the Americans were ill-prepared to fight a war for independence in 1776, the British were also seriously hampered by the great distance between the colonies and England. And there were other grave problems, particularly after 1778 when the French entered the war. When New York City fell to the British soon after the Battle of Long Island in August 1776, the Redcoats were further encumbered by thousands of American prisoners. There were at least sixteen British prison hulks in Wallabout Bay on the East River for most of the war. When these became jammed with prisoners, the British seized local churches, sugar factories, and warehouses, where additional prisoners were kept. Most of these makeshift prisons were tantamount to dying and going to hell.

The care of these hapless prisoners was delegated to Provost Marshal William Cunningham, who connived with several commissary officers to pocket most of the prisoner food funds and instead supply a bare minimum of rotten rations for their helpless charges. Given little food and water, the health of the prisoners quickly deteriorated and they soon began dying off from starvation, dysentery, typhoid, and contagious diseases of all kinds.

There were 4,435 American battle deaths during the War for Independence, while deaths in these hell-hole British prisons has been estimated at between 7,000 and 11,000 during the same period. Unthinkable as it seems, it is almost impossible not to conclude that an insidious British extermination plan was put into effect to get rid of these despised rebels in their care. The same scenario took place in Britain’s Dartmoor Prison during the War of 1812.

After the American Revolution, Britain could no longer continue to use coastal prison hulks nor transport convicts to the new United States of America. With its rotting hulks and gaols overflowing at home, and America now exempt from the continued dumping of felons on its shores, Britain looked about for other distant colonies to take up the slack. The British soon settled on New South Wales (Australia). In 1787, the first fleet of prisoners sailed for the far Pacific. British sugar plantations in Jamaica and Barbados also received their allotted share of convicts and prisoners of war. The British were not only getting rid of their criminals, but they were eliminating their prisons as well. The convict pioneers of New South Wales, however, would have to become self-sufficient.

The newly established United States employed a potpourri of local punishments for protection against criminals. In the early Massachusetts colonies, pillories were still in use, as well as chaining to trees, branding, ducking stools, and whipping posts. All these punishments were presented as public exhibitions in the hope that it would deter crime.

The first jail in New York was reportedly built by the Dutch in 1642. Called the Stadt Huys, the building also had rooms for courts and a tavern. A new city hall was completed in 1699 and in early 1704 was adapted to use as the new city jail.

What has been characterized as the first American penitentiary, if not the first in the world, was established in Philadelphia in 1790. Certainly the term penitentiary seems to stem from the Pennsylvania Quakers and their belief in penitence and self-examination as a means to salvation. Here, reportedly, the idea of exterior egress cells divided by an interior central corridor was first introduced in prison construction. Solitary confinement was adopted, as was a separation of the sexes according to age and type of offense. Medieval castles, with their attendant dungeons, were often the architectural inspiration for these early prison strongholds.

Philadelphia’s Eastern Penitentiary was a massive fortress, opened in 1829. Author’s Collection.

New York City continued to lead the way, however. Newgate Prison was erected in a rural area now encompassing Greenwich Village. It was completed in 1796 on four acres overlooking the Hudson River. The Doric-style building was two stories with a cupola, and was surrounded by a stone wall ranging from fourteen to twenty-three feet high. Basically patterned after the Philadelphia model, Newgate consisted of fifty-four twelve-by-eighteen-foot rooms, each designed to hold eight persons. Fourteen solitary cells allowed the new prison to accommodate 446 prisoners.

New prisons were authorized in New York at Auburn in 1821 and later at Sing Sing, which replaced the outdated Newgate in 1824. Always unpopular because of the cost and the purpose, state penitentiaries were usually established, albeit hesitantly, in various states only as the need became apparent. Later prisons in the West, such as in California, had the opportunity to learn much from these predecessors, which should have made for an easier beginning. But, because of the lack of interest and funds, it was usually years before makeshift beginnings could be overcome.

To house some 30 state prisoners, Kentucky established the first penitentiary west of the Allegheny Mountains at Frankfort in 1799. When the Missouri penitentiary was established in 1836, it became the initial state prison west of the Mississippi River. In 1839, only one year after achieving territorial status, Iowa erected its first penitentiary, patterned after New York’s Auburn prison. Iowa’s statehood was still some seven years in the future. Arkansas’ earliest state prison was established in 1840 at Little Rock.

Prison architecture and procedures were frequently adapted from preceding models, with various adjustments and improvements introduced by wardens and prison boards. From a distance these early prisons might suggest a cluster of university buildings, or a medieval walled fortress. Gradually, treatment shifted from isolation and solitary confinement to classifying the prisoners and providing rewards for good behavior and schools for the illiterate.

The occupation of these idle convict hordes has always been a problem. Eventually, legislators settled on the British system and passed laws allowing convict labor to be used to help pay the prison bills. Factories were set up to manufacture goods within the prison walls, while gangs of convicts could be leased out for road construction and farm work. Prisoners were gradually seen as paying their own way, but it was too good to be true. Soon, local merchants and manufacturers began complaining that they could not compete with goods produced by cheap convict labor. This was eventually resolved, in California at least, by laws allowing prisons to market their products only to the state.

As early as the eighteenth century, great concerns arose about prisons and their hapless inmates. In the United States, the Prison Society of Philadelphia published The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline in the 1840s. The society monitored state and local jails, as well as acts by the legislature, and reported their findings in their journal. With little in the state laws to regulate such institutions, the society had scant powers, but it was a start.

Early West Coast prisons were based on the penal institutions in the East, but because California’s machinery of state was being established at the same time, funds were sparse and construction work was coarse and hurried. The only circumstance all could agree on was that, despite those idyllic days of ‘49 when everyone was working too hard to worry about theft, a continuing horde of newcomers from around the world was generating serious crime problems.

By 1850, California was a state of the Union, but its society was still quite primitive, despite the burgeoning towns and cities. Disappointed miners, ex-convicts from the Australian penal colonies, thugs from the slum districts of New York, deserters from the abandoned ships in San Francisco Bay, and con men and thieves from around the world were in California now and, for many, digging for gold was the furthest thing from their minds.

The story of California’s first state prison is more than just the chronological and statistical annals of an institution. First and foremost, it is a story of people—flawed people, heroic people, and, ultimately, desperate people. Those wardens, officers, guards, and criminals who worked and lived behind the stones, bricks and walls of San Quentin were in their own way all prisoners, as well as pioneers, of a great, new state.

CHAPTER ONE

The Journey of the Waban

She was a bark of 268 tons. Built in Maine in 1836, there was little to distinguish her from other ships of the same designation. The Waban was just another workhorse of the fleet of merchant vessels in the shipping trade. During the hot summer of 1849, she had recently returned to Maine from a voyage to Rio de Janeiro. Now, moored in New York harbor, the Waban, named after a noted Maine Indian, was being hastily refitted and provisioned for the burgeoning California trade.

The great California Gold Rush was underway. At the end of the Mexican War, Colonel Richard B. Mason, First U.S. Dragoons, arrived in California as provisional governor. When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in early 1848, Colonel Mason hastened to verify the discovery with a trip to the new mines. Guided by the discoverer himself, James W. Marshall, Colonel Mason was astounded by the hordes of miners lining the banks of the American River. When he was shown samples of the gold being dug up, he collected specimens and prepared a report to his superiors in Washington. With the report went a Chinese tea chest containing some 230 ounces of gold dust and various quartz samples. The truth, reported an excited Colonel Mason, would be miraculous to one who had not seen with his own eyes.

Word of the gold discovery had already reached the East and was widely reported in the press, but it was at first not taken seriously. In his report to Congress on December 5, 1848, however, President Polk validated the rumors with Mason’s report, and word of the discovery was soon being circulated around the globe.

Now, the whole world seemed to be surging to California, where, if you could believe press accounts, riches were practically bursting from the ground. From China, the Pacific islands, South America, Europe and Great Britain, people from all stations of life clambered aboard ships of every description to travel to the new promised land. Most had no idea exactly what they should do when they got there, much less any conception of just what hard work was involved in mining. Others knew what a primitive land California was likely to be. They knew the easier ways to make their fortune, by profiteering in shopkeeping, politics, or providing professional services of some kind. Others, gamblers, thieves, and rascals of every description, came to take the gold from the rightful owners by any means at their command.

NEW YORK WEEKLY HERALD, NOVEMBER 17, 1849:

The California Excitement—Increased Mania—The rush of emigration to California has broken out afresh. The two steamers which sailed on Tuesday were full of passengers, and all could not be taken. The last accounts which we received from California have caused this great additional excitement. It appears that further and greater discoveries of gold have been made here. . . .

The Waban’s owners quickly heeded the siren call to the far coast and began loading their craft for the golden market awaiting them in California. There were few sawmills in those golden hills, so the Waban was loaded principally with lumber. On September first, twelve passengers were welcomed aboard and Captain Severn signaled for the lines to be slipped and the bark edged out into the current of Upper New York Bay. Dodging the many small craft that were constantly passing from shore to shore, the Waban was soon in the choppy waters of the Atlantic, heading for Rio.

A three-masted bark of Waban class. Authors collection

After restocking with firewood for cooking, fresh water, and provisions at Rio de Janeiro, the Waban resumed her journey in early January 1850. After rounding Cape Horn at the tip of South America, Captain Severn made several other stops along the Pacific coast. Following a ten-day stop at Valparaiso, Chile, for supplies, the Waban continued the last leg of her journey. On June 8, 1850, Captain Severn took his bark past Point Lobos and through the Golden Gate to anchor in San Francisco Bay. It had been a long passage—280 days—and the Waban had reached her final port in the land of gold.

Captain Severn dropped anchor on the outside fringe of a great mass of abandoned ships, projecting a forest of uncanvassed masts. The ghostly collection of marooned sailing vessels was the result of mass desertions by both captains and crews upon arrival. They had all, seamen and officers alike, headed inland for the mining region. As Captain Severn went ashore with the passengers, it was learned the town had already burned down twice. It was rapidly being rebuilt, however, with many brick structures scattered among the tents and wooden buildings. Six days after the Waban’s arrival, a large section of the business district burned down once again.

The vitality of these Argonauts was amazing. With hardly a pause, new and better buildings were going up anew. San Francisco visitor William Perkins witnessed, and commented on, the May 4, 1849, fire:

WILLIAM PERKINS’ JOURNAL, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1964:

The town of San Francisco, or rather the city, for it begins to merit the latter name, is . . . greatly improved within the last year. Twelve months ago there were only two or three of the very old adobe houses of the ancient port, and one timber house, the Parker Hotel,. . . . The rest of the town was composed of the mud huts of the natives, and thousands of tents, canvas and brush houses, of the new comers.

Now, a space of about forty acres is completely built up with good houses, some of adobe, some of brick, some of iron, but unfortunately, most as yet of wood.

A favorite speculation, from the beginning of the gold fever, has been the sending out of ready-made wooden houses, and there is scarcely a point on the river [Sacramento] where they are not to be seen. Half of San Francisco at this epoch is composed of these inflammable tinder boxes.

The fires stirred immediate mumblings of arson, but most knew that under the circumstances it would be more notable if there were no fires, considering the predominant wooden construction. Others had noticed the arrival of ships from the Australian penal colonies filled with Ticket-of-Leave men (paroled ex-convicts) and drew their own conclusions. The truth was perhaps that both criminal arsonists were active and that accidental fires were taking place. From all accounts, Australian criminals, or others, were certainly involved in stealing goods and profiting by the conflagrations however they were initiated. The exasperation of the populace was well expressed by a prominent lawyer of the city:

San Francisco in 1849 was growing fast but it was a wooden firetrap that was destroyed several times. Author’s Collection

SAN FRANCISCO DAILY ALTA CALIFORNIA, DECEMBER 16, 1850:

The motive for the perpetration of the crime [arson] in this country, and especially in this city, seems to be to afford an opportunity for plunder and house robbery while the occupants are engaged in extinguishing the conflagration. I would suggest one mode by which the incendiary may meet the reward of his crime, and it is the only one by which he incurs any chance at punishment.

When any person shall be caught in the act of stealing at a fire, let him receive Lynch law, and suffer death. One or two evidences of this determination on the part of this community will end the disastrous fires to which we have been subjected during the past year.

In truth, San Francisco, as the principal settlement in the new territory, was suffering from an unrestrained growth and municipal and state government would be playing catch-up for years. Although statehood was achieved in September 1850, the turbulent times allowed less than savory characters to be in charge of the body politic. No one seemed to realize that a great gold rush was also triggering changes from an agrarian to an urban society, creating further problems in the new state. New York Tammany Hall thugs controlled the first elections in San Francisco, and as a result, the city would suffer in many ways during the tumultuous 1850s.

Crime was quite naturally a side effect of a society struggling to establish itself, given such an amalgamation of nationalities and adverse situations. To make matters worse, California was at this point a United States possession, but neither a U.S. territory nor a state. Until statehood was achieved, California was still governed by Mexican law, augmented by frequent shootings and lynchings. California had to muddle through this period with little help from the federal government.

In San Francisco during the summer of 1849, a group of discharged New York soldiers banded together into a group calling themselves Hounds. Made up of recruits from the New York slums and Five Points area, these thugs marched around town in a troop, intimidating saloon and restaurant owners. On July 15, on the pretext of collecting a debt, the gang assaulted a camp of Chileans on Telegraph Hill. One man was shot, many were chased through the streets by riders shooting at their heels, while others were severely beaten and women reportedly were raped. Much property was also destroyed or stolen.

Refusing to suffer further intimidation, a group made up of Sam Brannan, lawyer Hall McAllister, Sam Ward, A.J. Ellis, and others formed a posse and rounded up all the Hounds they could find and then lodged them in the brig of a naval warship anchored in the bay. A committee of three judges tried Hounds leader Sam Roberts first, then all of his followers in hearings that lasted several days. Convicted and ordered out of town, all the Hounds were threatened with hanging if they ever returned. It was all done outside the law, since municipal authorities were inefficient and there was not yet a serviceable jail, much less a dependable police force. The message was clear. This was the beginning of vigilante law in the Bay City.

There were jails scattered throughout California, but they were mostly made of adobe and were untrustworthy at best. Mexicans, as a rule, did not believe in jails. They tended toward firing squads for capital punishment, while sentencing those guilty of lesser crimes to public works or fines. Flogging was also practiced. In the Gold Rush mines, lynchings were frequent, as well as ear-cropping and branding.

Meanwhile, in early 1850, the Graham House, a large, four-story building on the corner of Pacific and Kearny streets had been purchased for use as a city hall. The basement of the building was also remodeled to contain a police station and six cells that could house twenty-four prisoners. It was the only safe place of incarceration in the city, but it too was being vacated on a regular basis by escaping felons. Construction of a San Francisco county jail was grudgingly begun in late 1850, but was soon halted for lack of funds.

At this same time, city councilman Sam Brannan reported that he had purchased the brigantine Euphemia for $3,500 from a fellow councilman. To fit it up as a prison ship cost another $8,000. Apparently, no one thought to ask the impetuous Brannan why he had paid all that money for a ship, when the bay was filled with hundreds of vessels, many of whose captains and crews had abandoned them. Later, most of these ships were stripped of their iron, then burned and sunk to clear the harbor. Nevertheless, San Francisco now had a place to store the ever-expanding criminal population. The hulk was also used to house longer-term state prisoners. Anchored at various wharves in the bay at this time were other old ships being used as warehouses and saloons.

Councilman Brannan, a renegade Mormon, was an example of the type of politician running wild in San Francisco. Brannan, along with other councilmen, had obtained bay-front city lots at their own prices, then had wharves built on their properties that further increased their value.

The year 1849 also saw the establishment of a thirty-man police force in San Francisco, including a chief, assistant chief, and three sergeants. But problems persisted in the criminal justice system. One way or another, the bad guys were still escaping from the station house jail. If they weren’t carving their way out through the floor or walls, lawyers were doing it through the courts. Prosecuting attorneys were poorly paid, while criminal lawyers could ask for and obtain high fees from their burglar clients. San Franciscans looked at all this in a quiet fury . . . and they remembered the Hounds.

While there were constant complaints about the inefficiency and wastefulness of the municipal government and the state legislature, it was expensive to build a new territory. Everyone knew this. In San Francisco, the frequent fires, construction of wharves, roads, and other infrastructure was a bottomless pit of taxation. All goods and supplies had to be imported, and they were marked up accordingly, while officials voted themselves handsome and exorbitant salaries. For many, California seemed to be a financial nightmare rather than a treasure chest.

On October 18, 1850, the U.S. Mail steamer Oregon steamed into San Francisco Bay firing pre-arranged salutes and flying every flag and pennant in its lockers. The new state of California had been admitted into the Union the previous month. Thousands rushed down to the wharves to welcome the great news. Now that California was part of the United States, things were bound to improve.

Meanwhile, San Francisco continued to grow. In 1849, the city contained a floating population of some 2,000. By the following year, one resident estimated about 40,000 living there, with about 36,000 arriving by sea that year from foreign ports. In 1851, the Alta California newspaper estimated the city’s population at 23,000. Individual groups of foreigners—Chileans, Chinese, Australians, and others—camped around Telegraph Hill and the waterfront. Saloons, auction houses, and gambling hall lights splashed onto the crowds and horses that moved through the alternately dusty or muddy streets.

Since the Hounds affair, the public had been content to let the beefed-up police force handle crime in the city. That changed, however, on the night of February 15, 1851, when prominent merchant Charles Jansen was assaulted in his shop and robbed of nearly two thousand dollars. Burglaries, muggings, and holdups of travelers on the road were one thing, but the robbery and beating of a popular merchant like Jansen in his place of business struck a particular chord of outrage. As he had done after the Hounds incident, Sam Brannan was again instrumental in assembling a new vigilante group.

There is no need to go into the reign of the 1851 Vigilance Committee that now took the stage in Gold Rush San Francisco. Many books, articles, and scholars have argued the motives and morals of that committee. Perhaps the truth is that, given all the circumstances that came together that summer, something had to give. Aside from the general crime rate and political dissatisfaction, San Francisco had its fifth great fire on May 4, 1851. More than three-quarters of the city was destroyed, involving the loss of many lives and ten to twelve million dollars in property damage. Again, Australian arsonists were blamed, the claim bolstered by a report that ten thousand dollars’ worth of goods were found in houses occupied by Sydney immigrants. Whatever the cause, the disaster added to the existing feeling of helplessness engendered by the Jansen robbery.

The hanging of Jenkins on the San Francisco plaza. Annals of San Francisco.

On June 10, 1851, another Sydney convict named John Jenkins stole a safe from a shipping office on the Central Wharf. As he rowed across the bay, he was spotted by some other boatmen who had heard the shouts of the shipping office agent. Captured and taken back to the wharf, Jenkins was given a severe beating, then led off towards the police station. The group was interrupted by a crowd of the newly formed vigilantes and that night Jenkins was hanged before a huge crowd in the town square.

When James (English Jim) Stuart, one of the principals in the Jansen robbery, was finally captured, he was taken from the authorities by vigilantes and hanged on a wharf on July 11, 1851. In his long confession, he detailed his many crimes and fingered some of his associates, resulting in the hanging of two more of the gang the following month. As an indication of the perceived significance of their actions, the vigilantes performed one more public service before fading from view.

SAN FRANCISCO DAILY ALTA CALIFORNIA, JULY 13, 1851:

County Jail—The Vigilance Committee are very busily employed in collecting subscriptions for the completion of the County Jail. Already, in twenty-four hours labor, nearly six thousand dollars have been pledged, and there is little doubt that the fifteen thousand dollars pledged by the Committee will be raised. No person is allowed to give over three dollars, in order to give all an opportunity to lend a hand in this truly noble work.

San Francisco would soon have a new county jail, although it was destined to be built in fits and starts.

The events in San Francisco had not been overlooked by the state legislators, some of whom, not known for incorruptibility, must have been shaking in their boots for fear the vigilantes would now be coming after them. They had better do something . . . and fast! The lack of adequate jails was the problem. At the moment the best jail in the state was the San Francisco county jail, and it consisted of the old ship Euphemia, anchored in San Francisco Bay. How long this would last was anyone’s guess—already dozens of prisoners had escaped from the old hulk.

There had been a growing public awareness of this lack of a secure and permanent state prison. In April 1850, the legislature had passed a bill declaring that all county jails were now also officially state prisons. By the end of the year, all the larger California cities—San Francisco, San Jose, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and San Diego—had county jails. As state prisons, they were also authorized to employ the prisoners on public works. With an entire new state infrastructure to establish, it was easy for the legislature to ignore criminals and prisons to pursue projects that would generate jobs, industry, and progress. The county jails and the Euphemia were just a stopgap for a problem that could not be ignored for long.

The need, opined the editor of the Sacramento Daily Union in September 1851, of suitable places of confinement and houses of correction becomes more and more apparent every day.

California, however, was the land of gold and, more importantly, opportunity. One of those who saw riches, other than those that must be dug from the ground, was a Kentuckian named James Madison Estill. Born in Madison, Kentucky, in 1811, Estill brought his wife, Martha, and two children to Missouri in 1841 where he established a grain mill and worked for the government at nearby Fort Leavenworth. The couple had four more children in Missouri, but after some business reverses, Estill was looking for new opportunities when the great California Gold Rush caught the attention of the world.

Informing his wife he would send for her and the family when he was settled, Estill put together a company and travelled overland, heading west with his father-in-law, Archibald Woods, a lawyer and judge. They were accompanied by their good friend, James W. Denver, with the total number in their party being thirty-four. Fifteen slaves were also included in the Estill caravan; they were contracted to work for Estill for two years, after which they would be set free. The slaves were in charge of one John M. Gray, who had been employed by Estill in Missouri. Eight members of the wagon train reportedly died on the way to California and were buried in the wilderness.

Estill’s first order of business, however, was to initiate a mail service between California and the East. As he had done in all his previous business ventures, Estill sought a prominent partner to bolster his enterprise and share expenses. He contacted Brigham Young in Salt Lake City. The Mormon leader was not interested, however, and Estill moved on. Soon, Estill & Co. Express delivered several wagons of mail, but the scheme was premature and was soon abandoned. It would later be charged that a wagonload of east-bound letters was dumped on the prairie and burned. While camped at Pacific Springs during June and July 1850, Estill engaged a passing violinist to give a concert for all the wagon trains camped nearby, for which Estill charged a dollar a head. During the entertainment, Estill also steadily dispensed a supply of cigars and brandy at inflated prices. It was typical of the talent Estill displayed all his life for making a profit out of every situation.

Arriving in California in October 1850, Estill purchased two property deeds in Solano County, where he established a ranch and likely put his slaves to work under overseer John Gray. Estill and his friend Denver also became active in Democratic Party politics. In purchasing cattle for his ranch, Estill met with a rancher who owned much of the county, General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo. Truly a legendary character of old California, Vallejo possessed more than 175,000 acres of land grants in Solano County and seemed to be just the star to which Estill should attach himself.

Born in Monterey in 1808, Vallejo came from an illustrious, military family and was himself a colorful soldier, rancher, and friend to the Americans now flooding into California. Although the Vallejos had participated in the early cruel subjection of the Indians, the family proved in later years to be helpful and friendly to the native wards in their care. Both Mariano and his brother, Salvador, were generous and enjoyed giving big dinner parties for their friends. It was perhaps at one of these functions that rancher Mariano Vallejo met opportunist James Estill. There was an instant rapport between the two, each realizing that they could be a bridge to the other’s culture and business circumstances. The two were soon talking politics and exchanging ideas on how to best take advantage of the opportunities opening in the new state.

General Vallejo found that trouble and James Estill went hand-in-hand Author’s Collection.

In early 1851, Vallejo presented a plan to the state legislature to establish and maintain a state prison. Although benevolent by nature, Vallejo’s major concern was building up a city named after him. The six county jails that had been declared state prisons were merely a stopgap solution to the worsening criminal problem. Vallejo’s plan included giving the state $137,000 in exchange for the legislature moving the state capitol from San Jose to a city he proposed building on the northeastern shore of San Francisco Bay. Located in Solano County, the city was originally to be named Eureka, but was changed to Vallejo after its founder. In addition, Vallejo offered to furnish twenty acres of land on which to construct a state prison. Further, Vallejo and his associate, Estill, would build the prison, staff it, clothe and feed all the convicts, and offer rewards to be in effect for a ten-year period for any prisoner who escaped. Until the prison was built, Vallejo and Estill would also provide refurbished ships to serve as temporary quarters for the convicts. All that was asked in return was that Vallejo and Estill could utilize the convict labor for their own profit.

Various members of the state legislature were familiar with Eastern prisons. Few of these prisons turned a profit, while most showed deficits of up to $100,000 a year. Californians were being offered a prison and all the accessories—for virtually nothing! Needless to say, the legislature could not get the papers drawn up fast enough. On April 25, 1851, An Act Providing for Securing the State Prison Convicts was passed by the state senate and assembly.

While waiting for details to be worked out, Vallejo and Estill widened their business partnership. Vallejo would provide the cattle and Estill would market the stock on the hoof to California towns and Indian reservations.

Vallejo had vast herds of cattle that, prior to the Gold Rush, were only of value in the hide and tallow trade conducted by visiting Eastern merchant ships. But things had changed. Now there were markets for beef in the mining camps and larger cities such as Sacramento, San Francisco, and Stockton. Besides these obvious markets, three Indian commissioners sent from Washington were now canvassing the state, establishing Indian reservations that the federal government promised to provide with food. In August 1851, Indian Commissioner