Black, Jack, 1871-1932; Criminals -- Canada -- Biography; Criminals -- United States -- Biography
My three months passed quickly enough and I was released, still feeling
the effects of the jacket. When I got out I held up my hand and swore I
would never make another friend or do another decent thing. I borrowed a
gun and got money. I returned to Folsom by stealth and flooded the place
with hop. I went about the country for months with but one thing in my
mind, a sort of vicious hatred of everybody and everything. As much as
possible I shunned even my own kind—thieves.
Then back to San Francisco again where I fell into a stool-pigeon trap.
Captain “Steve” Bunner, who now chases policemen, was then a very plain,
plain-clothes “dick,” chasing burglars and stick-ups. He arrested me. He
says I tried to shoot him but that he bears me no malice. I say he got
me a twenty-five year sentence, and I bear him no malice; and to-day,
while we are not exactly bosom friends, we certainly are not enemies. I
had no money to take an appeal from this stiff sentence, but an
attorney came and volunteered his services, saying: “I was in the
district attorney’s office when you were sent to Folsom and I know you
got jobbed. I’ll take your case for nothing.”
While waiting on appeal the great earthquake and fire occurred. All the
records in my case were destroyed. I could not be sent to prison, and
the attorney could not get me out, so I became a permanent fixture in
the county jail.
The old Broadway county jail was a stout structure and resisted the
quake, but was fire-swept and abandoned. When the fire threatened, all
prisoners were removed to Alcatraz Island and later to the branch jail
at Ingleside. I was there over six years and the things that happened
there during that time would fill a book.
During the graft prosecution that followed the fire, Ingleside housed
the mayor, the political boss of San Francisco, and many of the
supervisors. A looting banker was there, many strikebreakers indicted
for the murder of union men during the car strike, and soldiers for
wantonly shooting down citizens while the city burned. Jack Johnson,
the colored heavyweight champion, was with us for thirty days for
speeding.
Money was plentiful in the jail. The grocer came every day, and we all
got enough to eat. The political boss bought many books and founded a
library. He also got a big phonograph that was kept going all day and
far into the night. I was “appointed” jail librarian, and at once
catalogued the books and installed them in an empty cell.
The jail was a cross between a political headquarters and an industrial
plant. The political prisoners did politics, and the prisoners whose
records were burned in the fire turned to industry.
We got contracts to address envelopes and sublet the work to others. We
sewed beads on “genuine” Indian moccasins for a concern downtown. Best
of all, we bought cheap jewelry from mail-order houses and sold it at a
profit to visitors, giving them to understand that it was stolen stuff
we had smuggled in with us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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