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The Emperor of the United States · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. That's our one and only
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Speaker 1: super producer, Mr Max Williams. Can we get some regal music? Max?
0:42
Speaker 1: Thank you? They called me Ben Noel. You and I
0:45
Speaker 1: are both big fans of the Sandman comics. Remember those?
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Speaker 1: Oh my god, are you getting so funny? I tried
0:52
Speaker 1: to give my thirteen year old daughter to read the
0:54
Speaker 1: first volume of it. She's been getting into comics lately,
0:57
Speaker 1: and she came back to me and said, Dad, I
1:00
Speaker 1: think I like it, but there's just a little too
1:02
Speaker 1: much going on. And then she used a golden excuse,
1:04
Speaker 1: but she would never use unless it was something she
1:06
Speaker 1: just didn't want to finish reading. I think it might
1:08
Speaker 1: be above my reading level. Oh nice, clever, clever Eden.
1:13
Speaker 1: People recognize Eden from an earlier episode of the show.
1:17
Speaker 1: Do check it out. We asked for this regal music,
1:20
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Sandman because I don't know about you,
1:24
Speaker 1: but I learned about this person first through the excellent
1:30
Speaker 1: Sandman graphic novels of the stories by Neil Gaiman uh
1:34
Speaker 1: now being adapted. I believe into a streaming series. Where
1:37
Speaker 1: are they going on with? Yeah, it's on Netflix, um
1:42
Speaker 1: and friend of the show and the network. John Cameron
1:45
Speaker 1: Mitchell is playing a really cool character from the Dolls
1:48
Speaker 1: House run of the comics. Um how the landlord in
1:53
Speaker 1: the apartment building that that series is based him? And
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Speaker 1: without spoiling the excellent, excellent Sandman series too much, there
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Speaker 1: are a lot of real life historical figures that feature
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Speaker 1: in some part of the story, often his cameos. William
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Speaker 1: Shakespeare shows up, for instance, and so does a fellow
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Speaker 1: named Joshua Norton. I'm so excited to explore this guy today.
2:27
Speaker 1: So Joshua Norton, the name sounds maybe a little oh,
2:32
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's not super extraordinary, you know. It's
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Speaker 1: not one of those unique names like Winker, Black, Fingerstein
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Speaker 1: or something. I just made that up. But but there
2:44
Speaker 1: there is. There are multiple josh Norton's probably alive now, uh.
2:48
Speaker 1: And there were multiple josh Norton's alive throughout history. But
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Speaker 1: this Joshua Norton. Some called him insane, some called him homeless,
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Speaker 1: and some called him emperor. How about that for an intro?
3:01
Speaker 1: But just don't call him during dinner. Am I right?
3:08
Speaker 1: Then I gotta follow up really quickly, and maybe this
3:10
Speaker 1: is a good way in I do not recall Joshua
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Speaker 1: Norton's part in the Sandman comics. Can you give us
3:17
Speaker 1: a little background as to how he slots in there? Yeah?
3:20
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. If you check out the Salman series, you
3:24
Speaker 1: will see that Norton appears in a story about a
3:30
Speaker 1: wager between desire and despair, who are two members of
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Speaker 1: the godlike entity uh or godlike family called the Endless.
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Speaker 1: Main character of the Salmon is Dream. So Joshua Norton's
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Speaker 1: real life is explained in the story in the context
3:51
Speaker 1: of this bet between the force of desire and the
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Speaker 1: force of despair. And really, what's beautiful about the way
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Speaker 1: Neil I'm just gonna call Neil writes it is that
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Speaker 1: it's so seamlessly incorporates the actual life of this genuine person,
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Speaker 1: the real josh Wood Norton was. He became famous in
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Speaker 1: the US, but he was actually born in Britain in
4:17
Speaker 1: twenty is raised in South Africa, and he immigrated to
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Speaker 1: the US during the California Gold Rush. This is a
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Speaker 1: story of fortunes built, fortunes lost, and in a very
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Speaker 1: strange way, maybe a bit of nobility found he wasn't
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Speaker 1: always known as Norton One, Emperor of the United States. No,
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Speaker 1: it's funny and just I am in the midst of
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Speaker 1: rereading the Sandman series not to be too Sandman heavy
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Speaker 1: on this, but I'm really glad you brought it up,
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Speaker 1: because it's very top of mind for me right now.
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Speaker 1: There's another story that involves another wager between dream and
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Speaker 1: um death about a man named Hobb Gadling who swear
5:00
Speaker 1: is off the idea of death, and you get to
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Speaker 1: see how that kind of plays out as Morpheus or
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Speaker 1: Dream or the Sandman goes back to visit him every
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Speaker 1: one hundred years in the same pub and you get
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Speaker 1: to see the life cycle of this character as he
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Speaker 1: experiences the height of fortune that eternal life might offer
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Speaker 1: and then all of the desperate low's that the boredom
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Speaker 1: and malaise of living forever might also offer. So there's
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Speaker 1: some interesting parallels there, and I'm really excited to get
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Speaker 1: to the part of the book that involves our character,
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Speaker 1: who essentially, you say, some called him crazy, some called
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Speaker 1: him homeless, he and others called him Emperor of the
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Speaker 1: United States. Yes, that's correct, but this was not always
5:43
Speaker 1: the case. As you say, he was born in Britain,
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Speaker 1: I said eighteen twenty, but I believe there's some discrepancy.
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Speaker 1: May have an eighteen nineteen or eighteen twenty. Before he
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Speaker 1: was emperor, he was playing old Joshua Abraham Norton. He
5:57
Speaker 1: was born into a family of regular merch no nobility.
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Speaker 1: As we said, he spent most of his youth in
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Speaker 1: South Africa, and his parents were people of the Jewish faith.
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Speaker 1: They had left England to move to South Africa as
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Speaker 1: part of a colonization scheme on the part of the government,
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Speaker 1: and they were They were members of a group that
6:21
Speaker 1: we now call the eighteen twenty settlers, and his his
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Speaker 1: father worked there selling supplies for ships. You know, I
6:30
Speaker 1: said earlier, there's some debate and discrepancy around his exact
6:34
Speaker 1: date of birth. I think for the rest of this episode,
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Speaker 1: let's go with February four, eighteen eighteen, because that is
6:44
Speaker 1: that that is how San Francisco determines the celebration of
6:48
Speaker 1: his birthday, and San Francisco, by the way, celebrates his birthday.
6:53
Speaker 1: But how how did he get from South Africa to
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Speaker 1: the U S Well, like you said, I mean his family,
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Speaker 1: they weren't necessarily the wealthiest of of folks, or at
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Speaker 1: least his direct parents, but he did end up getting
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Speaker 1: a pretty nice inheritance of some of forty dollars at
7:12
Speaker 1: the time, which today would be worth around a million
7:14
Speaker 1: dollars or a little over a million dollars. He used
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Speaker 1: that to go and make a run at the gold
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Speaker 1: rush that was happening in California in eighteen forty nine.
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Speaker 1: So he went to San Francisco, which at the time
7:27
Speaker 1: you hear him talk about San Francisco in Deadwood a lot. Uh.
7:31
Speaker 1: This is the same time period of the show Dead
7:33
Speaker 1: One on HBO, which is fantastic if you haven't seen,
7:35
Speaker 1: it does a really good job of kind of summing
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Speaker 1: up this period. Very lawless time, lots of crime, very
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Speaker 1: little oversight in terms of like codified rule of law,
7:45
Speaker 1: and even in terms of like law enforcements. As we
7:48
Speaker 1: know in Deadwood there's really just a sheriff and then
7:51
Speaker 1: you know he kind of takes that role reluctantly and
7:53
Speaker 1: it takes quite a lot to get people to answer
7:56
Speaker 1: for their crimes, of which there are many. Um So,
7:59
Speaker 1: what was once a very small little berg in San
8:02
Speaker 1: Francisco became this massive, bustling metropolis with the population of
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Speaker 1: around twenty five thousand, and that happened very very very quickly.
8:11
Speaker 1: By the way, kg e D dot org has a
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Speaker 1: fabulous article about this subject and this historical figure written
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Speaker 1: by a Ryan Levy. You can actually well reported by.
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Speaker 1: You can hear the piece on k q e D
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Speaker 1: dot com to get a little bit more backgrounds. Will
8:29
Speaker 1: be using that as one of our sources. But when
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Speaker 1: he arrived, um, he had already kind of gone through
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Speaker 1: some of the highs and lows that we talked about
8:39
Speaker 1: back when he was in South Africa. He built a
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Speaker 1: business and lost a business, So he was kind of
8:46
Speaker 1: already prepared for the sort of seat of your pants
8:50
Speaker 1: kind of attitude that takes to jump in feed first
8:54
Speaker 1: into a very very uh competitive and dangerous situation there
8:58
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. So he started selling things like rice
9:03
Speaker 1: and flour, things that you know, goods that people needed. Um.
9:07
Speaker 1: He was smart with his earnings. He invested in real estate.
9:12
Speaker 1: He built things there in San Francisco. He built buildings
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Speaker 1: on three of the four corners of Sansom and Jackson Streets,
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Speaker 1: which was a very very bustling and important little intersection
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Speaker 1: there in town. He also bought plots in the now
9:28
Speaker 1: incredibly I mean, every part of San Francisco is affluent
9:31
Speaker 1: and most people are priced out of even hanging out there.
9:35
Speaker 1: But North Beach area exactly the tenderland, which used to
9:38
Speaker 1: be the kind of artists, kind of like up and
9:40
Speaker 1: comer kind of area for people that were more scrappy
9:43
Speaker 1: and wanted to get set up. But yeah, North Beach
9:45
Speaker 1: is now incredibly expensive waterfront area. So I wanna step
9:50
Speaker 1: back a little bit with the question of how he
9:54
Speaker 1: got to San Francisco. He did get that inheritance, but
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Speaker 1: he earned it in a very tragic way, and he
10:00
Speaker 1: was very young with this happened. He was twenty one
10:03
Speaker 1: years old when he opened his own business. It went
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Speaker 1: bankrupt in less than two years, just eighteen months. And
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Speaker 1: then by eighteen forty eight his parents, both of them
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Speaker 1: and two of his siblings had died, so there wasn't
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Speaker 1: much holding him back. He was going to You know, um,
10:20
Speaker 1: it's like in Hambleton's right in New York, you can
10:22
Speaker 1: be a new man. It was that for him, but
10:25
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and like you said, Noel, he did
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Speaker 1: really well. He was, by eighteen fifty two, one of
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Speaker 1: the upper crusts, upper echelon members of society. He had
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Speaker 1: this forty thousand dollar state. He flipped it to two
10:41
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But you know, gold rush,
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Speaker 1: kind of like a casino. At this point, his greed
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Speaker 1: got the better of him. We talked about the rice stuff.
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Speaker 1: He was planning his next expansion in his empire, his
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Speaker 1: multifaceted business portfolio, and he knew there was a rice
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Speaker 1: famine ongoing in China. So he said, you know what,
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Speaker 1: maybe I can corner the rice market by buying an
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Speaker 1: entire shipload of Peruvian rice. And we got this from
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Speaker 1: a thought Co article by Bill Lamb. So in December
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Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty two, China had this domestic rice famine
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Speaker 1: going on, and they responded by placing a ban on
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Speaker 1: any exportation of rice to any other countries. This meant
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Speaker 1: that when Norton was planning his next business move, the
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Speaker 1: price of rice in San Francisco had exploded by eight
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Speaker 1: h and yeah, yeah, And so he said, I'm gonna
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Speaker 1: buy these two hundred thousand pounds of rice from this
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Speaker 1: ship that is coming to California from Peru, and I'm
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Speaker 1: sure the prices are gonna soar. So he puts twenty
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Speaker 1: five grand on the venture, and he has a couple
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Speaker 1: of other people chipping in money as well, and then
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Speaker 1: everything goes wrong. Well, the guy was clearly quite savvy,
12:05
Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, this would I mean, you know,
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Speaker 1: news would have traveled slower certainly in those days. But
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Speaker 1: he he had to have the information when few other
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Speaker 1: people had it about what was going on in China.
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Speaker 1: Um and be he had to have figured out a
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Speaker 1: way to convince the Peruvian merchants to sell him the
12:20
Speaker 1: entire boatload, you know, at a reasonable price. You think
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Speaker 1: that they would have, um maybe been aware of this
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Speaker 1: rice shortage and sold it for way, way more money.
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Speaker 1: But they obviously didn't have that information, or at least
12:32
Speaker 1: not to the degree that he had it. But right,
12:34
Speaker 1: boom and bust that those are the keywords for this
12:37
Speaker 1: period in American history. And uh, while boom was happening
12:41
Speaker 1: for him right off the bat, bust was not too
12:43
Speaker 1: far off the horizon. As you said, Ben, everything kind
12:46
Speaker 1: of went wrong. So I mentioned that it was a
12:49
Speaker 1: you know, a smart move that he was able to
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Speaker 1: convince these Peruvian merchants to sell him this rice at
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Speaker 1: what would have been a premium based on the skyrocketing
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Speaker 1: prices of rice. But bare la Peruvian rice, or at
13:01
Speaker 1: least this shipment approving rice, was of pretty poor quality.
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Speaker 1: And to answer my other question that I posed, there
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Speaker 1: was also kind of a lot of it, So he
13:10
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly in the catbird seat position that he fancied
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Speaker 1: himself in. Right, Yeah, there was not just lower quality rice,
13:19
Speaker 1: but there was tons of it. Because he didn't corner
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Speaker 1: the market, that's what happened. Several other ships came in.
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Speaker 1: They were also loaded with hundreds of thousands of pounds
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Speaker 1: of rice. And at this point Joshua still could have recovered.
13:37
Speaker 1: He had multiple different businesses, right, he was having a
13:40
Speaker 1: real estate for example. But he kind of shot himself
13:44
Speaker 1: in the foot and made his situation worse because he
13:48
Speaker 1: sued the guy who told him about this Peruvian rice,
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Speaker 1: and this led to a court case that stretched on
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Speaker 1: for four years and he's paying every day on this thing.
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Speaker 1: He's paying all these expenses for this legal case eventually
14:04
Speaker 1: goes to the state Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court,
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Speaker 1: and they say we rule against you, Joshua Norton. So
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Speaker 1: the bank forecloses on a ton of his real estate holdings. Eventually,
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Speaker 1: by eighteen fifty eight, he has declared bankruptcy and he
14:22
Speaker 1: goes dark for a few years. He has to move
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Speaker 1: out of his really nice home. He's not going to
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Speaker 1: the social uh, social functions, you know, the suareis of
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Speaker 1: the elite. He's gone for about a year or so,
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Speaker 1: and when he finally comes back into the public eye,
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Speaker 1: a lot of people are going, well, you know, withoutr
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Speaker 1: Joshua Norton, he didn't just lose his fortune, he also
14:47
Speaker 1: lost his mind. H that'll happen um. And it's sort
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Speaker 1: of evidence by the idea that he thought he could
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Speaker 1: sue the guy that gave him a hot tip about
15:02
Speaker 1: a business prospect. That's not really how that works. That's
15:05
Speaker 1: like the equivalent of trying to sue someone that gives
15:07
Speaker 1: you a stock tip and then it tanks. You got
15:10
Speaker 1: no grounds for suing. That's that's not how that works.
15:13
Speaker 1: That's just sorry, Charlie. You know, try again next time. Yeah,
15:17
Speaker 1: It's it's it's like it's like someone gives you a
15:19
Speaker 1: bad tip on insider training, you drag him through the Mud,
15:22
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, you just committed a felony. Like,
15:24
Speaker 1: that's not a good idea. I mean, obviously that's not
15:26
Speaker 1: what it is exactly happening here, but it's still not
15:29
Speaker 1: a good idea. Yeah, legally it's fraught. You know, this
15:32
Speaker 1: isn't the same thing. But it does remind me of
15:35
Speaker 1: those court cases where a thief will try to sue
15:39
Speaker 1: someone because they they injured themselves when they were breaking
15:42
Speaker 1: into a person's house. Like stuff like that has happened.
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Speaker 1: There's a great series we can do on ridiculous court
15:48
Speaker 1: cases in the future. But we don't know whether Norton
15:52
Speaker 1: was experiencing genuine mental problems or whether he just decided
15:56
Speaker 1: to holy embrace a very eccentric lifestyle. We don't know
16:01
Speaker 1: the interior of the man's mind. But what we can
16:04
Speaker 1: say for sure is that a The San Francisco Bulletin
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Speaker 1: published a fantastic proclamation from Norton to the editor on
16:14
Speaker 1: September eighteen fifty nine, where he says the following, know
16:18
Speaker 1: this a little long, so I think we should split
16:20
Speaker 1: this up. But here we go, at the peremptory request
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Speaker 1: of a large majority of the citizens of these United
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Speaker 1: States side Joshua and Norton, formerly of Algo Bay, Cape
16:31
Speaker 1: of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years
16:34
Speaker 1: and ten months past, of San Francisco, California, declare and
16:38
Speaker 1: proclaim myself the Emperor of these United States. This is
16:43
Speaker 1: just one long sentence, but it goes on. I still
16:46
Speaker 1: think it's too long. We should split it up, and
16:49
Speaker 1: in the virtue of the authority thereby and me invested
16:52
Speaker 1: to hereby order and direct the representatives of the different
16:56
Speaker 1: States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of
17:00
Speaker 1: this city on the first day of February next then
17:04
Speaker 1: and there to make such alterations in the existing laws
17:07
Speaker 1: of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which
17:11
Speaker 1: the county is laboring, and therefore cause confidence to exist,
17:15
Speaker 1: both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity,
17:20
Speaker 1: not in the first Emperor of the United States. Okay, okay,
17:25
Speaker 1: So first of all, let's just talk a little bit
17:26
Speaker 1: about the legality of a proclamation, Like what is a proclamation?
17:31
Speaker 1: Like you can proclaim just about anything, Like Remember when
17:34
Speaker 1: Trump like proclaimed he he liked to proclaim things. Remember
17:39
Speaker 1: what did he proclaim? Well, I think more particularly of
17:43
Speaker 1: the proclamations that Europeans made when they arrived on other
17:47
Speaker 1: people's land, and they would stroll into these communities and say,
17:51
Speaker 1: I'd delegate this is on to Spain, or this is
17:55
Speaker 1: this is all Portugal now you guys. Uh. They clearly
17:59
Speaker 1: had these American accents already in their in their statements.
18:02
Speaker 1: These proclamations legally are they're not binding, but you can't
18:08
Speaker 1: really get sued for them. And at the time these
18:13
Speaker 1: demands are his statement, I want everybody to go to
18:16
Speaker 1: the music hall on February one. This wasn't super crazy
18:22
Speaker 1: because secession was already in the national zeitgeist at this time.
18:28
Speaker 1: Abolitionists were increasingly increasingly upset, and rightly so, within action
18:36
Speaker 1: on the horrors of slavery, and so all we can
18:38
Speaker 1: guess is that the editor of the bulletin just said, hey,
18:43
Speaker 1: you know, let's give it a shot. Slow news day
18:46
Speaker 1: people are already kind of vibe in with this kind
18:49
Speaker 1: of stuff, And unlike Norton's prediction on Peruvian rice, this
18:55
Speaker 1: editor hit a gold mine. Readers loved Joshua Norton, they
19:01
Speaker 1: loved the Emperor, and other newspapers quickly picked up the
19:05
Speaker 1: story and started spreading around not just this proclamation, but
19:10
Speaker 1: multiple like proclamations declarations of his Yeah, I mean, you know,
19:16
Speaker 1: to me, I think this was a savvy move on
19:18
Speaker 1: the part of an editor in that he recognized this
19:21
Speaker 1: as it could be perceived as satire, you know what
19:24
Speaker 1: I mean, Like it was very much kind of poking
19:26
Speaker 1: a finger in the eye of the messy bureaucracy of
19:31
Speaker 1: politics and of governments, you know, at a time where
19:35
Speaker 1: the folks in charge weren't really doing much to help
19:38
Speaker 1: the common man. You know. It was, like we said,
19:40
Speaker 1: like very much a lawless kind of period in American history,
19:44
Speaker 1: and it didn't seem like there was a whole lot
19:46
Speaker 1: of interest in the plight of the common man. So
19:49
Speaker 1: this to me acts as like a really cool kind
19:51
Speaker 1: of like um critique of that system. You know. In
19:55
Speaker 1: some ways, like I don't believe that the the editor
19:59
Speaker 1: of the Bullets in believe that by publishing this it
20:02
Speaker 1: was in some way going to, you know, make this real,
20:05
Speaker 1: but it absolutely made it real in the minds of
20:08
Speaker 1: the readers of Bullets. It's also you know, I like
20:12
Speaker 1: what you're saying about satire. It also makes me think
20:14
Speaker 1: of clickbing that we would we would call it today,
20:18
Speaker 1: and it becomes sort of a currency of communication for
20:21
Speaker 1: people in San Francisco. They want to talk about the
20:24
Speaker 1: latest proclamations. Uh, we have one of the first of
20:28
Speaker 1: his several proclamations in October eighteen fifty nine, he says,
20:33
Speaker 1: fraud and corruption preventive fan proper expression of the public voice,
20:38
Speaker 1: in consequence of which we do hereby abolished Congress. Be
20:44
Speaker 1: that be that. I mentioned this sometimes on the stuff
20:48
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. But you would be
20:50
Speaker 1: surprised how many terrible things historically have a higher rating
20:54
Speaker 1: than Congress, including some STDs. That's a true story in
20:58
Speaker 1: the past. Yep, fires probably, I'll send it to you.
21:02
Speaker 1: But uh, but here's what happened. People love the story.
21:06
Speaker 1: But Congress, those dirty scoundrels kept meeting, and so Norton
21:13
Speaker 1: issued another decree where he ordered a general named Winfield
21:17
Speaker 1: Scott to march on Washington and kick the legislators out. Yeah. So,
21:21
Speaker 1: I mean, we we're talking about proclaiming, right. You often
21:25
Speaker 1: hear that term used with the words self as a
21:29
Speaker 1: hyphenate in front of it, like the self proclaimed King
21:31
Speaker 1: of New York. That was one of Donald Trump's kind
21:34
Speaker 1: of personas or like, you know, saying world's best cup
21:38
Speaker 1: of coffee that's self proclaimed as the proprietor of like
21:42
Speaker 1: say a New York City diner. Nothing really provable in
21:45
Speaker 1: a statement like that, but it certainly turns heads, except
21:49
Speaker 1: that most every diner in New York says they have
21:51
Speaker 1: the world's best cup of coffee, or at least in
21:53
Speaker 1: some region. So this goes over really really well with
21:58
Speaker 1: the public. It is I think, largely seen as an
22:01
Speaker 1: interesting satire, a way of kind of poking fun at
22:04
Speaker 1: the absurdity that is Washington, and this guy really becomes
22:07
Speaker 1: kind of this mouthpiece for the discontented public who are
22:11
Speaker 1: absolutely fed up with all of the hypocrisy and do
22:14
Speaker 1: nothingness of Washington. Yeah yeah, just so, uh, he also
22:21
Speaker 1: is existing. You know, nothing exists in a vacuum, so
22:24
Speaker 1: he is also existing. As these profound things are happening
22:30
Speaker 1: in the United States, the shadow of the Civil War
22:34
Speaker 1: is looming large, and in response, Emperor Norton announces to
22:39
Speaker 1: everyone that he has dissolved the Union, the entire thing,
22:42
Speaker 1: and now the US is an absolute monarchy. He's at
22:46
Speaker 1: the helm, and this is sort of for it's pitched
22:49
Speaker 1: as a security, stability and safety thing. Uh. He also
22:54
Speaker 1: when when France invades Mexico later in eighteen sixty one,
23:00
Speaker 1: he shows that he has Mexico's back by giving himself
23:05
Speaker 1: an extra honorific. He styles himself the protector of Mexico.
23:10
Speaker 1: So for those of us keeping track at home, he
23:12
Speaker 1: is now Norton One, Emperor of the United States and
23:17
Speaker 1: Protector of Mexico. I love the word honorific by the way,
23:20
Speaker 1: um I had to. I hear it all the time,
23:22
Speaker 1: and I of course mainly understand what it means. But
23:25
Speaker 1: um I did just look it up, and there is
23:27
Speaker 1: a specific caveat to it. It is a title given
23:30
Speaker 1: as a mark of respect, but having few or no
23:33
Speaker 1: duties associated with it, So it's sort of like a
23:36
Speaker 1: symbolic title. Uh. And Nordin was just given those two
23:39
Speaker 1: himself left and right, and he really became, at least
23:44
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, a an absolute public figure, a real celebrity. Um.
23:49
Speaker 1: He was treated, for lack of a better phrase, or
23:52
Speaker 1: maybe it's the exact right phrase, like royalty. Even though
23:55
Speaker 1: he was somewhat of a you know, Darryl type dude.
24:01
Speaker 1: He was treated with respect by business owners restaurant tours,
24:05
Speaker 1: theater owners. You know, he was given uh special reserve
24:08
Speaker 1: seats in restaurants and theaters, and he was absolutely in
24:14
Speaker 1: and of himself kind of like a tourist attraction. And
24:16
Speaker 1: the reason I think largely that he was given all
24:19
Speaker 1: of these extra kind of perks was because the business
24:21
Speaker 1: owners knew that if he was there, people would come,
24:25
Speaker 1: um patronize their business. Is just to kind of catch
24:27
Speaker 1: a glimpse of him in the hopes that he might like,
24:29
Speaker 1: you know, pontificate or whatever. Yeah. Absolutely, this is this
24:33
Speaker 1: is a really important part. There is money to be
24:36
Speaker 1: made from the tourism aspect. It also makes the city
24:41
Speaker 1: unique and helps San Francisco build its own mythology. We
24:46
Speaker 1: should mention this is neat little detail. Norton is now
24:51
Speaker 1: dressing in character. He is dressed in old military clothing
24:56
Speaker 1: from both the Union and the Confederate sides, because as
24:59
Speaker 1: an emperor he's a uniter, you know, not a divider.
25:03
Speaker 1: He also has a beaver hat with wait for it,
25:07
Speaker 1: ostrich feathers, so he's not just playing hatted scamp. And
25:12
Speaker 1: he also has a saber, which is ceremonial he he
25:17
Speaker 1: does Um okay, we we want to be sensitive to
25:21
Speaker 1: this issue because a lot of people find themselves unpredictably
25:25
Speaker 1: in bad places. He spends most of his days walking
25:30
Speaker 1: through the streets of the metropolis, quote unquote, inspecting the realm.
25:34
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. Picture him tapping that saber
25:37
Speaker 1: against the bridge and then demanding payment for taxes, and
25:42
Speaker 1: luckily for a lot of the local businesses, he would
25:46
Speaker 1: accept payment and kind. It didn't always have to be cash.
25:49
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would might just be a sandwich or a
25:51
Speaker 1: hot cup of soup. And people loved him. He was harmless. Uh,
25:55
Speaker 1: he was memorable. Writers of the day, as we'll find
25:59
Speaker 1: even walk to him as well. I love that he
26:02
Speaker 1: was able to walk around the city demanding things while
26:07
Speaker 1: brandishing a saber and was still considered harmless. I think
26:10
Speaker 1: that speaks a lot to the attitude and uh wonderful
26:14
Speaker 1: quirkiness that is so famous in the history of San Francisco.
26:18
Speaker 1: I think this is really awesome character that kind of
26:20
Speaker 1: sums up the uniqueness of of that city and that
26:23
Speaker 1: people weren't like freaked out about this guy walking around
26:26
Speaker 1: with the brandishing a sword and in a beaver hat
26:29
Speaker 1: and and the demanding payment for taxes. Uh, it could
26:32
Speaker 1: have gone badly, you know. I mean, I think it
26:34
Speaker 1: speaks to the fact that like, at least at this point,
26:37
Speaker 1: his mental state well maybe a little touched, wasn't dangerous,
26:42
Speaker 1: wasn't veering into like psychosis or anything. Because I could
26:45
Speaker 1: see some altercations bubbling up. You know, um if people
26:49
Speaker 1: questioned him. But I think that the key was people.
26:52
Speaker 1: I don't even if you know, if you call it
26:53
Speaker 1: humoring him, right, I think it really was kind of
26:56
Speaker 1: this like mythology, Ben, like you said, yeah, I would
26:59
Speaker 1: say they almost adopted him. The city almost adopted him.
27:03
Speaker 1: And there's a lot to be said for bedside manner. Right.
27:08
Speaker 1: He wasn't shaking these people down mafioso style. He was
27:12
Speaker 1: probably using the royal we and he was probably you know,
27:16
Speaker 1: like I have always said, this is the best cup
27:20
Speaker 1: of coffee in San Francisco. That is a royal proclamation,
27:25
Speaker 1: uh tribute, We do regrettably note that you are delinquent
27:32
Speaker 1: in your taxes. Matter that we could solve today with
27:37
Speaker 1: a simple cup of your famous coffee, you know what
27:41
Speaker 1: I mean, right, something nice like that. I don't think
27:45
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, you make a good point. Though he's
27:48
Speaker 1: not threatening people. He has another hat that has a
27:53
Speaker 1: peacock feather. He is given Oh, he's given this military regale,
28:00
Speaker 1: by the way, by US Army officers who like him. Uh.
28:04
Speaker 1: He also will, at the slightest invitation speak extemporaneously on
28:11
Speaker 1: a wide, wide range of esoteric philosophical concepts. He gets
28:17
Speaker 1: some sidekicks. How adorable is this bummer? And Lazarus, two
28:21
Speaker 1: dogs that would walk around with him constantly as he expected,
28:26
Speaker 1: you know, Rhodes sidewalks public property. This guy is like
28:31
Speaker 1: an early like psychedelic prophet if you think about it,
28:35
Speaker 1: you know, I mean like a Neil Cassidy type figure,
28:38
Speaker 1: or like Jerry Garcia, you know what I mean. Like
28:40
Speaker 1: it very much is almost like a proto kind of
28:44
Speaker 1: hippie sort of which obviously became a really huge part
28:48
Speaker 1: of the fabric of San Francisco, Hate Ashbury and Grateful
28:51
Speaker 1: Dead and psychedelics and all that good stuff. And eventually,
28:54
Speaker 1: like all of that stuff, he caught on in the
28:57
Speaker 1: larger zeitgeist um coming a character in comic operas and
29:03
Speaker 1: cartoons and novels, and his story kind of started to
29:06
Speaker 1: travel outside of Northern California. There was a reporter a
29:11
Speaker 1: little guy by the name of Mark Twain who worked
29:13
Speaker 1: for the San Francisco Daily Morning call Um and he
29:17
Speaker 1: reportedly was inspired by him to create Um, a royal
29:21
Speaker 1: impostor character of his own known as the King, and
29:25
Speaker 1: a little book called The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that
29:28
Speaker 1: I think they don't make kids read anymore because of
29:32
Speaker 1: problematic language. And I'm glad you mentioned this, because there
29:36
Speaker 1: was a wonderful there's some wonderful work by a scholar
29:41
Speaker 1: named Shelley Fisher Fishkin who suggests that Huckleberry Finn in
29:48
Speaker 1: both Tom Sawyer and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was
29:51
Speaker 1: himself not white, and that changes the way the book
29:55
Speaker 1: is processed. But yeah, but markin Yeah, Mark Twain's complain
30:00
Speaker 1: because they took a couple of classes on him back
30:02
Speaker 1: in college. I actually read his biography, which I love you, Sam,
30:07
Speaker 1: but it needed an editor. But your point holds, so
30:10
Speaker 1: Mark Twaine, Neil Gaiman, Charles Bukowski, Robert Louis Stevenson, Christopher Moore.
30:17
Speaker 1: Tons of authors and artists are inspired by this guy,
30:22
Speaker 1: as are I would argue many businessmen who exist contemporaneously
30:27
Speaker 1: with Joshua because they get into the merchandizing. We can't
30:32
Speaker 1: forget about the merchandizing. Photographs of him become these incredibly
30:37
Speaker 1: sought after souvenirs. If you walk into shops across downtown,
30:41
Speaker 1: you'll see people are selling dolls little Emperor Norton action figures.
30:47
Speaker 1: He has a free seat at the opening night of
30:50
Speaker 1: virtually every play in every theater in town. He rides
30:54
Speaker 1: the train for free, and and he eats for free
30:59
Speaker 1: at restaurants. He by exchanging a imperial seal exactly. And um,
31:05
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned the merchandizing stuff, and we obviously
31:08
Speaker 1: know that this dude had a background in business, and
31:11
Speaker 1: I think we could argue that he was pretty good
31:14
Speaker 1: at it. He made a couple of poor choices, but
31:16
Speaker 1: definitely made a good go of it. Maybe agreed got
31:18
Speaker 1: the better of him, but I think he was able
31:21
Speaker 1: to parlay some of those skills into his merchandizing. Um,
31:26
Speaker 1: because he got a cut of everything. Ah. Yeah, he
31:29
Speaker 1: was still considered cash poor, but he definitely he wasn't
31:35
Speaker 1: hurting for the necessities of life. The city get had
31:39
Speaker 1: just decided to take care of him, But he didn't,
31:41
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't have like cash on hand to
31:44
Speaker 1: buy a house. I love the idea of quote unquote
31:48
Speaker 1: pain for a meal with an imperial seal of approval.
31:52
Speaker 1: It's like a story about fran Drescher one time trying
31:55
Speaker 1: to pay a restaurant tab with signed photos of herself,
31:59
Speaker 1: which I would have accept that exactly. It reminds me
32:01
Speaker 1: of the way that the comedian Patton Oswald described the
32:04
Speaker 1: town I used to live in, Athens, Georgia, as a
32:06
Speaker 1: place where the streets are paved with marijuana and you
32:09
Speaker 1: can buy a sandwich with a song. Uh. That's Athens
32:13
Speaker 1: is sort of like our little mini San Francisco here
32:16
Speaker 1: in the South, home to bands like B fifty two
32:18
Speaker 1: and Neutral Milk Hotel and all that good stuff. Yeah,
32:22
Speaker 1: and I I also want to give your shout out
32:25
Speaker 1: if Joshua, wherever, your majesty, wherever you are, if you
32:29
Speaker 1: are listening to this today, well done on having your
32:33
Speaker 1: own currency. Bro. I can't believe him calling an emperor bro.
32:37
Speaker 1: But in eighteen seventy one, a local printing firm ran
32:41
Speaker 1: off special currency with a picture of Norton the First
32:45
Speaker 1: and his imperial seal, and he loved it. He started
32:48
Speaker 1: passing out the notes as his official government bonds, so
32:52
Speaker 1: he would like pay for a meal with these, you know,
32:56
Speaker 1: with these Norton bucks, and people kept them. They didn't
33:00
Speaker 1: really trade them, Uh, they kept them and displayed them
33:04
Speaker 1: like you would see it on the wall of a
33:05
Speaker 1: restaurant in a frame with the imperial seal. And you
33:10
Speaker 1: you will still find coin collectors trying to buy these
33:16
Speaker 1: imperial bonds today. And the funniest thing is the same
33:23
Speaker 1: social class of people that we're hanging out with him
33:27
Speaker 1: before the Peruvian rice tobaccle, they also got in on
33:31
Speaker 1: the game. They dug it like local lawmakers would buy
33:36
Speaker 1: him new clothes from the public funds, and no one
33:40
Speaker 1: had a problem with it. So we talked about how,
33:49
Speaker 1: you know, the whole start of this Emperor Norton craze
33:53
Speaker 1: was the result of him having written sort of an
33:55
Speaker 1: editorial to the um what was it the bullets in
33:59
Speaker 1: San Francisco bullets, I believe, where he proclaimed himself to
34:02
Speaker 1: be emperor, and they published it, I think, with a
34:04
Speaker 1: bit of a tongue implanted in cheek, knowing that it
34:07
Speaker 1: would cause a bit of a stir, and it did,
34:10
Speaker 1: and I think it did way more than what they
34:12
Speaker 1: were expecting. But the newspapers of San Francisco actually started
34:15
Speaker 1: to kind of take advantage of this and published fake
34:19
Speaker 1: proclamations and they signed his name to them, which that's
34:25
Speaker 1: a little bit above and beyond the originally betraying the king. Yeah,
34:30
Speaker 1: that feels like they're treating him like some sort of clown. Uh.
34:34
Speaker 1: And if he was, in fact, you know, suffering from
34:36
Speaker 1: some mental illness, I would argue that this is pretty
34:40
Speaker 1: opportunistic and nasty. But here's the thing. He flipped the scripts.
34:45
Speaker 1: He saw that this was happening, and he didn't like
34:47
Speaker 1: it one bit. And the man also had important things
34:51
Speaker 1: to say. He was not all just bluster and and
34:53
Speaker 1: and uh and pomp. In eighteen seventy he began publishing
34:57
Speaker 1: his actual proclamations, almost excl elusively in an African American
35:02
Speaker 1: owned um newspaper and abolitionist newspaper in fact that came
35:06
Speaker 1: out weekly, was called the Pacific Appeal. Uh. And at
35:10
Speaker 1: this point he began to speak to the rampant inequality
35:15
Speaker 1: that was happening in the United States, and he began
35:18
Speaker 1: speaking about how African Americans ought to be given the
35:21
Speaker 1: same rights as white men um and should be able
35:24
Speaker 1: to attend public schools and ride in public street cars.
35:28
Speaker 1: He even spoke to the plight of the Chinese immigrants
35:32
Speaker 1: that were, you know, flooding into San Francisco, obviously, who
35:35
Speaker 1: were doing a lot of the work that white men
35:37
Speaker 1: did not want to do, and were relegated to their
35:39
Speaker 1: own kind of ghettos and treated like absolute third class citizens. Um,
35:44
Speaker 1: that's another thing that you'll see in Deadwood if you
35:46
Speaker 1: watch that show. They have their own whole little kind
35:48
Speaker 1: of area that they're not allowed to come out of
35:51
Speaker 1: unless at the behest of the white man. And that's
35:54
Speaker 1: according to the president of the Emperor's Bridge Campaign, which
35:58
Speaker 1: is an organization that searches Norton's life and shares his stories.
36:02
Speaker 1: He also said that Norton was famous for arguing for
36:06
Speaker 1: the rights of Native Americans and was very anti political corruption.
36:11
Speaker 1: So all of this stuff holds true about the initial
36:14
Speaker 1: kind of satire of his character, but now he's really
36:17
Speaker 1: kind of like taking it into the realm of like
36:19
Speaker 1: public discourse, you know, and really getting people riled up
36:22
Speaker 1: and saying the things that a lot of people were
36:24
Speaker 1: probably thinking but we're afraid to say. Yeah. Lubia says
36:29
Speaker 1: that Norton made himself into an early champion of the
36:33
Speaker 1: values of fairness and tolerance and the common good, and
36:36
Speaker 1: this was a positive symbol for San Francisco. There are
36:41
Speaker 1: some stories that exist that I feel kind of like
36:45
Speaker 1: possible tall tales, such as the idea that Norton was
36:48
Speaker 1: actively anti racist. One of the best examples of this,
36:53
Speaker 1: again this is not confirmed, is that during one riot
36:58
Speaker 1: where the white population of San Francisco was wreaking havoc
37:03
Speaker 1: in the Chinese section of town, he put himself in
37:08
Speaker 1: the line of fire between the two sides and just
37:11
Speaker 1: loudly recited the Lord's prayer until people were amused and left.
37:17
Speaker 1: But his his acts are also prescient. He did this
37:21
Speaker 1: is something really interesting. This is something I'd love to
37:23
Speaker 1: end this show with, because history, as William Faulkner says,
37:27
Speaker 1: to paraphrase Faulkner, history is not over right. The past
37:30
Speaker 1: does not even passed. One of his decrees was that
37:34
Speaker 1: there must be a bridge joining San Francisco and Oakland,
37:40
Speaker 1: and at the time, residents of San Francisco were kind
37:45
Speaker 1: of concerned that Oakland might become the major economic hub
37:50
Speaker 1: of the West because it might become the major rail hub.
37:54
Speaker 1: The Bay bridge was actually completed in ninety six. Unlike
37:59
Speaker 1: his predictions about Rice, Norton was correct about this bridge.
38:04
Speaker 1: They built it exactly where he recommended it should be.
38:08
Speaker 1: And to your earlier point about hipsters, I want to
38:11
Speaker 1: add some fuel to that idea before people even use
38:15
Speaker 1: the word hipster, before San Francisco became known as this
38:19
Speaker 1: epicenter of eccentricity, like the phrase you could see Norton
38:23
Speaker 1: riding round town on a fixed gear bicycle someone gave him.
38:27
Speaker 1: He was writing, it's a little fixy, yeah, and uh.
38:31
Speaker 1: He also would find people actively he would give people
38:36
Speaker 1: a twenty five dollar fine if anyone ever called their
38:40
Speaker 1: city Frisco instead of San Francisco, similar to you know,
38:44
Speaker 1: people saying Hotlanta. Yeah, people also from San Francisco hate
38:48
Speaker 1: it when you call it sf that's the worst. That
38:51
Speaker 1: would probably be the modern equivalent of Frisco, which is
38:54
Speaker 1: just like so passe that that people don't even utter it. Um. Yeah,
38:58
Speaker 1: he was definitely an early to hipster um evangelists, you know.
39:02
Speaker 1: And again back to my earlier point about him being
39:05
Speaker 1: kind of this proto hippie, sort of like a defender
39:09
Speaker 1: of the weirdness of San Francisco. I love it. But unfortunately,
39:15
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty seven there was a new regime in
39:18
Speaker 1: place running the police force, and vagrancy became a real
39:22
Speaker 1: priority or the elimination thereof a over zealous cop apparently
39:27
Speaker 1: you know, trying to make a name for himself, not
39:30
Speaker 1: knowing what the score was here, arrested the Emperor on
39:34
Speaker 1: this charge of vagrancy, and the city's newspapers absolutely blasted
39:40
Speaker 1: the guy, sighting Norton as being a local institution and
39:43
Speaker 1: uh quote, since he has warned the Imperial Purple he
39:47
Speaker 1: has shed no blood, robbed nobody, and despoiled the country
39:51
Speaker 1: of no one, which is more than ken be said
39:54
Speaker 1: for his fellows in that line. Uh, the police chief,
39:58
Speaker 1: Patrick Crowley real lies that he had a pr nightmare
40:01
Speaker 1: on his hand and he ordered it. Norton be released
40:04
Speaker 1: and even issued a formal apology from the police force,
40:09
Speaker 1: and his story continues. He's a real class act about it.
40:12
Speaker 1: This guy is one of my favorite people. Just full disclosure,
40:15
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna at the end recommend some excellent resources
40:18
Speaker 1: to learn more about him. So when when this formal
40:21
Speaker 1: apology occurs, how cool is this? The Emperor officially pardons
40:26
Speaker 1: the policeman who arrested him, and then from then on,
40:29
Speaker 1: from that point on, all law enforcement in the city
40:34
Speaker 1: picks up this habit of just saluting the emperor when
40:37
Speaker 1: they see him on the street. Uh, he didn't always
40:42
Speaker 1: have these crazy days. And there's a big question. I'm
40:46
Speaker 1: sure a lot of our fellow ridiculous historians are wondering.
40:49
Speaker 1: It's a question we can answer. He was not homeless.
40:52
Speaker 1: He was not sleeping rough in parks. He lived in
40:55
Speaker 1: a rental. He had a rented room, you know, in
40:57
Speaker 1: an in a building. And on his ridge days he
41:01
Speaker 1: would just walk around, like we said, but he would
41:03
Speaker 1: also play chess. He would go to various religious services.
41:08
Speaker 1: He would spend a lot of time reading in libraries.
41:11
Speaker 1: So he he had attained a sort of serenity and
41:15
Speaker 1: peace and become a symbol of a fast growing city.
41:20
Speaker 1: But he remained human, as all emperors and paupers are.
41:25
Speaker 1: On January eight, he collapsed on the corner of California
41:31
Speaker 1: and DuPont Streets. Uh. DuPont is now known as Grant Avenue.
41:36
Speaker 1: He was going to watch a lecture at the California
41:39
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences. People are panicking because again people love
41:44
Speaker 1: this guy. Uh, the police get him a ride to
41:48
Speaker 1: the city receiving hospital. However, he dies before that carriage
41:54
Speaker 1: can make the scene, and this is when people start
41:57
Speaker 1: to pull back the screen. Authorities go to the room
42:02
Speaker 1: where he's living in this boarding house, and they're able
42:04
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, he wasn't living high on the hog.
42:07
Speaker 1: He had about five bucks on him when he fell
42:09
Speaker 1: in the streets, and they found a gold coin worth
42:13
Speaker 1: about two dollars and fifty cents in his room, and
42:17
Speaker 1: he had a bunch of hats and cats. He had
42:20
Speaker 1: letters that he had written to Queen Victoria, and he
42:23
Speaker 1: had a collection of walking sticks. But everybody, and now
42:30
Speaker 1: not just people in San Francisco. All the papers of
42:32
Speaker 1: note across the country are publishing the news, including the
42:37
Speaker 1: New York Times. You're seeing these headlines that say stuff
42:41
Speaker 1: like the king is dead and no citizen of San
42:45
Speaker 1: Francisco has been taken away who would be more generally missed.
42:50
Speaker 1: Somewhere between ten thousand to thirty thousand people turned up
42:53
Speaker 1: at the funeral. Yeah, he was definitely beloved um and
42:56
Speaker 1: and was this fixture. And it's almost kind of like
42:59
Speaker 1: mass head of San Francisco and it's kind of burgeoning weirdness.
43:04
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that he was embraced in that way.
43:06
Speaker 1: But it does bring me back to, you know, the
43:08
Speaker 1: circumstances of his death. So a little money in his pocket,
43:10
Speaker 1: and you know that the you mentioned he had a
43:12
Speaker 1: rental I've seen describe in a couple of places. It's
43:15
Speaker 1: kind of like a dingy flop house, you know, like
43:18
Speaker 1: very the lowest tier of rental, which I'm sure there
43:20
Speaker 1: were quite a few of in that city at the time.
43:23
Speaker 1: But there's a guy by the name of Joel Gazas
43:26
Speaker 1: Sachs who is the president of the Depression and Bipolar
43:30
Speaker 1: Support Alliance of South Orange County, and he's written a
43:33
Speaker 1: couple of pieces where he kind of describes Norton's mental state. Uh.
43:40
Speaker 1: In one essay he wrote called the Madness of Joshua Norton,
43:45
Speaker 1: he has this to say. My guess is that Joshua
43:47
Speaker 1: Norton suffered from major depression, which accounts for his neglect
43:50
Speaker 1: of his person, his work, and other necessary aspects of
43:53
Speaker 1: his life. He fought this using the mechanism of what
43:56
Speaker 1: psychologists call a histrionic personality. By his dress, by his anners,
44:00
Speaker 1: by his attendance and public gatherings and church services, and
44:03
Speaker 1: by the publication of his proclamations and other documents in
44:06
Speaker 1: the city's newspapers. He kept himself at the center of attention.
44:09
Speaker 1: When he acted the role of the Emperor, people looked
44:12
Speaker 1: at and listened to him, and he was able to
44:14
Speaker 1: earn for himself a modest living. His stick enabled him
44:17
Speaker 1: to keep going after the stunning defeats he suffered during
44:19
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties. It negated his pain. It's interesting to
44:24
Speaker 1: say that because we should point out that while while
44:28
Speaker 1: that exploration is in good faith and it is sincere
44:31
Speaker 1: and it's well written, this author is not themselves a
44:36
Speaker 1: psychiatrist nor a psychologist. And during Norton's life, uh, no
44:40
Speaker 1: one did any kind of medical examination in that regard.
44:44
Speaker 1: They just called him mad because it helped sell the story.
44:49
Speaker 1: There's a there's another great article called His Majesty Psychosis
44:53
Speaker 1: the Case of Emperor Joshua Norton by Eric Liss. You
44:57
Speaker 1: can find this um. You can find this online. And
45:01
Speaker 1: I think these are two things, two works that complement
45:05
Speaker 1: each other very well, and I do recommend reading them. Also.
45:10
Speaker 1: Gases Sachs wrote several pieces right, um in both in
45:15
Speaker 1: the Madness of Joshua Norton, which you quoted, and Diagnosing Norton,
45:19
Speaker 1: which is a shorter piece that sort of addresses what
45:22
Speaker 1: people are talking about when they say Emperor Norton was
45:25
Speaker 1: mentally ill. You can find both of these, by the way,
45:28
Speaker 1: on the awesome resource Ember Norton trust dot org. Sure Canon.
45:32
Speaker 1: Just to just to sew it up with with Sachs,
45:34
Speaker 1: he openly acknowledges, you know that he is not a
45:37
Speaker 1: psychologist or psychiatrist, and that what he's doing is just
45:40
Speaker 1: sort of more of an exploration through the lens of
45:42
Speaker 1: his expertise and background in depression, you know, just like
45:47
Speaker 1: as a lame a lay person. And and it's quite
45:51
Speaker 1: possible again because you know, in the defense of both
45:55
Speaker 1: of these scholars, there was not a medical assessment at
45:59
Speaker 1: his time, but he was he was very much beloved.
46:03
Speaker 1: He was originally going to be buried in a potter's field,
46:08
Speaker 1: right and a pauper's coffin, but a group of San
46:11
Speaker 1: Francisco businessman called the Pacific Club said, you know what
46:15
Speaker 1: we are going to pay for equality rosewood casket. The
46:19
Speaker 1: funeral procession on January eight, where you know, I said,
46:23
Speaker 1: somewhere between ten to thirty thousand people attended. That procession
46:28
Speaker 1: was two miles long. He was buried in the Masonic Cemetery. Later,
46:33
Speaker 1: much later, his casket gets moved to the Woodlawn Cemetery.
46:38
Speaker 1: The entire Masonic Cemetery is relocated. Uh, about sixty thousand
46:43
Speaker 1: people came just to see that internment. There's a new
46:47
Speaker 1: tombstone that reads Norton, one emper of the United States
46:51
Speaker 1: and of course protector of Mexico. And now, you know,
46:56
Speaker 1: like like we said earlier, even today people kind of
47:00
Speaker 1: debate over whether there was a genuine like delusion, histrionic personality,
47:07
Speaker 1: major depression, or was it all just a tongue in
47:10
Speaker 1: cheek hustle. It's I don't know, it's tough to it's
47:16
Speaker 1: tough to guess, but there's there's no arguing that ultimately
47:19
Speaker 1: he was good for the city, and it seems like
47:21
Speaker 1: the city was good to him. Would you agree with that?
47:24
Speaker 1: I would absolutely agree with that. And um he I
47:28
Speaker 1: think was acting in good faith in an attempt to
47:32
Speaker 1: be good for the country, and we have this really
47:35
Speaker 1: cool timeline from thought co of his official acts as emperor.
47:39
Speaker 1: I think that might be a fun way to wrap
47:41
Speaker 1: this up. You want to round robin these bad boys, then, sure,
47:44
Speaker 1: of course. October twelfth, eighteen fifty nine, like I mentioned earlier,
47:48
Speaker 1: that's when he abolishes the U. S. Congress In December two,
47:51
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, a very early proclamation showing his his
47:56
Speaker 1: kind of progressiveness. Um, he declared the Governor Henry Wise
47:59
Speaker 1: of Virginia should leave the office for the execution of
48:01
Speaker 1: abolitionist John Brown, and that John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky
48:06
Speaker 1: be inaugurated in his place. Yes. And then, as we
48:10
Speaker 1: mentioned again earlier, July six, eighteen sixty he dissolves the
48:14
Speaker 1: United States of America. And this was, you know, a
48:17
Speaker 1: move against because of Civil War tensions exactly. Uh. Then
48:21
Speaker 1: we've got August twelfth of eighteen sixty nine, he dissolves
48:24
Speaker 1: and abolished as the Democratic and Republican parties due to
48:27
Speaker 1: party strife. And on March twenty three, eighteen seventy two,
48:33
Speaker 1: there's another one we mentioned, Uh, he orders a suspension
48:36
Speaker 1: bridge to be built a S A P from Oakland
48:40
Speaker 1: Point to Goat Island and from there on to San Francisco, which,
48:44
Speaker 1: as we know totally ended up happening. Then finally, September
48:47
Speaker 1: twenty one, eighteen seventy two, he ordered a survey to
48:49
Speaker 1: determine whether a bridge or a tunnel was the best
48:52
Speaker 1: way to connect Oakland and San Francisco. Turns out they
48:55
Speaker 1: went with the bridge. He's making moves, He's he is
48:58
Speaker 1: making moves. If you want to learn more about Emperor Norton,
49:02
Speaker 1: we have mentioned, of course, the Emperor Norton Trust dot org. Uh.
49:07
Speaker 1: This guy will be familiar to any Discordians in the
49:10
Speaker 1: audience because he is the patron saint of Discordians. And
49:14
Speaker 1: now there are ongoing efforts by the Emperor Norton Trust
49:22
Speaker 1: to read name the Bay Bridge, or at least part
49:26
Speaker 1: of it for Emperor Norton, which I don't think is
49:29
Speaker 1: asking too much. That's kind of cool, and it's sort
49:31
Speaker 1: of immortalizes him, you know. It's more so it's sort
49:35
Speaker 1: of like interstates, you know, where you'll have like the
49:37
Speaker 1: official name of the interstate and then a subtitle with
49:40
Speaker 1: a with a you know, like a nickname you know,
49:42
Speaker 1: based on some historical figure or a person that was
49:44
Speaker 1: responsible for, uh, the infrastructure. Uh. And And lastly, I
49:49
Speaker 1: just want to say, if you go to some friends
49:53
Speaker 1: to school. Uh, you can take a walking tour of
49:56
Speaker 1: the life of Emperor Norton and you can find that
49:58
Speaker 1: on Atlas Obscura. New map tracks the life of San
50:01
Speaker 1: Francisco's Emperor Norton by Sarah Lascow, And there is a
50:05
Speaker 1: Google doc embedded a Google map rather embedded, showing some
50:10
Speaker 1: key points um of that that represented the kind of
50:14
Speaker 1: trajectory of his life. And I don't have any plans
50:16
Speaker 1: to go to San Francisco anytime soon, but I hope too,
50:19
Speaker 1: and I when I do, I definitely am going to
50:21
Speaker 1: do this. And one teaser, consider this the stinger on
50:26
Speaker 1: the end of the episode. If this were a Marvel movie,
50:30
Speaker 1: the stinger is this Emperor Norton is not the only
50:33
Speaker 1: person in the US who one day just declared themselves royalty.
50:38
Speaker 1: Those are stories for another day. But we hope you
50:42
Speaker 1: enjoyed this exploration of San Francisco's Emperor as much as
50:47
Speaker 1: the three of us did. Thank you, of course, to
50:50
Speaker 1: the people of San Francisco. Thank you, of course to
50:53
Speaker 1: Norton first of his name, the Emperor of the United States.
50:57
Speaker 1: And UH, equally, just as importantly, thanks to our one
51:01
Speaker 1: and only super producer Mr Max Williams, Maximilian, He's the
51:05
Speaker 1: man Um. He can do all the things that no
51:08
Speaker 1: one else can. That's how that goes um huge Thanks
51:11
Speaker 1: to Max's brother, another one of our men Um, Alex Williams,
51:16
Speaker 1: who composed this theme that you are hearing in your
51:18
Speaker 1: your holes this very minute. And of course thanks to
51:20
Speaker 1: our own mad Emperor of Quizzery Jonathan Strickland DK the Quister.
51:26
Speaker 1: Thanks to Christoph Rossiotis, thanks to Eve's Jeff Coach. Thanks
51:30
Speaker 1: to Eli Banks and Diana Brown of Ridiculous Romance. Do
51:34
Speaker 1: check out their show. Uh It personally just tickles the
51:39
Speaker 1: hell out of me. D See you next time, folks.
51:49
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I
51:51
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
51:54
Speaker 1: your favorite shows