June 19, 2019 • 14 mins
After a San Francisco real estate mogul went bankrupt, he reinvented himself as the Emperor of the United States – and became the city’s most celebrated resident.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey there, and welcome to short stuff. I'm josh and
there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is short stuff.
Let's go all right. Emperor Joshua Norton the uh maybe first,
but at least one of the early great eccentrics of
San Francisco, California. Yeah, it's possible he was one of
(00:25):
It's possible he was the first, but it's actually kind
of unlikely if you think about it. Yeah, but it
is so funny to think about the fact that this
was in the eighteen fifties and and beyond, and uh,
San Francisco was still San Francisco. Yeah. I'd heard of
this guy. I didn't know much about him as his
news and eccentric, beloved San Franciscan. But when you dig
(00:47):
into this guy, it just gets better and better. Yeah,
it's pretty great. So he was. He was, Like you said,
his name was Joshua Norton. He was born in England.
Um and his parents traveled to South Africa to settle
there in eighteen twenty. Is part of a settlement scheme. Uh.
And by settle I mean show up in interlocal colonized Yeah,
(01:08):
you go, um, and they I guess I don't. I
didn't understand why they left or he left, but at
some point he made his way to San Francisco. Um,
I believe for the gold brush. So I guess he
probably left himself and he made um. He made himself
pretty wealthy man, pretty quick by eighteen fifty two, within
(01:28):
just three years UM of arriving, he was one of
the wealthy, reputable citizens of San Francisco. Yeah, the end
of story. Yeah, he he was in real estate early on. Um.
But in late December or I guess just late eighteen
fifty two, there was a famine in China and they
(01:52):
placed a ban on rice exports to other countries. Pretty sensible. Yeah,
so there was a shortage of rice as a result
in the US and in San Francisco, where they love
their rice. It is the San Francisco treat and always
has been. Right, they do a little something special to it,
but yeah, it's basically rice. So Norton heard that there
was a ship coming to California from Peru that had
(02:14):
like two hundred thousand pounds of rice. He saw a business,
uh investment opportunity and said, all right, I'm gonna buy
all this rice. I'm gonna corner the rice market and
I'm going to get even richer, which he did. Um.
He bought this entire shipment. However, a bunch of more
ships came from Peru in order. Yeah, he didn't know
about those coming, No, and they had a bunch of rice,
(02:35):
and then the prices went back to normal and he
was just stuck with a bunch of rice. And eventually, uh,
and pretty short order, I think um had to file
for bankruptcy. Yeah, so he went from super wealthy San
Franciscan to bankrupt San Franciscan from one bad business decision,
which is why you don't want to put all your
eggs in one basket, right, that's right, or all of
(02:57):
your rice on one ship from Peru. So he uh,
he kind of dropped out of of San Francisco society.
Everybody lost track of him, and after a year or
two he re emerged. And when he re emerged, he
was a little different, a little off compared to how
he had been before. Uh. And one of the first
things he did was distribute letters to the newspapers around
(03:20):
San Francisco declaring himself Emperor Norton, the first of the
United States. And the story would kind of end there.
It would have just been a crackpot who distributed leaflets
and no one would know about it because it would
have been totally lost to history if one of those
San Francisco papers, the Bulletin, hadn't taken him up on this, uh,
(03:43):
this offer and printed his letter, his his proclamation, and
it kicked off a tradition around San Francisco of basically
not just um printing Emperor Norton's proclamations, but also just
reporting on him and his doings and what he was
up to at any given time. It was kind of
(04:03):
it became a San Francisco media tradition. Yeah, and uh,
I guess it was just something about San Francisco even
back then, where the residents roundly were I guess probably
kind of entertained by the guy uh and accepted him
and revered him and embraced him as one of their
kind of wacky locals exactly, maybe the wackiest local of
(04:26):
all back then. Probably. So he would go around town
and he wore a military uniform, and the even the
I love this, even the army officers at the base
at the presidio there gave him some like epaulets and
things like that to put on his uniform. Yeah, it
was pretty awesome. He wore a hat with the peacock
feather and he had a couple of dogs named Bummer
(04:47):
and Lazarus. That would you know, I mean, he sounds
like this could be San Francisco two thousand nineteen as well. Sure,
sure that Bummer and Lazarus thing, though that is contested.
There is a plaque in San Francisco by the what's
the pyramid building trans America trans America. Um that there's
a plaque they're commemorating Bummer and Lazarus, and it specifically
(05:09):
says they were not Norton's dogs. Um, they were their
own sometimes possibly, but they were definitely their own equal
celebrities to Emperor Norton. They were their own crew. Um
that may or may not have overlapped with Emperor Norton,
but they deserve their own short stuff too. Actually, yeah,
(05:29):
I'm curious about the name Bummer from back then. What
that must have meant, I don't know. I don't know either.
But the newspapers would also report on what they did too,
Like there was at least apparently I've read an Atlas Obscure,
there was at least one article that wrote on how
they had stolen a bone from another dog. Like that's
what you could pick up the San Francisco papers and
(05:50):
read about. But it was it was part of Yeah,
it was part of the city's pride and like every
every aspect of it, you know. All right, well, let's
take a short break and we're gonna come back and
talk about some of his acclamations and uh and how
he went about town right after this. Alrighty, so, uh
(06:28):
Emperor Norton. And by the way, in nineteen I'm sorry,
in eighteen sixty one he added the title Protector of
Mexico to his name after the French invaded Mexico. So
did you know the French invaded Mexico? Mm hmmm, I
don't know. I did not. I don't think I did.
But it didn't. I mean, I don't know. There was
so much invading going on back then. Nothing surprises me anymore.
(06:53):
Just two weeks ago it was the Dutch. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
So he's hanging around Sam fram Cisco, he's got his outfit.
He's Over the course of his reign, I guess you
could say he had some wacky declarations and some that
ended up kind of making sense. Um. He abolished Congress
or called for the abolishing of Congress. He dissolved the
(07:17):
United States of America as a whole, which makes it
tricky to be the emperor of the United States. And
I didn't quite see how he how he rectified those
two I don't think he did. Um. He dissolves and
abolished the two political parties. Pretty sensible. But then one
thing he did was kind of interesting. He ordered a survey.
He was he was committed to finding a way to
(07:38):
connect Oakland and San Francisco, whether by bridge or by tunnel,
and he ordered a survey even in eighteen seventy two
to try and figure this out, which ended up being
pretty relevant later on. Yeah. He uh, he said, there's
going to be a great basketball team one day over
in Oakland, and San Francisco needs to have a way
to lay claim on that team. Oh, that's true. Um.
(08:01):
He he also ordered a suspension bridge be built from
Oakland to Goat Island to San Francisco too, So he
was very interested in connecting Oakland to San Francisco. Um.
And that is kind of it was part of like
the kind of civic um attention I guess that he
paid to the city. He was known for inspecting sidewalks
(08:24):
and streets and making sure they were in proper repair. Um,
and the city loved this guy. He actually once proclaimed
that if you called San Francisco Frisco, it was a
high misdemeanor and you can be fine twenty five bucks,
which these days is more than five dollars. So he
really meant it, right. Yeah. I love that that was
(08:44):
even for boating back then, because it's it's long been
known that you don't say Frisco. Yeah, this might be
the origin of it. Actually, it's pretty cool. Um And
and like I said, the city really did love him.
They they he ate for free at all of the
city's best restaurants. Um. If there is an opening of
a show, Uh, they would save a seat for him. Like,
(09:05):
the city just loved him so much so that he
was once committed by a police officer and the city
just had this huge outcry against it. Yeah. I think,
well they got out because you know, like the police chief.
I guess it was like you can't look up Emperor Norton, right.
I think my favorite part of the whole thing though,
is he issued his own currency and it was accepted. Yeah,
(09:29):
that great, It's amazing. Man. I want to be this guy.
But what's neat Well, there's just a couple of steps.
You need to take their chuck and need together to
do that. I need to get some flets and pretty
much make some money. Um, you're already beloved, so check
check one. All right. Um. So this guy, Emperor Norton,
is um hanging around San Francisco. He's he's loved, he
(09:52):
is issuing his own currency. He eats at all of
the city's best restaurants. One of the things that stuck
struck me about this guy is he does that seemed
to have taken advantage of it because when he died,
except for eating for free and issuing his own money, well,
I'm saying he wasn't like, oh, you guys are gonna
take this money. Let's see what all what all I
can do with this? You know what I mean? Um,
(10:13):
he just seems to have kind of done enough to
to live comfortably and gotten by um. But like when
they when he died, he dropped dead at the corner
of California and what is now Grant Avenue, which was
between knob Hill and the Financial District. At age sixty one,
just dropped that on the street. And um, when they
went to go search his room at the boarding house,
(10:36):
I mean he had some a collection of walking sticks
and canes they would carry around with them, some hats,
and like a two dollar and fifty cent gold piece. Um,
so he he didn't he wasn't a hog. It sounds
like he he was very much committed to looking over
San Francisco and making sure it was in good shape. Yeah,
(10:56):
and they ended up taking care of him, uh postmortem
even Um, originally he was going to be buried in
a pauper's grave. And the Pacific Club, which was a
businessman's association back then, they may still be around for
all I now, Uh, maybe they're part of the problem
in San Francisco. Maybe they said, you know what, we're
gonna he should be buried in a rosewood casket and
(11:18):
we're gonna have a great funeral procession. And in eighteen
eighty January tenth, thirty thousand of two hundred and thirty
thousand residents attended this funeral procession. Yeah, that's amazing. Even
more attended his exhamation because he was buried at the
Masonic Cemetery and they moved the Masonic cemetery, probably to
(11:40):
make way for like Uber's offices or something like that.
And um, everybody was moved to Colem, California. Well, Colma, California.
They had a new they had a reburial and something
like I think sixty thousand people showed up for that one. Amazing, Yeah,
and they flew the flag that half mass. This is
(12:01):
fifty years after this guy has died, and he he
was still that revered and still is today by by
some people in San Francisco of course. Uh yeah, San
Francisco loves to embrace their their local eccentrics. I love it.
So he uh, like we said, they they have built
the Bay Bridge now, uh there is a tunnel with
(12:23):
the public transportation. So that those two things came true
that he was looking into. And then since then he's
been immortalized in a lot of literature and plays over
the years, including Mark Twain even who lived in San
Francisco at the time. He was clearly smitten with the
guy as well. Yeah. He he shows up as the
king in Huckleberry Finn. I think that characters named after him.
(12:47):
There's no less than three operas and a musical written
about him. He's He's beloved. Also, there's a episode of Bonanza.
This this is the weird Cherry on Top. I think
it basically tells the story of the time he was
comitted um and released and he liked. The character's name
is Emperor Norton. It just it just so happens that
they coincided, you know, the Bonanza timeline and Emperor Norton's
(13:10):
real lifetimeline coincide in this this episode of Bonanza, which
I have to see. It's called um well, I don't
know what it's called. Well, I know that I gotta
see it too. I do know that Mark Twain was
on the show, even not the real Mark Twain. Obviously
it was probably he broke I guess. I hope. So
there's nobody who could do a Mark Twain like him
(13:31):
or Val Kilmer. There's nobody who can do a Mark
Twain like Howhold. I got nothing against well that's not true.
Oh yeah, that old grudge that time he shoved you
into the street. Ye shouldn't have done that. Bal I
got nothing else, nothing else over here. I hope you
enjoyed this episode of short Stuff, short stuff, away stuff.
(13:55):
You should Know is production of I Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H m hm
Hey there, and welcome to short stuff. I'm josh and
there's Chuck and there's Jerry, and this is short stuff.
Let's go all right. Emperor Joshua Norton the uh maybe first,
but at least one of the early great eccentrics of
San Francisco, California. Yeah, it's possible he was one of
(00:25):
It's possible he was the first, but it's actually kind
of unlikely if you think about it. Yeah, but it
is so funny to think about the fact that this
was in the eighteen fifties and and beyond, and uh,
San Francisco was still San Francisco. Yeah. I'd heard of
this guy. I didn't know much about him as his
news and eccentric, beloved San Franciscan. But when you dig
(00:47):
into this guy, it just gets better and better. Yeah,
it's pretty great. So he was. He was, Like you said,
his name was Joshua Norton. He was born in England.
Um and his parents traveled to South Africa to settle
there in eighteen twenty. Is part of a settlement scheme. Uh.
And by settle I mean show up in interlocal colonized Yeah,
(01:08):
you go, um, and they I guess I don't. I
didn't understand why they left or he left, but at
some point he made his way to San Francisco. Um,
I believe for the gold brush. So I guess he
probably left himself and he made um. He made himself
pretty wealthy man, pretty quick by eighteen fifty two, within
(01:28):
just three years UM of arriving, he was one of
the wealthy, reputable citizens of San Francisco. Yeah, the end
of story. Yeah, he he was in real estate early on. Um.
But in late December or I guess just late eighteen
fifty two, there was a famine in China and they
(01:52):
placed a ban on rice exports to other countries. Pretty sensible. Yeah,
so there was a shortage of rice as a result
in the US and in San Francisco, where they love
their rice. It is the San Francisco treat and always
has been. Right, they do a little something special to it,
but yeah, it's basically rice. So Norton heard that there
was a ship coming to California from Peru that had
(02:14):
like two hundred thousand pounds of rice. He saw a business,
uh investment opportunity and said, all right, I'm gonna buy
all this rice. I'm gonna corner the rice market and
I'm going to get even richer, which he did. Um.
He bought this entire shipment. However, a bunch of more
ships came from Peru in order. Yeah, he didn't know
about those coming, No, and they had a bunch of rice,
(02:35):
and then the prices went back to normal and he
was just stuck with a bunch of rice. And eventually, uh,
and pretty short order, I think um had to file
for bankruptcy. Yeah, so he went from super wealthy San
Franciscan to bankrupt San Franciscan from one bad business decision,
which is why you don't want to put all your
eggs in one basket, right, that's right, or all of
(02:57):
your rice on one ship from Peru. So he uh,
he kind of dropped out of of San Francisco society.
Everybody lost track of him, and after a year or
two he re emerged. And when he re emerged, he
was a little different, a little off compared to how
he had been before. Uh. And one of the first
things he did was distribute letters to the newspapers around
(03:20):
San Francisco declaring himself Emperor Norton, the first of the
United States. And the story would kind of end there.
It would have just been a crackpot who distributed leaflets
and no one would know about it because it would
have been totally lost to history if one of those
San Francisco papers, the Bulletin, hadn't taken him up on this, uh,
(03:43):
this offer and printed his letter, his his proclamation, and
it kicked off a tradition around San Francisco of basically
not just um printing Emperor Norton's proclamations, but also just
reporting on him and his doings and what he was
up to at any given time. It was kind of
(04:03):
it became a San Francisco media tradition. Yeah, and uh,
I guess it was just something about San Francisco even
back then, where the residents roundly were I guess probably
kind of entertained by the guy uh and accepted him
and revered him and embraced him as one of their
kind of wacky locals exactly, maybe the wackiest local of
(04:26):
all back then. Probably. So he would go around town
and he wore a military uniform, and the even the
I love this, even the army officers at the base
at the presidio there gave him some like epaulets and
things like that to put on his uniform. Yeah, it
was pretty awesome. He wore a hat with the peacock
feather and he had a couple of dogs named Bummer
(04:47):
and Lazarus. That would you know, I mean, he sounds
like this could be San Francisco two thousand nineteen as well. Sure,
sure that Bummer and Lazarus thing, though that is contested.
There is a plaque in San Francisco by the what's
the pyramid building trans America trans America. Um that there's
a plaque they're commemorating Bummer and Lazarus, and it specifically
(05:09):
says they were not Norton's dogs. Um, they were their
own sometimes possibly, but they were definitely their own equal
celebrities to Emperor Norton. They were their own crew. Um
that may or may not have overlapped with Emperor Norton,
but they deserve their own short stuff too. Actually, yeah,
(05:29):
I'm curious about the name Bummer from back then. What
that must have meant, I don't know. I don't know either.
But the newspapers would also report on what they did too,
Like there was at least apparently I've read an Atlas Obscure,
there was at least one article that wrote on how
they had stolen a bone from another dog. Like that's
what you could pick up the San Francisco papers and
(05:50):
read about. But it was it was part of Yeah,
it was part of the city's pride and like every
every aspect of it, you know. All right, well, let's
take a short break and we're gonna come back and
talk about some of his acclamations and uh and how
he went about town right after this. Alrighty, so, uh
(06:28):
Emperor Norton. And by the way, in nineteen I'm sorry,
in eighteen sixty one he added the title Protector of
Mexico to his name after the French invaded Mexico. So
did you know the French invaded Mexico? Mm hmmm, I
don't know. I did not. I don't think I did.
But it didn't. I mean, I don't know. There was
so much invading going on back then. Nothing surprises me anymore.
(06:53):
Just two weeks ago it was the Dutch. Yeah, exactly. Uh.
So he's hanging around Sam fram Cisco, he's got his outfit.
He's Over the course of his reign, I guess you
could say he had some wacky declarations and some that
ended up kind of making sense. Um. He abolished Congress
or called for the abolishing of Congress. He dissolved the
(07:17):
United States of America as a whole, which makes it
tricky to be the emperor of the United States. And
I didn't quite see how he how he rectified those
two I don't think he did. Um. He dissolves and
abolished the two political parties. Pretty sensible. But then one
thing he did was kind of interesting. He ordered a survey.
He was he was committed to finding a way to
(07:38):
connect Oakland and San Francisco, whether by bridge or by tunnel,
and he ordered a survey even in eighteen seventy two
to try and figure this out, which ended up being
pretty relevant later on. Yeah. He uh, he said, there's
going to be a great basketball team one day over
in Oakland, and San Francisco needs to have a way
to lay claim on that team. Oh, that's true. Um.
(08:01):
He he also ordered a suspension bridge be built from
Oakland to Goat Island to San Francisco too, So he
was very interested in connecting Oakland to San Francisco. Um.
And that is kind of it was part of like
the kind of civic um attention I guess that he
paid to the city. He was known for inspecting sidewalks
(08:24):
and streets and making sure they were in proper repair. Um,
and the city loved this guy. He actually once proclaimed
that if you called San Francisco Frisco, it was a
high misdemeanor and you can be fine twenty five bucks,
which these days is more than five dollars. So he
really meant it, right. Yeah. I love that that was
(08:44):
even for boating back then, because it's it's long been
known that you don't say Frisco. Yeah, this might be
the origin of it. Actually, it's pretty cool. Um And
and like I said, the city really did love him.
They they he ate for free at all of the
city's best restaurants. Um. If there is an opening of
a show, Uh, they would save a seat for him. Like,
(09:05):
the city just loved him so much so that he
was once committed by a police officer and the city
just had this huge outcry against it. Yeah. I think,
well they got out because you know, like the police chief.
I guess it was like you can't look up Emperor Norton, right.
I think my favorite part of the whole thing though,
is he issued his own currency and it was accepted. Yeah,
(09:29):
that great, It's amazing. Man. I want to be this guy.
But what's neat Well, there's just a couple of steps.
You need to take their chuck and need together to
do that. I need to get some flets and pretty
much make some money. Um, you're already beloved, so check
check one. All right. Um. So this guy, Emperor Norton,
is um hanging around San Francisco. He's he's loved, he
(09:52):
is issuing his own currency. He eats at all of
the city's best restaurants. One of the things that stuck
struck me about this guy is he does that seemed
to have taken advantage of it because when he died,
except for eating for free and issuing his own money, well,
I'm saying he wasn't like, oh, you guys are gonna
take this money. Let's see what all what all I
can do with this? You know what I mean? Um,
(10:13):
he just seems to have kind of done enough to
to live comfortably and gotten by um. But like when
they when he died, he dropped dead at the corner
of California and what is now Grant Avenue, which was
between knob Hill and the Financial District. At age sixty one,
just dropped that on the street. And um, when they
went to go search his room at the boarding house,
(10:36):
I mean he had some a collection of walking sticks
and canes they would carry around with them, some hats,
and like a two dollar and fifty cent gold piece. Um,
so he he didn't he wasn't a hog. It sounds
like he he was very much committed to looking over
San Francisco and making sure it was in good shape. Yeah,
(10:56):
and they ended up taking care of him, uh postmortem
even Um, originally he was going to be buried in
a pauper's grave. And the Pacific Club, which was a
businessman's association back then, they may still be around for
all I now, Uh, maybe they're part of the problem
in San Francisco. Maybe they said, you know what, we're
gonna he should be buried in a rosewood casket and
(11:18):
we're gonna have a great funeral procession. And in eighteen
eighty January tenth, thirty thousand of two hundred and thirty
thousand residents attended this funeral procession. Yeah, that's amazing. Even
more attended his exhamation because he was buried at the
Masonic Cemetery and they moved the Masonic cemetery, probably to
(11:40):
make way for like Uber's offices or something like that.
And um, everybody was moved to Colem, California. Well, Colma, California.
They had a new they had a reburial and something
like I think sixty thousand people showed up for that one. Amazing, Yeah,
and they flew the flag that half mass. This is
(12:01):
fifty years after this guy has died, and he he
was still that revered and still is today by by
some people in San Francisco of course. Uh yeah, San
Francisco loves to embrace their their local eccentrics. I love it.
So he uh, like we said, they they have built
the Bay Bridge now, uh there is a tunnel with
(12:23):
the public transportation. So that those two things came true
that he was looking into. And then since then he's
been immortalized in a lot of literature and plays over
the years, including Mark Twain even who lived in San
Francisco at the time. He was clearly smitten with the
guy as well. Yeah. He he shows up as the
king in Huckleberry Finn. I think that characters named after him.
(12:47):
There's no less than three operas and a musical written
about him. He's He's beloved. Also, there's a episode of Bonanza.
This this is the weird Cherry on Top. I think
it basically tells the story of the time he was
comitted um and released and he liked. The character's name
is Emperor Norton. It just it just so happens that
they coincided, you know, the Bonanza timeline and Emperor Norton's
(13:10):
real lifetimeline coincide in this this episode of Bonanza, which
I have to see. It's called um well, I don't
know what it's called. Well, I know that I gotta
see it too. I do know that Mark Twain was
on the show, even not the real Mark Twain. Obviously
it was probably he broke I guess. I hope. So
there's nobody who could do a Mark Twain like him
(13:31):
or Val Kilmer. There's nobody who can do a Mark
Twain like Howhold. I got nothing against well that's not true.
Oh yeah, that old grudge that time he shoved you
into the street. Ye shouldn't have done that. Bal I
got nothing else, nothing else over here. I hope you
enjoyed this episode of short Stuff, short stuff, away stuff.
(13:55):
You should Know is production of I Heart Radios How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. H m hm
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