A group of about four to five hundred men with pistols drawn sealed both sides of Battery Street in front of the Committee’s headquarters. We took a position on the loading dock of a warehouse opposite the headquarters where we could look down on the scene as it played out. On the side of Battery Street nearest the Plaza, a mob of at least three thousand were jostling for position in anticipation that Stuart would be hung from a yardarm run out of the Committee’s upper windows where their prisoners were held and interrogated. The men sealing both sides of the street with their revolvers kept the mob from surging forward. Many in the crowd were chanting, “Hang the bastard now!”
“The men restraining the mob are Committee members,” Pierre-Louis whispered over the noise of stamping feet and hooting calls for action now and demands of “bring him out now.” After several minutes a Committee member, calling himself “Colonel Stevenson,” emerged from the barricaded headquarters. He waved for the crowd to be silent.
“I am here to inform you good people who seek justice in the matter of the recent incendiary and criminal acts against the law abiding citizens and businesses of San Francisco that James Stuart, also known as ‘English Jim,’ has been fairly tried before a jury of the Committee of Vigilance and has freely admitted to his crimes to wit: he was one of the robbers who viciously assaulted and robbed the hardware store owner, Jansen; that on his escape from the gallows at Marysville, he stole a horse to make his getaway and later sold it for profit; that he organized a gang of criminals who preyed on citizens and businesses alike; that he and his accomplices, who were named and will be arrested and interrogated by the Committee of Vigilance, planned and were prepared to set fire to the city again. As a consequence, the trial jury has convicted him of those crimes and sentenced him to hang…” At this point, the crowd interrupted him with cries of “hang him now!”
Col. Stevenson motioned the crowd to be quiet. “The Executive Committee has summoned you good people of San Francisco to serve as a court of review before any sentence is carried out. Do you agree to convict Stuart? What is your verdict?” The mob howled, “Yes.”
“Shall he hang for his crimes?” An immediate and almost unanimous roar of approval erupted from the mob. “Hang him.”
With that, the armed members of the Committee formed in columns of two to thwart any rescue attempt and Stuart, with hands tied behind him, was marched out of the Committee’s headquarters, placed in the middle of the armed phalanx of Committee men and marched past us south down Battery Street towards the Market Street pier.
The throng following behind was boisterous and ugly as members jostled and trampled others to get to the scene of the execution. Pierre-Louis and I waited patiently for the last stragglers to leave the scene before heading back to the restaurant. Neither of us had a stomach for the last act. Pierre-Louis opened a bottle of red wine to go with a platter of hard cheeses and sausage slices. The distant roar of the mob told us that the execution had taken place.
“HANGING OF JAMES STUART,” 1851.
California Gold Rush Journal
CHAPTER SIX
San Francisco — July 1851
I checked with the consulate and was assured I could have tickets to the upcoming French Ball at the Cairo Saloon. I broached the subject with Manon before discussing it with Teri and Giselle.
“So Daddy-to-be wants to check out all the pretty French ladies in town while Manon lugs his progeny around in her bigger and bigger belly, yes?”
“That’s only partially true,” I said tongue-in-cheek. “I look at all the pretty ladies every day, but none compares to you, Mommy-to-be.”
“Hah. So you admit your roving eye can’t be trusted, Heh!”
I laughed at her attempt to say “Gotcha.” “But of course not, ma Chérie. We are being invited to chaperone Teri and Giselle if they want to go. Gino wants to invite Teri and he’s afraid she won’t go with him unless we tag along. We both thought it would be good for Giselle as well to meet other Frenchmen and have some fun. There will lots of successful French businessmen and merchants in attendance. I thought it would be a safe outing for all of us.”
“Yes, and there will be all the French dance hall girls and barmaids and pouffiasses who work in the bars and gambling palaces and make their real money on their backs who will be there to snare respectable French ladies’ husbands, Non?”
“I am not afraid. You can come in your sailor boy outfit with a carving knife in your boot and your marine pistol in your belt. No conniving wench will be able to get near me with you to protect me.”
It was Manon’s turn to laugh. “So you gonna just dance with your pregnant wife dressed as a pot-bellied sailor boy all night?”
“Maybe I’ll get to dance with Teri and Giselle as well if my favorite wife gets tired?”
“Ha, you make goo-goo eyes at any other woman, and mother-to-be will cut you up in little pieces and feed you to the seagulls on the wharf,” she retorted ignoring my reference to her partners.
“So, you’re willing to go?”
“We go only if Teri and Giselle go,” she stated emphatically. “And you don’t go unless I go, so there, Big Boy.”
I let it go at that. I opened the subject at our next communal dinner. All three women were surprised when I related that Gino asked my permission to date Teri. Teri agreed she’d go if we all went as a group. Giselle was unsure and hesitant, but Manon prodded her to tag along with us. Manon even offered to have me dance with her if she didn’t want to dance with any of the men present. Manon gave me a devilish tit-for-tat look.
Later she informed me that the lawyer, Thomas Hawthorne, had been ordering his lunch “take out” the last few days from Giselle’s stand on the wharf and had been finding excuses to hang around, sip a glass of wine and engage Giselle in conversation in his limited French. She suggested I get a ticket for him as well, but not tell Giselle.
“So we are now conniving and running a matrimonial agency?”
“Maybe,” she said coyly. “I sneaked a look at him and he is tall and not unattractive. You don’t expect me to dance only with you when we have other men seeking favors, do you, Big Boy,” she said flirtatiously.
I laughed. “Do you think Giselle will welcome him as part of our group?”
“Well, you are going to do business with him, so we’ll find out. Maybe a chance encounter will break the ice. Giselle is still shy and fearful of men and the lawyer is too timid to ask her for a date. So, we just help the matter along, non?”
“My, my, Manon has become quite the little intriguer, hasn’t she?”
Manon puckered her pouty lips and fluttered her long, black eyelashes for full effect. “If you are going to forsake mother-to-be and go gallivanting around the mining camps with Gino, then who better than a lawyer in love to protect three abandoned women?”
As usual, I was being out maneuvered and chastised at the same time by my clever wife. “It looks like I better get that extra