THE BARBARY COAST: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld

by Herbert Asbury

Herbert Asbury's classic chronicle of the birth of San Francisco - a violent explosion from which the infant city emerged full-grown and raging wild. From all over the world practitioners of every vice stampeded for the blood and money of the gold fields. Gambling dens ran all day including Sundays. From noon to noon houses of prostitution offered girls of every age and race. (In the 1850s, San Francisco was home to only one woman for every thirty men. It was not until 1910 that the sexes achieved anything close to parity in their populations.) This is the story of the banditry, opium bouts, tong wars, and corruptions, from the eureka at Sutter's Mill until the last bagnio closed its doors seventy years later.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Crime, True Crime, American History, Historical, Cities

364 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 1933

About the author

Herbert Asbury (September 1, 1889 – February 24, 1963) was an American journalist and writer best known for his books detailing crime during the 19th and early-20th centuries, such as Gem of the Prairie: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld and The Gangs of New York.

Reviews

[Eli - Bookworm & Vine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Classic history. Not a lot of good stories, pretty much just talking about different brothels and dancehalls.

[Melanie Spiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 1933, not all that long after the Barbary Coast was shut down and modern San Francisco took its shape. In that regard, it's clearly drawn from the writer's own experiences as well as some research.

I enjoyed the sense of the time that I got, going back to 1848 and as far forward as the 1920s. The book is light on contextual history, heavy on politics and prostitution. I needed a map, so I printed one from GoogleMaps, and taped it to the inside cover. I live in SF, but even so, all the street name-dropping, especially in the first quarter of the book, made me get lost. Someone less familiar with SF would have an even harder time of it.

At least a half of the book discusses prostitution, which seems out of proportion somehow. It was clearly a huge way of making money in the region, but I wished for more about legitimate businesses (restaurants, rooming houses, grocery stores, etc.) and perhaps a bit more about the other illegal activities. Mugging is barely covered, and shanghaiing gets only a dozen pages or so. There was a LOT of money in the area (people were making as much as $50,000 a year in mining and mining-related industries in the 1850s and 60s), and I would have liked more about those industrious souls. The upstanding citizens of SF are discussed in their prurient interest in the bawdy houses, and a kind of tourism industry took advantage of their interest. Otherwise, how the rest of the city was affected by the Barbary Coast wasn't mentioned.

Also, very little was discussed about the earthquake and fire of 1906, which, for those of us living in SF, provided a "before and after" structure to the city. Asbury focuses on who was mayor and whether that mayor was part of the prostitution problem or not, rather than taking a larger view.

I've only just begun researching the area and the time period, so perhaps some of my criticisms are because the information I wanted wasn't important to this author. In general, I enjoyed the book. The writer's style was pleasant, he didn't sound lascivious even though he devotes so much attention to the bawdier side of the Barbary Coast, and I did get a strong sense of which politicians were trying to make SF a better place and which were trying to get rich off the efforts of others.

I would recommend this book, even though I gave it a lowish rating.

[Celeste · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic. Brilliantly entertaining stories, and most of them close to agreed upon historical consensus. Lurid details of the "Underbelly" of the Barbary Coast. I couldn't get enough of it, and this book launched me into an obsession with the history of San Francisco. At least a particular side of SF. Great to read in tandem with "You Can't Win", by Jack Black ...

[Linda Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm happy to report I finally finished reading this nonfiction history of a city I've spent a lot of time in. I was born nearby in Oakland and moved to San Francisco as a young adult. (I no longer live there; I've escaped to a small mountain town.)

I chose to read The Barbary Coast for novel research; one of my novels takes place primarily in San Francisco in 1855 so I needed to know more about what the city was like back then.

This book is a chronicle of human depravity in early San Francisco from about 1848 to 1917, in the section of the city that was known as the Barbary Coast. If you want to read about decadent dehumanizing depravity, indecent debauchery and despicable moral deficiencies, this is the book for you.

The Barbary Coast started as an entertainment venue for gold rush prospectors who had left their wives, families and all pretense of moral decency behind on the East Coast. Even when the gold rush was over the money flowed in the parlor clubs, dance halls and saloons with the foundation of this district being in the countless lives of desperate prostitutes who chose that profession to escape extreme poverty and destitution. I'm not defending their actions; many if not most of them were just as morally debased as any other person spending time in the Barbary Coast.

Author Herbert Asbury made a career of writing books about vice, evil and desperation in the history of major American cities: New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and this book about San Francisco. He also wrote about Carry Nation and interestingly, his memoir is titled Up from Methodism: A Memoir of a Man Gone to the Devil. That doesn't surprise me, as this man spent years and years researching the worst evils of big city histories, then writing about them.

The five-star rating is based on the author's writing style and research skills. It is not based on my love of the book's content. These topics were shocking and distressing to me. It saddened me to learn of the depravity of so many of my fellow humans. The section on enslaved Chinese teenage prostitutes was especially heart-rending. Most of them died before the age of 25. Many of them were enslaved when they were infants and knew no other opportunities in life.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early San Francisco was a profoundly strange city. The Gold Rush exploded a sleepy port into an expensive haven of vice and villainy, designed to separate miners and sailors from their cash with booze, prostitution, and blunt objects. The dense area of houses of ill-repute, named the Barbary Coast, was a real-life version of that Simpsons song about New Orleans. Asbury's book is from 1933, and takes pretty much every lurid newspaper article from the time at face value. There are some interesting anecdotes about such characters as Dirty Tom McAlear, who would eat or drink anything for a few cents and hadn't had a bath in fifteen years, to wars between proprietors of vice and the vigilant Vigilance Committee, or the various ruses used to shanghai sailors onto new ships, but overall this book is just long, early 20th century scandalizing about admittedly very bad vice, without much of an organizing framework.

[Amina Ahsan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great look back at the start and end of the Barbary Coast. The SF underworld. The waterfront district of SF in the 19th century, notorious for its cheap bars, nightclubs, prostitute abs gambling houses abs the high incidence of crime. As an SF resident it bring to life all the neighborhoods and streets that we are so familiar with in the 21st century.

[Gillian Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars because of its historical context, not because the writing is particularly artful. This is a portrait of San Francisco in the Great Depression. The great earthquake/fire is past, the Gold Rush is nearly a hundred years in, and the boom town is equal parts rich and squalid.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good gritty history of 19th & early 20th century San Francisco. Probably not really historically accurate, but entertaining.

[Paul Bauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Little Lost Chicken was a tiny girl in her middle twenties. She knew but one song, a ballad which began: 'The boat lies high, the boat lies low; she lies high and dry on the Ohio.' This she sang in a quavering falsetto, invariably bursting into tears at the last note. She so obviously required protection against the cruel blasts of the world that many gentlemen very chivalrously offer it; but always to their financial distress, for in her artless way the Little Lost Chicken was a first-rate thief and pickpocket." Herbert Asbury, The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (1933)

[Aaron Hertzmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting window into the past, but also focused on the lurid and sensational at the expense of broader context. Couldn't sustain interest after 100 pages.

[Edmund Roughpuppy · Rating 5 out of 5]

God bless this pretty powder-keg
Anyone who connects with the city of San Francisco recognizes the special excitement and danger they feel. In this place, many rules do not apply. We may soar, we may crash. No one will prevent our flight, and in all likelihood, no one will clean up our messy end. We do not feel the same way, anywhere else.

This atmosphere of exalted possibilities is not an accident, but the product of San Francisco’s accidental birth and orphaned development in the 19th century. The city sprang up to serve gold miners and the criminal elements who preyed on them. Reading this history, two things struck me: (1) How bad conditions were, and (2) how much remains the same, in the 21st century.

We come here to pretend, and to reinvent ourselves
San Francisco did not so much attract eccentric outlaws and religious fanatics as those characters washed up on its shores, expelled from more sensible communities. In fierce competition for scarce resources, language was twisted in a fashion that sounds remarkably recent:

The cost of practically every commodity and of every sort of personal service was on a par with that of lodging. There were few men willing to perform the necessary menial tasks, and those who did condescend to undertake such work not only charged accordingly but insisted upon grandiloquent titles calculated to disguise and dignify their labors. Thus, the few washerwomen in the town put out signs announcing “Clothing Refreshed”; the porters who handled the baggage of travelers called themselves “baggage conveyors and transporters,” and the waiters in the hotels and restaurants refused to respond unless addressed respectfully as “Mister Steward.” Fewer than a score of cooks were in private service, but they insisted, of course, upon being called “chefs.”

Individuals lived out their fantasies, like children whose parents left them alone too long:

Willie Coombs . . . thought he was George Washington and always wore a Continental uniform of tanned buckskin. To Willie Coombs the saloon was both General Headquarters and the White House. He appeared there each night with his maps and his state papers and over a glass of beer planned his battles and composed messages to Congress and foreign nations. Once he almost starved himself to death before his friends could convince him that he was no longer at Valley Forge.

Pleasure was always for sale, but mind the price
Alcohol
“Oh, King Alcohol!” cried Happy Jack. “Great is thy sway! Thou makest meaner creatures, kings, and the unfortunate fellow of the gutter forget his miseries for a while!”

The crime and debauchery of the early days of the Barbary Coast was accompanied by the gurgle of enormous quantities of liquor, the consumption of which probably reached its peak in 1890. In that year the city granted the right to sell beer, whisky and other intoxicating beverages to 3,117 places, or one for every ninety-six inhabitants. And there were at least two thousand blind pigs, or blind tigers, as speakeasies were called in those days, which operated without licenses.

And yes, opium was smoked, if the drunkards could hunt it down in Chinatown.

The fairer sex
For many years after its birth, San Francisco was almost exclusively populated by males. Pent up desire increased to nuclear levels.

By the end of 1852 there was no country in the world that was not represented in San Francisco by at least one prostitute.

It was a popular superstition in San Francisco for many years that a woman with auburn tresses was exceedingly amorous, and that a red-haired Jewess was the most passionate of all. A pimp who owned two or three such girls was on the highroad to fortune.

Crime was a way of life
Most of the prostitutes in San Francisco were, in fact, slaves. When disease or age destroyed their economic value, many were unceremoniously murdered. Their customers were robbed blind. Sailors arriving in San Francisco were often “Shanghai’ed,” kidnapped, then sold into slavery to a new captain.

Murders were always expected.

During the half-dozen years that followed Alcalde Geary’s first attempt to form a reputable municipal government, an average of almost two murders a day were committed in San Francisco—and at no time in that period did the city have a population of more than forty thousand. Robberies, assaults, and other crimes were so numerous that no effort was ever made to determine even their approximate number.

Law enforcement was a joke—this has not changed
If you overstay your parking meter in 21st century San Francisco, you can expect a hefty ticket, no exceptions. If you are attacked by a murderer, on the other hand, the police are likely to drive by slowly, wave at you, and wish you a good evening. Thus it ever was.

A recapitulation of California’s crime statistics for the year ending January 1, 1856, published by this journal, showed that 489 murders had been committed, about two-thirds of them in San Francisco. In the then largest city of California no murderer had been punished, although in other parts of the state six had been legally executed and forty-six hanged by mobs.

Let’s hear it for corrupt, incompetent government and outrageous deficit spending
The deficit for the single year ending March 12, 1855 was $840,000, and the annual message of the Mayor on that date showed that since the middle of 1851 obligations had been incurred amounting to $1,959,000, an enormous debt for a city with a population of less than fifty thousand. Later that same year a commission, appointed under an act of Legislature to fund the floating debt, recognized as valid indebtedness only a little more than $300,000. The remainder was repudiated.

Then, as now, we were proud of our badness
While most of San Francisco’s reputable citizens publicly bemoaned the iniquities of the Barbary Coast and performed lip-service in the many campaigns designed to eliminate its more objectionable features, secretly they were, for the most part, enormously proud of their city’s reputation as the Paris of America and the wickedest town on the continent. A tour of the district, under proper police supervision, was usually a part of the itinerary of the distinguished visitor to San Francisco, and if through some oversight it wasn’t, the distinguished visitor very frequently included it on his own account, for no area of similar size in the Western Hemisphere had been so widely publicized or was so universally known. And since comment upon the evils of the quarter was eagerly sought by the newspapers, few celebrities set foot in San Francisco without seeing it. Sarah Bernhardt always visited the Barbary Coast when she played in San Francisco on her frequent tours, and pleased local journalists immensely by declaring that she had found it more fascinatingly wicked than Montmartre. Anna Pavlowa, the famous dancer, often visited the dance-halls, and avowed that she had obtained many ideas for her own dance creations by watching the gyrations of the light-footed Barbary Coasters. And when John Masefield, now Poet Laureate of England, arrived in San Francisco some sixteen years ago, the first thing he said when he disembarked from a ferry-boat at Market Street was: “Take me to see the Barbary Coast.”

In spite of all this . . .
I love the place. Nowhere else have I felt so fully alive as in San Francisco. This well-written account of its evils only makes me love it more. It’s a sickness, I freely admit.

[Steve Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Asbury’s books.

Critics have said he embellished his works, but it appears he researched them. No doubt many of the tales grew with the telling and were magnified by the time Asbury got to them.

He chronicles the vice of San Francisco from the Gold Rush days up to ten years past the 1906 earthquake. He writes of racism, child exploitation, violence...all fascinating and tragic accounts of the era that explode “Golden Age” myths of modern times.

Sometimes the stories are darkly funny as well. No spoilers.

[E. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beh. This is one of those books I'll pick up and put down for years to come when I'm bored or in the can or something. Someday I might finish it, or not. I don't really care either way.

This isn't to say it's not interesting. It is. But it's hard to tell what is true and what is conjecture. Some interesting history in here though. SF!

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Informal history" means that legend is mixed in with fact. Most legends are based on fact anyway....

[Farrah · Rating 2 out of 5]

SF is still fucked up. But now everyone has ironic haircuts and iphones.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first started reading this, I didn't realize that it had been written in 1933 and that the author also wrote Gangs of New York and other books detailing crime in cities such as Chicago and New Orleans. But as I started to read this, it became rather obvious that the book was written in a less politically correct era when Chinese were referred to as Celestials or Chinamen and some of the words used such as bagnio (bordello or brothel) are little used today.

But overall, this is a very extensive history of San Francisco and its vices from the time of the gold rush in the 1840s up until about 1917 when the city closed most of the "bagnios" that thrived in the section of the city known as the notorious Barbary Coast. I lived in the Bay Area for about 13 years during the 80s and 90s but I was really unaware of most of its wild past. A lot of this was fascinating and perverse. Included in the history were immigrants from Australia who started some of the earliest gangs in the city and targeted much of the Latino population. The gangs were called the "Hounds" and the "Sydney Ducks" and they were instrumental in the forming of the Committee of Vigilance in 1851 to rid the city of their presence. A lot of the book focuses on the brothels and prostitutes of the era including young Chinese girls who were smuggled from China and forced to work in small "cribs" in the city. It also tells of the Chinese gangs called tongs and their wars with each other. And then there was the plight of the sailors who embarked in the city and were taken for anything they had.

There was a lot of detail about various personages who played a part in the story including brothel owners, gamblers, dance-hall girls and performers, etc. Some of this in the later chapters became a little tedious and I ended up skimming some of it. Overall, I would only mildly recommend this if you are interested in the history of San Francisco when it was its wickedest...

[Jonathan Fesmire · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible look at San Francisco history!

From the earliest days of the California Gold Rush in 1848 until the final doors were forced shut in 1921, the Barbary Coast district of San Francisco was home to extreme crime and debauchery. Many of the city's most memorable historical figures profited from the Barbary Coast. Between it, Chinatown, and the Upper Tenderloin district, San Francisco has perhaps the most colorful history of any U.S. city.

This account of that infamous district, first published in 1933, is an entertaining and sometimes shocking read.

"The Barbary Coast" is one of the books I've read as research for the next book in my steampunk zombie western series, which will take place in San Francisco in late 1876 and will involve this district and many of its more dangerous inhabitants from that time. I wish I could thank Herbert Asbury for this detailed resource.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historical book about the Barbary Coast in San Francisco from the Gold Rush in 1849 to its demise in 1917. The first half of the book is more about the history of San Francisco itself than just the Barbary Coast—and it is a horrible history, filled with lawlessness and horrendous crimes. Early San Francisco was inhabited primarily by men, most of whom were violent and not held accountable for their crimes since the police and politicians were corrupt. Examples include young Chinese girls sold in China and shipped to prostitution houses as slaves; sailors kidnapped from their ships and drugged, then put on near-pirate ships to sail across the Pacific; houses of prostitution called cribs and cow-yards forcing girls and women to service as many as 30 to 80 men a night. Very well researched, written and detailed—including the 1906 earthquake and fire. Though, due to the intense subject matter, it was very difficult to read.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

About time I read this as I grew up on Telegraph Hill that sat above the Barbary Coast. I learned that Barbary comes from Berber.

I had a feeling that the Barbary Coast would be rougher and tougher in ways I could never imagine, and sure enough I was right. Makes me wonder how anyone survived. It's hard to imagine being in San Francisco in the 1850s or '60s, but this book gives you some idea.

We should be grateful for the author's efforts, for imagine if he had not written this colorful and frequently appalling addition to the canon of San Francisco history, replete with outlandish/horrific stories and situations and extreme characters that rival (outdo?) the greatest writers of fiction.

It's also a case study in what happens if people find out there's gold in them thar hills. Fucking savages.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating, salacious read, paints early San Francisco out to be a mix of the Wild West and a Capone-esque gangster world, with at times a Dickensian black-humored twist.

Caveat: the book is a time capsule of the period it describes, but also of the period in which it was written. The author puts forth what in his time must have been a notably progressive take on his subject matter, but ultimately can't help sounding like a product of his time. Just something to be aware of.

Summary: recommended reading if you enjoy true crime, mob, or wild west stories. I wish Scorsese would make a movie out of this like he did the author's other book, Gangs of New York.

[Mrs.Chardonnay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was on my list for many years, I'm glad I finally got to it. There is some fascinating history here, and my progress was slowed down due to me putting the book down and going to Google to look up various characters and incidents. A subscription to Newspapers.com sheds additional light on some of the more fascinating tales, via 1800s era newspaper accounts. My progress was also slowed by the fact that the last 1/4 or so of the book became rather repetitive with what felt like the same old stories about brothels and prostitution rings. So, I took off one star for that. Overall this was an interesting read for those who are into the history of San Francisco.

[Eugene · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a big surprise that this book is hard to read since it was written in 1933 and consist of a very thorough analysis and list of all the establishments, personalities, and activities it also shows the reason why San Francisco is such a weird city.
Homelessness, crimes, corruption, lawlessness, and lack of proper management were always present in this city in much bigger amounts, so it's not a big surprise that the spirit of Barbary Coast is still present here, just maybe changed the neighborhood.

[Jimmacc · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I purchased the book, I was expecting a story along the lines of “gangs of New York” movie. This book is a piece by piece history of the Barbary Coast from beginning to end. Really interesting descriptions of the…depravity/lawlessness/…? That occurred in that area starting off with the gold rush and then through the early 1900’s. The influence of nyc gangs, the life of sailors, continually intricate ways of ripping off or sterling people.

On the dry side, but nonetheless a worthwhile read.

[Chris Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is book by an apparently independent (non-scholarly) historian. In parts repetitive and redundant, a picture of the subject is well developed in 1933 (copyright date) way. Mr. Asbury often uses humorous and pithy prose, although it is oftern with a wink-wink attitude. The history of the Coast is well explained and documented, but the repetition of elements, people, and events is off-putting. The attitudes toward minorities and women are disturbing to a 2024 eye, but it has value in showing certain middle-class attitudes of the time.

[Leila Kern · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took a long time for me to read. Not because the story was not interesting but the writing rambled somewhat. This book was an interesting read; history I had not heard or read about. And, having been born and raised in San Francisco, I was extremely interested in reading about San Francisco's early history. I did not realize that the Barbary Coast existed for so long. I would recommend this book as an addition to other history written about San Francisco.

[Jennifer Boughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thrilling historical read about the debauchery and vice of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. Starting in 1849 and ending around 1911, Herbert Asbury tells in graphic detail the businesses and happenings of San Francisco’s notorious saloons, brothels, and dives. The book reads almost like a novel - and since some of the street names remain the same today in San Francisco, it’s easy for the reader to imagine the city of old.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this nearly as much as Gangs of New York. San Francisco is a port city and was for a time closest in its cultural flavors to New Orleans, surprisingly enough.

It was helpful also to read the more accurate account of the murders of Theodore Durant, after reading the atrocious nonsense of Robert Graysmith's The Bell Tower, which bordered on demented in its incoherence and absurdity.

[Rachel Parham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was ultimately a fascinating look into the insanity that was San Francisco's Barbary Coast, but I have to admit the amount of time spent on the sex workers and how the brothels operated got to be a bit much. Chapter after chapter.after chapter on this... in fact, the title should be "The Barbary Coast: A History of Sex Work in the 1800s."

[Du · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're looking for a history of prostitution and nefarious activities in old time San Francisco, this is the book for you. The book is very light on contextualizing its topics, but very deep on politics and social interaction. It's like an early example of social history. It almost feels like the first hand account in some instances.