Chapter 10

At eight o'clock in the evening of February 19, 1851 two men entered the store of Jansen, Bond & Company, in Montgomery Street, knocked J. C. Jansen, a senior member of the firm, unconscious with a slung shot, and fled with two thousand dollars in gold coin. This was the beginning of a set of coincidences that no one would believe.

The next day the San Francisco police arrested Thomas Berdue. They believed him to be James Stuart, and lodged him in the jail to await transportation to Marysville and trial there for the murder of Sheriff Moore. A man named Windred, who was found in Berdue's company, was also arrested, on suspicion of being involved with the crime. Berdue was recognized as English Jim by half a dozen men who had known Stuart well, and was also positively identified by Jansen as one of the two men who had assaulted him. Jansen also identified Windred, although not with such certainty. Berdue protested his innocence and attempted to prove that he was not James Stuart, but his protestations and evidence alike were in vain against the overwhelming physical similarity between himself and English Jim. In weight, height, color of eyes and hair, shape of feature, and in every other general characteristic, the two men were identical. But the resemblance went even further. The notorious Sydney Duck was known to have a small scar over his left eye. So did Berdue. In English Jim's left ear was a slit where he had been cut by a knife. Such a slit was also found in Berdue's left ear. English Jim's left forefinger had been amputated at the first joint. Berdue had suffered a precisely similar injury. Because of the positive identification of the prisoners by Jansen, there was scarcely anyone in San Francisco who doubted their guilt. There was, also, scarcely anyone who was not convinced that the two men would eventually escape punishment through the connivance of politicians and crooked officials.

Sam Brannan also didn't help the situation when he distributed a circular around the crowd of more than 5,000 men.

I went to the City Hall where I found that the mayor had called out the Washington Guard, a volunteer military organization who was waiting to defend the prisoners from the crowd. An attempt to seize the men from the courtroom was made by several hundred men but the Washington Guard managed to repulse the men while several deputies and I spirited the prisoners to the basement cells. Sam Brannan continued to agitate the crowd after the men were put in jail. Josie reported the short speech he made when some of the other prominent men in town wanted to hold a jury trial, "I am very much surprised to hear people talk about grand juries, or recorders, or mayors. I'm tired of such talk. These men are murderers, I say, as well as thieves. I know it, and will die or see them hung by the neck. I'm opposed to any farce in this business. We had enough of that eighteen months ago, ( Brannan referred to the affair of the Hounds, in July 1849) when we allowed ourselves to be the tools of these judges. We are the Mayor and the recorder, the hangman and the laws. The law and the courts never yet hung a man in California, and every morning we are reading fresh accounts of murders and robberies. I want no technicalities. Such things are devised to shield the guilty."

He continued to urge the immediate hanging of both men but finally the other leaders refused to follow him and they adjourned without a decision on what to do. The next afternoon between eight thousand and nine thousand men gathered in Portsmouth Square. At the suggestion of William T. Coleman, another committee was named to consider the matter and recommend a course of action. This committee advised an immediate trial, and accordingly the hearing of evidence was begun at once in the Recorder's room of City Hall, before a judge and jury chosen from among the town's leading citizens. They were unable to come to a unanimous decision and the crowd blew up. Cries of "Hang them anyway" and "The majority rules!" rang out and the leaders with great difficulty managed to keep the men from assaulting the jail. Most of the men went home but several hundred of them remained and several attempts to seize the prisoners were made.

Afterwards they were then tried according to due process of law, found guilty of assaulting and robbing Jansen, and each sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment. I had left by this time and later learned that Windred managed to escape while Berdue was sent to Marysville where he was identified as English Jim again, convicted and sentenced to be hung. Finally on February 21, Josie and I left on the trail of English Jim.

I found that when I concentrated on the dowsing rod I felt a definite pull to the north, so that's the direction that Josie and I headed. I followed the dowsing rod to Yuba City first. When we got there, we heard that English Jim had been seen in the area yesterday and had quickly left after several of the townspeople had formed a mob to seize him for the murder of Sheriff Moore of Marysville. Yuba City is directly across from Marysville on the Yuba River and rather rustic compared to the other town. As we followed English Jim across the swampy landscape we went through the Sutter Buttes. It's really weird to see this little mountain chain in the middle of the valley. At least we were able to sleep somewhere dry after we finally made it to the raised area between the mountains. I was surprised at how wet the Sacramento Valley got in the spring. I was used to the Valley after they built the dams to control the flooding. I don't see how anyone could live in this mud.

After that we followed him to Eureka where we almost caught him at the docks. I was surprised at how many ships I saw there. I found out that most of the goods for Northern California were shipped through here. One man made a move on Josie and before I could act she had him on the ground using Krav Magen. One of his friends started toward her but I discouraged him by shooting the heel of his boot off. At the end of our stay in Eureka I gave the sheriff there a copy of the wanted poster for English Jim and my federal warrant for his arrest. We managed to buy some provisions and resumed tracking English Jim. He was headed toward the Oregon Border, which surprised me. I almost walked into an ambush, but I was able to dowse his presence on the hillside. He shot at us, but we never really came into range. We kept close behind English Jim, often reaching the towns the day after he had. I continued handing out the wanted posters and telling everyone who would listen about the federal warrant. Even most of the people he associated with were angered by the white slavery charge and he began avoiding towns as his sources of food and information dried up.

English Jim kept moving and we kept following him. He started to become more desperate as he continued fleeing ahead of us. His trail was littered by robberies committed by a desperate man for nothing more than food. English Jim committed several murders on the trip, mainly men who had been trying to collect the bounty placed on his head. Josie and I hurried to catch up with him and came very close several times. Finding his fire shortly after he had left became commonplace for us. Every so often we would catch a glimpse of him in the distance just out of rifle shot and he would shake his fist at us before riding away. English Jim knew we were after him and we avoided several ambushes he set only by my ability to find him using the dowsing rod. We set counter ambushes several times but he avoided them and continued to run ahead of us. We went through most of Northern California and dipped into Utah and Nevada while we hunted English Jim. By late June we were exhausted and almost broke. We had to take a break to let the horses rest and get some money for food to continue the chase.

I managed to find some dust in a stream and that allowed me to dowse out more gold in a creek bed and we panned for three days, managing to take out some 8 ounces of gold. We returned to the chase and found that English Jim had managed to rob a miner and left him dead in his cabin after stealing his horse and provisions. We reported this to the nearest authorities when we replenished our supplies and then began the chase again. When we began to follow him again, I found English Jim was headed back toward San Francisco. We hurried as fast as we could but failed to find him before he reached San Francisco. I was surprised to find that English Jim had been seized while trying to rob an English ship in the harbor. The captain's wife wouldn't let him go when she found him ransacking their cabin. He had been seized by the crew and badly beaten before being handed over to the Vigilance Committee. They were determined to see justice was done this time, especially after the fourth fire in less than a year.

On May 4, 1851 a man recognized as an inhabitant of Sydney Town was seen running from a paint shop right before it burst into flames. Several other fires began at the same time in the downtown business district. The wind was blowing away from Sydney Town, as it had during previous fires, and within ten hours over two thousand buildings had been burned. Groups of looters from Sydney Town roamed the streets and took many valuable items from the burning buildings while the other inhabitants of San Francisco struggled to save what they could of the city. Citizens shot several of the looters while they were looting the buildings and they were later discovered to be members of the Sydney Ducks. By the time the fire burned out over three quarters of San Francisco was in ruins. This was the last straw for the citizens of San Francisco.

They were determined to find a remedy for a situation that had become unbearable. As a result of the fire and the lack of any law, a group of some two hundred prominent citizens held a secret meeting early in June 1851, in a building at Battery and Pine streets that was owned by Samuel Brannan. After many hours of discussion they formed the first Vigilance Committee. The following extracts from the committee's constitution summarize its avowed aims: