March 30, 2021 • 29 mins
At the end of the 19th century, a man in San Francisco declared himself the Emperor of the United States. Was he mad? Possibly. But he also became a beloved fixture of a city, a unifying symbol, and a monarchical mascot. This is the story of Emperor Norton I.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Miinki listener. Discretion is advised.
What makes someone a royal? This isn't a loaded or
a trick question. I'm actually asking trying to come up
(00:21):
with a common sense, non dictionary definition. Maybe it's easier
to start by asking how somebody becomes a royal? Well
blood right, Certainly, that's the first and easiest way to
get into the aristocracy. You are literally grandfathered in if
your ancestors are nobles in a certain country. Barring a revolution,
(00:44):
you'll also be a noble. Although even after a revolution
there were plenty of Russian aristocrats who fled the country
and settled in various European manners and hotel rooms and
still called themselves dukes and duchesses. What have you without
a country? So blood there it is. But you can
also be granted a title by a royal for an
(01:06):
act of service or greatness, or you can marry a royal.
Those are two ways for a commoner to insert his
or herself into an already existing system of nobility. You
probably won't be the main monarch, but you'll still get
a title, And then there's the coup strategy. If you
can overthrow a king, then you become the king so
(01:29):
long as the military and certain foreign powers will accept you.
So what is the actual common denominator then that unites
the cousins, the spouses, the usurpers, what makes them all
real royals? That then diagram becomes even harder to reckon
with when you add in a country like Belgium, which
(01:50):
imported in a semi random Bavarian prince to be their
king in eighteen thirty one because they figured that any
self respecting independent European country needed a king. It's not
necessarily money that makes a king. There are plenty of
royals who are history rich and cash poor, and it's
certainly not actual power. Just ask any of the present
(02:13):
day royals whose days consist more of charity events and
ceremonial displays than declarations of war. I suppose, at its
most basic core, if you strip away the factor of
historical precedent and focus only on any given moment actually
in the present, A monarch is a figure supported by
(02:34):
the people or government financially or otherwise, who can offer
opinions or proclamations, who attend the needs of the people
to the best of their ability, who serve as a
uniting symbol, someone that the government and the people have
decided is a monarch. With that in mind, and only
(02:57):
semi ironically, in honor of A Berl Fool's Day, I
ask you to consider the curious case of Emperor Norton
the First, the man who in eighteen fifty nine declared
himself to be the Emperor of the United States. Most
contemporary accounts saw him as an eccentric if they were
(03:18):
being polite, insane if they weren't. But today, now that
we've moved past fiefdoms and protectorate, maybe the entire notion
of royalty, of someone being born more worthy of power
than somebody else, is a little bit insane. And there's
certainly nothing more American than a man who decided what
(03:40):
he wanted to be and then lived it. I'm Danis Schwartz,
and this is noble blood. The man who would eventually
style himself as Emperor. Norton the First was born in Deptford, Kent,
(04:00):
present day a part of London, on November fourth, eighteen eighteen,
to English Jewish parents. There's actually some historical disagreement as
to the actual year that Norton was born. Even his
obituary when he died gave his age as quote about
sixty five. But from what I've read, eighteen eighteen seems
(04:21):
to be the year with the most documented supporting evidence,
and that evidence includes the record of Norton being two
years old when his parents moved from England to South
Africa in eighteen twenty. After the Napoleonic Wars, England was
facing an unemployment crisis, and the government responded by encouraging
(04:43):
their citizens to move to England's African Colony. The promise
was wealth and opportunity. Those who traveled there eventually came
to be known as the eighteen twenties settlers, and though
the eastern border of the colony never became the densely
populated metropolitan are area that the British governor in South
Africa no doubt envisioned, it seems that the land provided
(05:06):
at least enough stable income for Norton's parents to go
on to have six more children. Norton's mother died in
eighteen forty six and his father died just two years later,
leaving Norton as an orphan. In his early thirties. Without
an anchor, he had no real connection to South Africa,
and though we don't have this specific date to confirm
(05:29):
when it happened, most of his siblings didn't make it
past infancy. He was his father's sole surviving son, which
meant that he inherited whatever property was left over after
they passed. Norton was an ambitious man. Like his parents,
he was willing to cross oceans to chase opportunity. He
(05:50):
took his inheritance, stopped briefly in South America, and then
made his way towards that mythical land of gold, the
American West. There was a gold rush happening in California
in eighteen forty nine, and Joshua Norton was going to
San Francisco in almost no time at all. Norton became
(06:17):
a semi prominent businessman. Now, this part of Norton's life
when he first arrived in America is another major point
of contention amongst those who study and write about Norton's life.
Right after Norton's death, an obituary asserted that Norton had
arrived in San Francisco with forty thousand dollars an inheritance
(06:39):
from his father. That number has been almost endlessly duplicated
in other sources. You find sometimes by more sensationalist accounts,
which also go on to declare that Norton quickly parlayed
that forty thousand dollars using his business acumen, into two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But there's not a ton
(07:00):
of evidence for those claims, although they do paint a
compelling picture of a man catapulting himself from obscurity to
wealth in less than a year in the land of opportunity.
More detailed biographies imply that Norton's father was actually in
debt in South Africa. Still, it's possible that after liquidating
(07:22):
his father's business and paying off debts, Norton still had
a decent inheritance, and it's more than possible that he
turned that inheritance into a hefty profit once he reached California.
Although to me the two d and fifty thousand dollar
amount seems a little nebulous, it's probably more accurate to
(07:43):
say that by eighteen fifty two Norton was a member
of the San Francisco well to do by Association, perhaps
not as wealthy as most of the other social elite,
but well liked and certainly well respected. But that was
a status that wouldn't last long. In December of eighteen
fifty two, China banned the export of their rice in
(08:07):
response to a famine, so that its own citizens could
afford to eat. As you might imagine, that band of
Chinese exports caused the price of rice to skyrocket around
the rest of the world. The staple, which usually cost
four cents a pound in San Francisco, was going for
as high as thirty six cents a pound. That's when
(08:31):
a business acquaintance came into Norton's office. The man pulled
a handful of rice from his pocket. Excellent quality. Where
did you get that? Norton asked. There are two hundred
thousand pounds of it on board the ship the Glide,
sitting in the harbor right now. The acquaintance said, the
(08:52):
rice came from Peru. It's the only rice San Francisco
is going to get for a while, and definitely the
only rice of this quality. I'll take the entire shipment,
Norton said. He bought all two hundred thousand pounds of
Peruvian rice for twelve cents a pound. He would control
(09:13):
the entire market, and if all went according to plan,
he would make a massive profit. It's probably not a
surprise if I say things didn't go according to plan.
Norton was all set to make a tidy profit until
(09:36):
several more shipments of Peruvian rice arrived in Port over
the next few days. By the very next week, there
was so much rice from Peru in San Francisco that
the price was lowered to two cents a pound. And
to make matters worse, the two hundred thousand pounds of
rice from the Glide that Norton had purchased was small, hard,
(10:00):
terrible quality, nothing like the beautiful handful of rice that
had glimmered like pearls in his acquaintance's hand, the rice
that had tempted him into what was promised to be
a sure fire investment. Norton was ruined. He claimed that
he was misled by the business associate and tried to
(10:21):
avoid his contract and began a lengthy legal battle. Norton
one in lower courts, but eventually the California Supreme Court
ruled against him. If the payment for the two hundred
thousand pounds of low quality, overpriced rice hadn't already been
enough to ruin him. The legal fees took what was left.
(10:42):
Norton's holdings were foreclosed on. Norton declared bankruptcy, fed up
and exasperated by the American judicial system. In eighteen fifty eight,
he was living as a pauper in a cheap San
Francisco boarding house, paying by the week, alongside degenerates and
the impoverished. There's no record of what Norton did while
(11:06):
he was licking his wounds, hiding from the society, folks
who had up until so recently been his friends. He
was a proud man, and he remained in seclusion until
he was ready to be reborn. On September sevent eighteen
(11:30):
fifty nine, a proclamation was printed in the San Francisco
Daily Evening Bulletin. It read, at the peremptory request of
a large majority of the citizens of these United States,
I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope,
and now for the past nine years and ten months
(11:53):
of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of
these Us, and in virtue the authority thereby in me
vested do hereby order and direct the representatives of different
states of the Union to assemble in the Music Hall
of this city on the first day of February next
(12:15):
then and there to make such alterations in the existing
laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under
which the country is laboring, and thereby caused confidence to exist,
both at home and abroad in our stability and integrity.
That meeting of all the states at the Musical Hall
(12:35):
it never happened, But Norton wasn't entirely wrong about the
troubling direction that the American political system was heading into.
We were a year away from Abraham Lincoln being elected president,
and it would be a year after that that the
Civil War would begin. Norton saw the fractures in this country,
the deep roots of racism and division amongst its people.
(12:59):
He figured an emperor would be just the thing to
fix us. He had delivered his typewritten proclamation to newspaper
offices around the city. In person, he was a large man,
more stocky than tall. Behind his thick mustache and full beard,
he had small, sharp eyes and a complexion that verged
(13:19):
on ruddy. His hair was dark and curly, but almost
always hidden beneath a beaver hat, although eventually he would
take to wearing the sunken, flat soft cap of a
Union soldier along with the rest of a blue Union uniform.
Norton purchased these uniforms from pawn shops, usually left behind
(13:40):
by Union deserters. Over time, Norton's uniform gradually became more elaborate.
He was gifted gold plated epaulets that he affixed to
his clothing whenever he wanted to look particularly regal, and
his hat would come to house a peacock feather and
a rosette. Sometimes Norton walked around the San Francisco streets
(14:04):
with a cane. His politics were progressive. His first proclamation
after announcing himself, of course, was to dismiss the governor
of Virginia for hanging the abolitionist John Brown. Norton would
go on to demand that African Americans be permitted to
(14:26):
attend public schools and to ride public street cars, and
that Chinese people be permitted to testify in court. Quote,
the eyes of the Emperor will be upon anyone who
shall counsel any outrage or wrong on the Chinese Emperor,
Norton wrote and with respect to Native Americans, Norton wrote
that any parties connected with frauds against the quote Indian
(14:49):
tribes were to be punished before a council of as
many Native American chiefs as could be assembled. Though his
words didn't make much of a polite to call impact
in San Francisco, at least, it didn't take long for
Emperor Norton to gain massive attention as a popular figure,
a figure who captured the public imagination and became something
(15:12):
of a citywide mascot. Just two years after Norton appeared
on the scene, a new theater in San Francisco opened
with a comic opera written and staged about him, called
Norton the First or Emperor for a Day. Citizens delighted
at seeing him in public, especially if he happened to
(15:32):
be accompanied by two of San Francisco's other most famous citizens,
beloved street dogs Bummer and Lazarus. Industrialist Leland Stanford, who
was the president of the Central Public Railroad, clocked Norton's
popularity and saw an opportunity to gain some good pr
(15:53):
to help dispel his robber baron reputation, Stanford gave Norton
a free pass for all of his train routes in California,
Norton lived off of goodwill donations and good deals throughout
the city. Most pubs offered a free lunch with the
purchase of a drink, but Norton typically ate at the
(16:14):
Bank Exchange, where you could get a free lunch of soup, salmon, roast, beef, potatoes, bread,
and cheese, all with the purchase of a brandy smash
for just twenty five cents. His clothes were shabby, visibly secondhand,
and if friends from his former life tried to help him,
Norton would be willing to take fifty cent pieces, but
(16:36):
only because he referred to them as taxes and recorded
them dutifully in a notebook that he always carried with him.
He's actually secretly incredibly wealthy, went the gossip on the streets.
Didn't you hear he's a millionaire. He only accepts charity
and lives the way he does because he's very cheap.
It's all a ruse. Yes, I've heard that, came the
(16:59):
typical sponse. Did you know he's actually the secret son
of Louis Napoleon. When Napoleon invaded Mexico, Norton gave himself
an additional title Protector of Mexico, despite the fact that
there's no evidence that Norton ever set foot in Mexico
at any point during his life. One brief side note,
(17:20):
if you happen to have listened to my Noble Blood
episode about Maximilian and Carlotta of Mexico, you'll know that
Norton um didn't do such a great job as Protector.
All the while, Norton continued to issue decrees that were
published by newspapers. A proclamation that the Democratic and Republican
(17:45):
parties were to be abolished, a demand that Sacramento clean
up the mud on its street and installed gaslight on
the street leading to the Capitol Building. And a very
forward thinking idea that a bridge or tunnel should be
built to connect Say and Francisco to Oakland. When norton
second hand uniform began to fall apart, the San Francisco
(18:07):
Board of Supervisors bought him a new one. In response,
Norton sent a formal thank you letter and issued every
member of the board quote a patent of nobility in perpetuity. Newspapers,
particularly the Daily Alta California, recognized what a boon umper
Norton was to circulation numbers. He was a central comic
(18:31):
figure to the tapestry of the city. People loved him,
and so in short time, certain newspapers began using Norton's
name and notoriety to make editorial jokes about political situations,
writing phony proclamations supposedly by him. It's under these circumstances
(18:52):
that one of the most widely shared proclamations supposedly by
Norton was issued in eighteen seventy two. Quote whoever, after
do and proper warning, shall be heard to utter the
abominable word frisco, which has no linguistic or other warrant,
shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and shall
(19:16):
pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of
twenty five dollars. Charming and a good reminder never to
call San Francisco frisco, but probably not actually written by
Emperor Norton. Because Emperor Norton was almost from the outset,
a figure larger than life, a living myth, it can
(19:39):
be difficult to parse out the truth in his history,
as opposed to stories that were merely urban legends that
cast a colorful folk hero in the leading role. There's
also the question as to whether well Emperor Norton was
mentally unwell. He seemed to genuinely believe that he was
(20:00):
the Emperor of the United States. The eighteen seventy census
lists his occupation sensibly as emperor, but also added the
note that he was insane. The famous writer Mark Twain
was living in San Francisco for several years during Emperor
Norton's reign, and in Twain's column for the Daily Morning Call,
(20:24):
he wrote of Norton, quote, Oh, dear, it was always
a painful thing for me to see the Emperor begging
for Although nobody else believed he was an emperor, he
believed it. In eighteen sixty seven, a man named Armand Barbier,
(20:45):
who was working as part of a civilian security policing force,
arrested Norton and tried to have him involuntarily committed to
a psychiatric facility. The outrage was loud an instant. The
Daily Alta wrote an article with the headline arrest of
the Emperor, which read quote Special Officer Barbier yesterday arrested
(21:10):
the Emperor Norton the first and took him to the
calaboost to be examined by the Commissioner of Lunacy. Norton was,
in his day a respectable merchant, and since he has
worn the Imperial purple, he has shed no blood, robbed
and nobody, and despoiled the country of no one, which
is more than can be said for any of his
(21:31):
fellows in that line. Within a day, the San Francisco
Chief of Police himself personally granted Norton's release and issued
a formal apology, which Norton graciously accepted. Norton also graciously
granted an imperial pardon to Barbier, who Norton understood was
(21:52):
only trying to do his job. The Dailyalta's article about
his release read honorably discharge urged his Imperial majesty. Norton,
the first who was arrested as a lunatic on Monday night,
as stated in The Altar, was promptly discharged from custody
as soon as the facts of the arrest were made
(22:12):
known to the proper authorities. Yesterday, he called the property
Clerk's desk, received back the key of the palace and
the imperial funds amounting to four dollars and seventy cents
of lawful money of the United States. From that day on,
whenever police saw Emperor Norton walking through the streets of
(22:33):
San Francisco and his uniform and hat, they saluted. Norton
was a fixture of the city, riding trains, trolleys, and ferries,
attending sessions of the state legislature, university lectures, and occasionally
traveling across California to inspect military troops. Norton also issued
(22:53):
his own currency from fifty cents to ten dollars, which
was happily accepted by the restaurants that he frequently patronized.
Norton was so famous and beloved in the city that
businesses would gleefully declare themselves as the Emperor's favorite to
gain publicity. Emperor Norton reigned for over twenty years, traveling
(23:16):
the city, writing his proclamations on typewriters at the city library,
greeting any small dogs were children who came his way
with a smile, and declaring any child who met him
to be king or queen for a day. But then,
(23:36):
on January eight, Norton was on his way to a
lecture at the California Academy of sciences. When he collapsed
on the corner of what is now California Street and
Grand Avenue. A policeman happened to be nearby, and he
rushed to get Norton a carriage to the hospital, but
it was too late. Norton had a stroke and he
(23:59):
died almost instantly. As it turns out, all of the
rumors of the Emperor having secret wealth were unfounded. When
the authorities went through his belongings, they found only six
dollars in small change and no personal belongings of value,
although there was one fake letter from Alexander the Second
(24:21):
of Russia congratulating Norton on his impending marriage to Queen Victoria.
Over the years, Norton had sent numerous letters to the
Queen of England proposing that they unite their empires through matrimony,
although rudely Victoria never responded. Norton was going to be
buried in a simple redwood box until the people of
(24:44):
San Francisco decided that he deserved a proper burial. The
Pacific Club issued a subscription list two sponsors who would donate.
That list supposedly is still available to see in their
club room. Norton was buried in a rosewood casket, and
his funeral procession was over two miles long, with as
(25:06):
many as ten thousand people lining the streets to pay
their final respects. Norton lived on in literature. Mark Twain's
most famous novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, includes two
con artists who call themselves the Duke and the King,
the latter pretending to be the descendant of the dead
(25:28):
Dauphin Louis, the seventeenth of France. Although those characters are
antagonists wildly not merely eccentric but actually nefarious, they were
nevertheless inspired by the Emperor. But I find a more
fitting literary description of Emperor Norton in Young gay Men's
(25:48):
graphic novel series The Sandman in the story Three Septembers
and a January. If you haven't read Sandman yet, please
put it on your list immediately. In the series, Despair, Dream, Delirium, Desire,
and Death are all semi living characters, immortal siblings called
the Endless. In the comic, after Norton fails as a businessman,
(26:13):
he is a victim of despair until Dream arrives and
gives him the dream of him being an Emperor. It's
that dream that keeps him from going mad. He ought
to be mine, but he isn't. Is he delirium asks
He's so sane except about being the Emperor. Of course,
(26:34):
his madness keeps him sane. At the end of the issue,
when death comes for Emperor Norton, the two of them
walk away side by side. I've met a lot of
kings and emperors and heads of state in my time,
Joshua Death says to him, I've met them all, and
you know something I think I like to you best.
(27:08):
That's the story of Emperor Norton. But keep listening after
a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more
about the Emperor's legacy in San Francisco, And just a
quick reminder if you want to support the show, we
have a Patreon, Patreon, dot com slash Noble Blood Tales
where you can get access to scripts, episode bibliographies, and
(27:29):
other behind the scenes information. Eventually, after Norton's death, there
was a bridge built between San Francisco and Oakland, the
Bay Bridge, built in fifty six years after Norton's death.
(27:51):
Since then, there have been multiple campaigns to rename the
bridge in his honor. Another little bit of interesting Norton
comes from Jose Saria, who became the first openly gay
person to ever run for public office in the United
States when he ran for the San Francisco Board of
(28:11):
Supervisors in Sarria was also a drag performer who sometimes
styled himself as her Royal Majesty Embrace of San Francisco,
Jose the First the Widow Norton. Sarria actually purchased the
grave plot next to Joshua Norton, and that's where he
(28:34):
was buried next to his imaginary husband, the Imaginary Emperor.
Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and
Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written
and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky,
(28:55):
Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. M
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Miinki listener. Discretion is advised.
What makes someone a royal? This isn't a loaded or
a trick question. I'm actually asking trying to come up
(00:21):
with a common sense, non dictionary definition. Maybe it's easier
to start by asking how somebody becomes a royal? Well
blood right, Certainly, that's the first and easiest way to
get into the aristocracy. You are literally grandfathered in if
your ancestors are nobles in a certain country. Barring a revolution,
(00:44):
you'll also be a noble. Although even after a revolution
there were plenty of Russian aristocrats who fled the country
and settled in various European manners and hotel rooms and
still called themselves dukes and duchesses. What have you without
a country? So blood there it is. But you can
also be granted a title by a royal for an
(01:06):
act of service or greatness, or you can marry a royal.
Those are two ways for a commoner to insert his
or herself into an already existing system of nobility. You
probably won't be the main monarch, but you'll still get
a title, And then there's the coup strategy. If you
can overthrow a king, then you become the king so
(01:29):
long as the military and certain foreign powers will accept you.
So what is the actual common denominator then that unites
the cousins, the spouses, the usurpers, what makes them all
real royals? That then diagram becomes even harder to reckon
with when you add in a country like Belgium, which
(01:50):
imported in a semi random Bavarian prince to be their
king in eighteen thirty one because they figured that any
self respecting independent European country needed a king. It's not
necessarily money that makes a king. There are plenty of
royals who are history rich and cash poor, and it's
certainly not actual power. Just ask any of the present
(02:13):
day royals whose days consist more of charity events and
ceremonial displays than declarations of war. I suppose, at its
most basic core, if you strip away the factor of
historical precedent and focus only on any given moment actually
in the present, A monarch is a figure supported by
(02:34):
the people or government financially or otherwise, who can offer
opinions or proclamations, who attend the needs of the people
to the best of their ability, who serve as a
uniting symbol, someone that the government and the people have
decided is a monarch. With that in mind, and only
(02:57):
semi ironically, in honor of A Berl Fool's Day, I
ask you to consider the curious case of Emperor Norton
the First, the man who in eighteen fifty nine declared
himself to be the Emperor of the United States. Most
contemporary accounts saw him as an eccentric if they were
(03:18):
being polite, insane if they weren't. But today, now that
we've moved past fiefdoms and protectorate, maybe the entire notion
of royalty, of someone being born more worthy of power
than somebody else, is a little bit insane. And there's
certainly nothing more American than a man who decided what
(03:40):
he wanted to be and then lived it. I'm Danis Schwartz,
and this is noble blood. The man who would eventually
style himself as Emperor. Norton the First was born in Deptford, Kent,
(04:00):
present day a part of London, on November fourth, eighteen eighteen,
to English Jewish parents. There's actually some historical disagreement as
to the actual year that Norton was born. Even his
obituary when he died gave his age as quote about
sixty five. But from what I've read, eighteen eighteen seems
(04:21):
to be the year with the most documented supporting evidence,
and that evidence includes the record of Norton being two
years old when his parents moved from England to South
Africa in eighteen twenty. After the Napoleonic Wars, England was
facing an unemployment crisis, and the government responded by encouraging
(04:43):
their citizens to move to England's African Colony. The promise
was wealth and opportunity. Those who traveled there eventually came
to be known as the eighteen twenties settlers, and though
the eastern border of the colony never became the densely
populated metropolitan are area that the British governor in South
Africa no doubt envisioned, it seems that the land provided
(05:06):
at least enough stable income for Norton's parents to go
on to have six more children. Norton's mother died in
eighteen forty six and his father died just two years later,
leaving Norton as an orphan. In his early thirties. Without
an anchor, he had no real connection to South Africa,
and though we don't have this specific date to confirm
(05:29):
when it happened, most of his siblings didn't make it
past infancy. He was his father's sole surviving son, which
meant that he inherited whatever property was left over after
they passed. Norton was an ambitious man. Like his parents,
he was willing to cross oceans to chase opportunity. He
(05:50):
took his inheritance, stopped briefly in South America, and then
made his way towards that mythical land of gold, the
American West. There was a gold rush happening in California
in eighteen forty nine, and Joshua Norton was going to
San Francisco in almost no time at all. Norton became
(06:17):
a semi prominent businessman. Now, this part of Norton's life
when he first arrived in America is another major point
of contention amongst those who study and write about Norton's life.
Right after Norton's death, an obituary asserted that Norton had
arrived in San Francisco with forty thousand dollars an inheritance
(06:39):
from his father. That number has been almost endlessly duplicated
in other sources. You find sometimes by more sensationalist accounts,
which also go on to declare that Norton quickly parlayed
that forty thousand dollars using his business acumen, into two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. But there's not a ton
(07:00):
of evidence for those claims, although they do paint a
compelling picture of a man catapulting himself from obscurity to
wealth in less than a year in the land of opportunity.
More detailed biographies imply that Norton's father was actually in
debt in South Africa. Still, it's possible that after liquidating
(07:22):
his father's business and paying off debts, Norton still had
a decent inheritance, and it's more than possible that he
turned that inheritance into a hefty profit once he reached California.
Although to me the two d and fifty thousand dollar
amount seems a little nebulous, it's probably more accurate to
(07:43):
say that by eighteen fifty two Norton was a member
of the San Francisco well to do by Association, perhaps
not as wealthy as most of the other social elite,
but well liked and certainly well respected. But that was
a status that wouldn't last long. In December of eighteen
fifty two, China banned the export of their rice in
(08:07):
response to a famine, so that its own citizens could
afford to eat. As you might imagine, that band of
Chinese exports caused the price of rice to skyrocket around
the rest of the world. The staple, which usually cost
four cents a pound in San Francisco, was going for
as high as thirty six cents a pound. That's when
(08:31):
a business acquaintance came into Norton's office. The man pulled
a handful of rice from his pocket. Excellent quality. Where
did you get that? Norton asked. There are two hundred
thousand pounds of it on board the ship the Glide,
sitting in the harbor right now. The acquaintance said, the
(08:52):
rice came from Peru. It's the only rice San Francisco
is going to get for a while, and definitely the
only rice of this quality. I'll take the entire shipment,
Norton said. He bought all two hundred thousand pounds of
Peruvian rice for twelve cents a pound. He would control
(09:13):
the entire market, and if all went according to plan,
he would make a massive profit. It's probably not a
surprise if I say things didn't go according to plan.
Norton was all set to make a tidy profit until
(09:36):
several more shipments of Peruvian rice arrived in Port over
the next few days. By the very next week, there
was so much rice from Peru in San Francisco that
the price was lowered to two cents a pound. And
to make matters worse, the two hundred thousand pounds of
rice from the Glide that Norton had purchased was small, hard,
(10:00):
terrible quality, nothing like the beautiful handful of rice that
had glimmered like pearls in his acquaintance's hand, the rice
that had tempted him into what was promised to be
a sure fire investment. Norton was ruined. He claimed that
he was misled by the business associate and tried to
(10:21):
avoid his contract and began a lengthy legal battle. Norton
one in lower courts, but eventually the California Supreme Court
ruled against him. If the payment for the two hundred
thousand pounds of low quality, overpriced rice hadn't already been
enough to ruin him. The legal fees took what was left.
(10:42):
Norton's holdings were foreclosed on. Norton declared bankruptcy, fed up
and exasperated by the American judicial system. In eighteen fifty eight,
he was living as a pauper in a cheap San
Francisco boarding house, paying by the week, alongside degenerates and
the impoverished. There's no record of what Norton did while
(11:06):
he was licking his wounds, hiding from the society, folks
who had up until so recently been his friends. He
was a proud man, and he remained in seclusion until
he was ready to be reborn. On September sevent eighteen
(11:30):
fifty nine, a proclamation was printed in the San Francisco
Daily Evening Bulletin. It read, at the peremptory request of
a large majority of the citizens of these United States,
I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope,
and now for the past nine years and ten months
(11:53):
of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of
these Us, and in virtue the authority thereby in me
vested do hereby order and direct the representatives of different
states of the Union to assemble in the Music Hall
of this city on the first day of February next
(12:15):
then and there to make such alterations in the existing
laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under
which the country is laboring, and thereby caused confidence to exist,
both at home and abroad in our stability and integrity.
That meeting of all the states at the Musical Hall
(12:35):
it never happened, But Norton wasn't entirely wrong about the
troubling direction that the American political system was heading into.
We were a year away from Abraham Lincoln being elected president,
and it would be a year after that that the
Civil War would begin. Norton saw the fractures in this country,
the deep roots of racism and division amongst its people.
(12:59):
He figured an emperor would be just the thing to
fix us. He had delivered his typewritten proclamation to newspaper
offices around the city. In person, he was a large man,
more stocky than tall. Behind his thick mustache and full beard,
he had small, sharp eyes and a complexion that verged
(13:19):
on ruddy. His hair was dark and curly, but almost
always hidden beneath a beaver hat, although eventually he would
take to wearing the sunken, flat soft cap of a
Union soldier along with the rest of a blue Union uniform.
Norton purchased these uniforms from pawn shops, usually left behind
(13:40):
by Union deserters. Over time, Norton's uniform gradually became more elaborate.
He was gifted gold plated epaulets that he affixed to
his clothing whenever he wanted to look particularly regal, and
his hat would come to house a peacock feather and
a rosette. Sometimes Norton walked around the San Francisco streets
(14:04):
with a cane. His politics were progressive. His first proclamation
after announcing himself, of course, was to dismiss the governor
of Virginia for hanging the abolitionist John Brown. Norton would
go on to demand that African Americans be permitted to
(14:26):
attend public schools and to ride public street cars, and
that Chinese people be permitted to testify in court. Quote,
the eyes of the Emperor will be upon anyone who
shall counsel any outrage or wrong on the Chinese Emperor,
Norton wrote and with respect to Native Americans, Norton wrote
that any parties connected with frauds against the quote Indian
(14:49):
tribes were to be punished before a council of as
many Native American chiefs as could be assembled. Though his
words didn't make much of a polite to call impact
in San Francisco, at least, it didn't take long for
Emperor Norton to gain massive attention as a popular figure,
a figure who captured the public imagination and became something
(15:12):
of a citywide mascot. Just two years after Norton appeared
on the scene, a new theater in San Francisco opened
with a comic opera written and staged about him, called
Norton the First or Emperor for a Day. Citizens delighted
at seeing him in public, especially if he happened to
(15:32):
be accompanied by two of San Francisco's other most famous citizens,
beloved street dogs Bummer and Lazarus. Industrialist Leland Stanford, who
was the president of the Central Public Railroad, clocked Norton's
popularity and saw an opportunity to gain some good pr
(15:53):
to help dispel his robber baron reputation, Stanford gave Norton
a free pass for all of his train routes in California,
Norton lived off of goodwill donations and good deals throughout
the city. Most pubs offered a free lunch with the
purchase of a drink, but Norton typically ate at the
(16:14):
Bank Exchange, where you could get a free lunch of soup, salmon, roast, beef, potatoes, bread,
and cheese, all with the purchase of a brandy smash
for just twenty five cents. His clothes were shabby, visibly secondhand,
and if friends from his former life tried to help him,
Norton would be willing to take fifty cent pieces, but
(16:36):
only because he referred to them as taxes and recorded
them dutifully in a notebook that he always carried with him.
He's actually secretly incredibly wealthy, went the gossip on the streets.
Didn't you hear he's a millionaire. He only accepts charity
and lives the way he does because he's very cheap.
It's all a ruse. Yes, I've heard that, came the
(16:59):
typical sponse. Did you know he's actually the secret son
of Louis Napoleon. When Napoleon invaded Mexico, Norton gave himself
an additional title Protector of Mexico, despite the fact that
there's no evidence that Norton ever set foot in Mexico
at any point during his life. One brief side note,
(17:20):
if you happen to have listened to my Noble Blood
episode about Maximilian and Carlotta of Mexico, you'll know that
Norton um didn't do such a great job as Protector.
All the while, Norton continued to issue decrees that were
published by newspapers. A proclamation that the Democratic and Republican
(17:45):
parties were to be abolished, a demand that Sacramento clean
up the mud on its street and installed gaslight on
the street leading to the Capitol Building. And a very
forward thinking idea that a bridge or tunnel should be
built to connect Say and Francisco to Oakland. When norton
second hand uniform began to fall apart, the San Francisco
(18:07):
Board of Supervisors bought him a new one. In response,
Norton sent a formal thank you letter and issued every
member of the board quote a patent of nobility in perpetuity. Newspapers,
particularly the Daily Alta California, recognized what a boon umper
Norton was to circulation numbers. He was a central comic
(18:31):
figure to the tapestry of the city. People loved him,
and so in short time, certain newspapers began using Norton's
name and notoriety to make editorial jokes about political situations,
writing phony proclamations supposedly by him. It's under these circumstances
(18:52):
that one of the most widely shared proclamations supposedly by
Norton was issued in eighteen seventy two. Quote whoever, after
do and proper warning, shall be heard to utter the
abominable word frisco, which has no linguistic or other warrant,
shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and shall
(19:16):
pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of
twenty five dollars. Charming and a good reminder never to
call San Francisco frisco, but probably not actually written by
Emperor Norton. Because Emperor Norton was almost from the outset,
a figure larger than life, a living myth, it can
(19:39):
be difficult to parse out the truth in his history,
as opposed to stories that were merely urban legends that
cast a colorful folk hero in the leading role. There's
also the question as to whether well Emperor Norton was
mentally unwell. He seemed to genuinely believe that he was
(20:00):
the Emperor of the United States. The eighteen seventy census
lists his occupation sensibly as emperor, but also added the
note that he was insane. The famous writer Mark Twain
was living in San Francisco for several years during Emperor
Norton's reign, and in Twain's column for the Daily Morning Call,
(20:24):
he wrote of Norton, quote, Oh, dear, it was always
a painful thing for me to see the Emperor begging
for Although nobody else believed he was an emperor, he
believed it. In eighteen sixty seven, a man named Armand Barbier,
(20:45):
who was working as part of a civilian security policing force,
arrested Norton and tried to have him involuntarily committed to
a psychiatric facility. The outrage was loud an instant. The
Daily Alta wrote an article with the headline arrest of
the Emperor, which read quote Special Officer Barbier yesterday arrested
(21:10):
the Emperor Norton the first and took him to the
calaboost to be examined by the Commissioner of Lunacy. Norton was,
in his day a respectable merchant, and since he has
worn the Imperial purple, he has shed no blood, robbed
and nobody, and despoiled the country of no one, which
is more than can be said for any of his
(21:31):
fellows in that line. Within a day, the San Francisco
Chief of Police himself personally granted Norton's release and issued
a formal apology, which Norton graciously accepted. Norton also graciously
granted an imperial pardon to Barbier, who Norton understood was
(21:52):
only trying to do his job. The Dailyalta's article about
his release read honorably discharge urged his Imperial majesty. Norton,
the first who was arrested as a lunatic on Monday night,
as stated in The Altar, was promptly discharged from custody
as soon as the facts of the arrest were made
(22:12):
known to the proper authorities. Yesterday, he called the property
Clerk's desk, received back the key of the palace and
the imperial funds amounting to four dollars and seventy cents
of lawful money of the United States. From that day on,
whenever police saw Emperor Norton walking through the streets of
(22:33):
San Francisco and his uniform and hat, they saluted. Norton
was a fixture of the city, riding trains, trolleys, and ferries,
attending sessions of the state legislature, university lectures, and occasionally
traveling across California to inspect military troops. Norton also issued
(22:53):
his own currency from fifty cents to ten dollars, which
was happily accepted by the restaurants that he frequently patronized.
Norton was so famous and beloved in the city that
businesses would gleefully declare themselves as the Emperor's favorite to
gain publicity. Emperor Norton reigned for over twenty years, traveling
(23:16):
the city, writing his proclamations on typewriters at the city library,
greeting any small dogs were children who came his way
with a smile, and declaring any child who met him
to be king or queen for a day. But then,
(23:36):
on January eight, Norton was on his way to a
lecture at the California Academy of sciences. When he collapsed
on the corner of what is now California Street and
Grand Avenue. A policeman happened to be nearby, and he
rushed to get Norton a carriage to the hospital, but
it was too late. Norton had a stroke and he
(23:59):
died almost instantly. As it turns out, all of the
rumors of the Emperor having secret wealth were unfounded. When
the authorities went through his belongings, they found only six
dollars in small change and no personal belongings of value,
although there was one fake letter from Alexander the Second
(24:21):
of Russia congratulating Norton on his impending marriage to Queen Victoria.
Over the years, Norton had sent numerous letters to the
Queen of England proposing that they unite their empires through matrimony,
although rudely Victoria never responded. Norton was going to be
buried in a simple redwood box until the people of
(24:44):
San Francisco decided that he deserved a proper burial. The
Pacific Club issued a subscription list two sponsors who would donate.
That list supposedly is still available to see in their
club room. Norton was buried in a rosewood casket, and
his funeral procession was over two miles long, with as
(25:06):
many as ten thousand people lining the streets to pay
their final respects. Norton lived on in literature. Mark Twain's
most famous novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, includes two
con artists who call themselves the Duke and the King,
the latter pretending to be the descendant of the dead
(25:28):
Dauphin Louis, the seventeenth of France. Although those characters are
antagonists wildly not merely eccentric but actually nefarious, they were
nevertheless inspired by the Emperor. But I find a more
fitting literary description of Emperor Norton in Young gay Men's
(25:48):
graphic novel series The Sandman in the story Three Septembers
and a January. If you haven't read Sandman yet, please
put it on your list immediately. In the series, Despair, Dream, Delirium, Desire,
and Death are all semi living characters, immortal siblings called
the Endless. In the comic, after Norton fails as a businessman,
(26:13):
he is a victim of despair until Dream arrives and
gives him the dream of him being an Emperor. It's
that dream that keeps him from going mad. He ought
to be mine, but he isn't. Is he delirium asks
He's so sane except about being the Emperor. Of course,
(26:34):
his madness keeps him sane. At the end of the issue,
when death comes for Emperor Norton, the two of them
walk away side by side. I've met a lot of
kings and emperors and heads of state in my time,
Joshua Death says to him, I've met them all, and
you know something I think I like to you best.
(27:08):
That's the story of Emperor Norton. But keep listening after
a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more
about the Emperor's legacy in San Francisco, And just a
quick reminder if you want to support the show, we
have a Patreon, Patreon, dot com slash Noble Blood Tales
where you can get access to scripts, episode bibliographies, and
(27:29):
other behind the scenes information. Eventually, after Norton's death, there
was a bridge built between San Francisco and Oakland, the
Bay Bridge, built in fifty six years after Norton's death.
(27:51):
Since then, there have been multiple campaigns to rename the
bridge in his honor. Another little bit of interesting Norton
comes from Jose Saria, who became the first openly gay
person to ever run for public office in the United
States when he ran for the San Francisco Board of
(28:11):
Supervisors in Sarria was also a drag performer who sometimes
styled himself as her Royal Majesty Embrace of San Francisco,
Jose the First the Widow Norton. Sarria actually purchased the
grave plot next to Joshua Norton, and that's where he
(28:34):
was buried next to his imaginary husband, the Imaginary Emperor.
Noble Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and
Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written
and hosted by Dani Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky,
(28:55):
Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is
on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can
learn more about the show over at Noble blood Tales
dot com. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. M
Host
Dana Schwartz
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