Short Stuff: Emperor Norton

San Francisco was still San Francisco. Yeah. I'd heard of this guy. I didn't know much about him as his news and eccentric, beloved San Franciscan. But when you dig into this guy, it just gets better and better. Yeah, it's pretty great. So he was. He was, Like you said, his name was Joshua Norton. He was born in England. Um and his parents traveled to South Africa to settle there in eighteen twenty. Is part of a settlement scheme. Uh. And by settle I mean show up in interlocal colonized Yeah,

you go, um, and they I guess I don't. I didn't understand why they left or he left, but at some point he made his way to San Francisco. Um, I believe for the gold brush. So I guess he probably left himself and he made um. He made himself pretty wealthy man, pretty quick by eighteen fifty two, within just three years UM of arriving, he was one of the wealthy, reputable citizens of San Francisco. Yeah, the end

of story. Yeah, he he was in real estate early on. Um. But in late December or I guess just late eighteen fifty two, there was a famine in China and they placed a ban on rice exports to other countries. Pretty sensible. Yeah, so there was a shortage of rice as a result in the US and in San Francisco, where they love their rice. It is the San Francisco treat and always has been. Right, they do a little something special to it,

but yeah, it's basically rice. So Norton heard that there was a ship coming to California from Peru that had like two hundred thousand pounds of rice. He saw a business, uh investment opportunity and said, all right, I'm gonna buy all this rice. I'm gonna corner the rice market and I'm going to get even richer, which he did. Um. He bought this entire shipment. However, a bunch of more

ships came from Peru in order. Yeah, he didn't know about those coming, No, and they had a bunch of rice, and then the prices went back to normal and he was just stuck with a bunch of rice. And eventually, uh, and pretty short order, I think um had to file for bankruptcy. Yeah, so he went from super wealthy San Franciscan to bankrupt San Franciscan from one bad business decision, which is why you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket, right, that's right, or all of

your rice on one ship from Peru. So he uh, he kind of dropped out of of San Francisco society. Everybody lost track of him, and after a year or two he re emerged. And when he re emerged, he was a little different, a little off compared to how he had been before. Uh. And one of the first things he did was distribute letters to the newspapers around San Francisco declaring himself Emperor Norton, the first of the United States. And the story would kind of end there.

It would have just been a crackpot who distributed leaflets and no one would know about it because it would have been totally lost to history if one of those San Francisco papers, the Bulletin, hadn't taken him up on this, uh, this offer and printed his letter, his his proclamation, and it kicked off a tradition around San Francisco of basically not just um printing Emperor Norton's proclamations, but also just reporting on him and his doings and what he was

up to at any given time. It was kind of it became a San Francisco media tradition. Yeah, and uh, I guess it was just something about San Francisco even back then, where the residents roundly were I guess probably kind of entertained by the guy uh and accepted him and revered him and embraced him as one of their kind of wacky locals exactly, maybe the wackiest local of

all back then. Probably. So he would go around town and he wore a military uniform, and the even the I love this, even the army officers at the base at the presidio there gave him some like epaulets and things like that to put on his uniform. Yeah, it was pretty awesome. He wore a hat with the peacock feather and he had a couple of dogs named Bummer and Lazarus. That would you know, I mean, he sounds

like this could be San Francisco two thousand nineteen as well. Sure, sure that Bummer and Lazarus thing, though that is contested. There is a plaque in San Francisco by the what's the pyramid building trans America trans America. Um that there's a plaque they're commemorating Bummer and Lazarus, and it specifically says they were not Norton's dogs. Um, they were their own sometimes possibly, but they were definitely their own equal

celebrities to Emperor Norton. They were their own crew. Um that may or may not have overlapped with Emperor Norton, but they deserve their own short stuff too. Actually, yeah, I'm curious about the name Bummer from back then. What that must have meant, I don't know. I don't know either. But the newspapers would also report on what they did too, Like there was at least apparently I've read an Atlas Obscure, there was at least one article that wrote on how

they had stolen a bone from another dog. Like that's what you could pick up the San Francisco papers and read about. But it was it was part of Yeah, it was part of the city's pride and like every every aspect of it, you know. All right, well, let's take a short break and we're gonna come back and talk about some of his acclamations and uh and how he went about town right after this. Alrighty, so, uh

Emperor Norton. And by the way, in nineteen I'm sorry, in eighteen sixty one he added the title Protector of Mexico to his name after the French invaded Mexico. So did you know the French invaded Mexico? Mm hmmm, I don't know. I did not. I don't think I did. But it didn't. I mean, I don't know. There was so much invading going on back then. Nothing surprises me anymore. Just two weeks ago it was the Dutch. Yeah, exactly. Uh. So he's hanging around Sam fram Cisco, he's got his outfit.

He's Over the course of his reign, I guess you could say he had some wacky declarations and some that ended up kind of making sense. Um. He abolished Congress or called for the abolishing of Congress. He dissolved the United States of America as a whole, which makes it tricky to be the emperor of the United States. And I didn't quite see how he how he rectified those two I don't think he did. Um. He dissolves and abolished the two political parties. Pretty sensible. But then one

thing he did was kind of interesting. He ordered a survey. He was he was committed to finding a way to connect Oakland and San Francisco, whether by bridge or by tunnel, and he ordered a survey even in eighteen seventy two to try and figure this out, which ended up being pretty relevant later on. Yeah. He uh, he said, there's going to be a great basketball team one day over in Oakland, and San Francisco needs to have a way

to lay claim on that team. Oh, that's true. Um. He he also ordered a suspension bridge be built from Oakland to Goat Island to San Francisco too, So he was very interested in connecting Oakland to San Francisco. Um. And that is kind of it was part of like the kind of civic um attention I guess that he paid to the city. He was known for inspecting sidewalks and streets and making sure they were in proper repair. Um,

and the city loved this guy. He actually once proclaimed that if you called San Francisco Frisco, it was a high misdemeanor and you can be fine twenty five bucks, which these days is more than five dollars. So he really meant it, right. Yeah. I love that that was even for boating back then, because it's it's long been known that you don't say Frisco. Yeah, this might be the origin of it. Actually, it's pretty cool. Um And and like I said, the city really did love him.

They they he ate for free at all of the city's best restaurants. Um. If there is an opening of a show, Uh, they would save a seat for him. Like, the city just loved him so much so that he was once committed by a police officer and the city just had this huge outcry against it. Yeah. I think, well they got out because you know, like the police chief. I guess it was like you can't look up Emperor Norton, right. I think my favorite part of the whole thing though,

is he issued his own currency and it was accepted. Yeah, that great, It's amazing. Man. I want to be this guy. But what's neat Well, there's just a couple of steps. You need to take their chuck and need together to do that. I need to get some flets and pretty much make some money. Um, you're already beloved, so check check one. All right. Um. So this guy, Emperor Norton, is um hanging around San Francisco. He's he's loved, he is issuing his own currency. He eats at all of

the city's best restaurants. One of the things that stuck struck me about this guy is he does that seemed to have taken advantage of it because when he died, except for eating for free and issuing his own money, well, I'm saying he wasn't like, oh, you guys are gonna take this money. Let's see what all what all I can do with this? You know what I mean? Um, he just seems to have kind of done enough to

to live comfortably and gotten by um. But like when they when he died, he dropped dead at the corner of California and what is now Grant Avenue, which was between knob Hill and the Financial District. At age sixty one, just dropped that on the street. And um, when they went to go search his room at the boarding house, I mean he had some a collection of walking sticks and canes they would carry around with them, some hats, and like a two dollar and fifty cent gold piece. Um,

so he he didn't he wasn't a hog. It sounds like he he was very much committed to looking over San Francisco and making sure it was in good shape. Yeah, and they ended up taking care of him, uh postmortem even Um, originally he was going to be buried in a pauper's grave. And the Pacific Club, which was a businessman's association back then, they may still be around for all I now, Uh, maybe they're part of the problem

in San Francisco. Maybe they said, you know what, we're gonna he should be buried in a rosewood casket and we're gonna have a great funeral procession. And in eighteen eighty January tenth, thirty thousand of two hundred and thirty thousand residents attended this funeral procession. Yeah, that's amazing. Even more attended his exhamation because he was buried at the Masonic Cemetery and they moved the Masonic cemetery, probably to make way for like Uber's offices or something like that.

And um, everybody was moved to Colem, California. Well, Colma, California. They had a new they had a reburial and something like I think sixty thousand people showed up for that one. Amazing, Yeah, and they flew the flag that half mass. This is fifty years after this guy has died, and he he was still that revered and still is today by by some people in San Francisco of course. Uh yeah, San Francisco loves to embrace their their local eccentrics. I love it.

So he uh, like we said, they they have built the Bay Bridge now, uh there is a tunnel with the public transportation. So that those two things came true that he was looking into. And then since then he's been immortalized in a lot of literature and plays over the years, including Mark Twain even who lived in San Francisco at the time. He was clearly smitten with the guy as well. Yeah. He he shows up as the king in Huckleberry Finn. I think that characters named after him.

There's no less than three operas and a musical written about him. He's He's beloved. Also, there's a episode of Bonanza. This this is the weird Cherry on Top. I think it basically tells the story of the time he was comitted um and released and he liked. The character's name is Emperor Norton. It just it just so happens that they coincided, you know, the Bonanza timeline and Emperor Norton's real lifetimeline coincide in this this episode of Bonanza, which

I have to see. It's called um well, I don't know what it's called. Well, I know that I gotta see it too. I do know that Mark Twain was on the show, even not the real Mark Twain. Obviously it was probably he broke I guess. I hope. So there's nobody who could do a Mark Twain like him or Val Kilmer. There's nobody who can do a Mark Twain like Howhold. I got nothing against well that's not true. Oh yeah, that old grudge that time he shoved you into the street. Ye shouldn't have done that. Bal I

got nothing else, nothing else over here. I hope you enjoyed this episode of short Stuff, short stuff, away stuff. You should Know is production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H m hm