Mark’s Reviews > The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld > Status Update

Red haired Jewish prostitutes on Morton St (Union Square)

The Little Frog Catcher (so sad). She went from catching frogs in the marshes of San Mateo County to organizing a gang, purloining hos from the other brothels. Shot in the heart at 25.

Shanghai Kelly shanghai'd an entire boatload of men who didn't knew one end of a ship from the other by throwing a birthday party with free drugged booze on board the Goliath. On the way back he picked up the survivors of a ship that had wrecked near Santa Barbara. The landing of the rescued men at the Market St wharf caused such excitement that no one seemed to notice that he had returned without his picnic guests.

Sailors were forced to go ashore by runners who also sold dummies to ships instead of sailors, sometimes with rats in sleeves (Nikko)
Mother Bronson (female crimp) used her teeth to subdue obstreperous customers
Nikko could drink a gallon of whiskey
Chilean Calico Jim shanghaied six cops. He was eventually shot by one of them in Callao, Chile where he had fled.

Cops along the waterfront carried large knives and several battles occurred in which they chopped off the hands of their assailant and one incident where Sergeant Langford decapitated a man ransacking a secondhand clothing store on Pacific.

The life of a Chinese prostitute slave was brutal in the extreme. They were left to die "hospitals."

90% of Chinese prostitutes had STDs. A physician testified that he had seen white 8 and 20 year old boys of with diseases they had gotten from the hos.

He thinks that Chinatown was more or less purged of evil by the '06 quake.

"The best cure for hoodlumism is the frequent application of locust or hickory to the hoodlum's skull."

Felonious dandies