Even in Death and Wax, the Eyes of the Emperor Were on the Former HQ of Denis Kearney’s Anti-Chinese Crusade
By February 1868, Emperor Norton had taken up the cause of the Chinese, demanding fair treatment, expanded federal legal protections and an end to violence against them. It was a campaign of Proclamations and other public actions that the Emperor would carry forward until he died in 1880.
In one of his best-known Proclamations on the subject, published in February 1873, Emperor Norton warned that “the eyes of the Emperor will be upon any one who shall council any outrage or wrong on the Chinese.”
Back to 1868. On November 25th, the San Francisco Chronicle carried the following ad for the Thanksgiving Day grand opening of the new Recreation Grounds at the corner of Folsom and 25th Streets. (For a detailed look at the fascinating pre-history of the Recreation Grounds, see this wonderful FoundSF essay by Angus MacFarlane.)
Ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, 25 November 1868, p.2. Source: San Francisco Public Library.
The proprietors of this new venture were W.J. Hatton and R.W. Kohler.
How Richard Wildblood Kohler (c.1821–1888) came to be an investor and partner in a real estate development project to keep and expand baseball, horse racing and other sporting amusements in the Mission district of San Francisco is unclear.
One clue may be in the concert program for the grand opening, which listed Kohler both as a conductor and an instrumentalist. In fact, by the time Kohler — born Richard Wildwood and known as “Dick” — arrived in San Francisco in 1868, he had been professionally active as a musician for some 25 years, first in his native England (1843–55), then in Australia and New Zealand (1855–67).
Kohler’s mainstays as an instrumentalist were the cornet and the flageolet. But, in keeping with his musically entrepreneurial spirit, Kohler mastered several other instruments too, including the ocarina, the concertina and experimental musical devices like the tumbleronicon, the rock harmonicon — a marimba-like instrument in which the bars were made of stone — and what he called a bush piano. Often, Kohler innovated technological improvements to these instruments and used his own versions in public performance and as a music teacher to cultivate new audiences.
According to this exceptionally well-documented biographical summary by Graeme Skinner of the University of Sydney, Richard Wildwood had adopted the stage name of “Kohler” by 1851 — some years later, a newspaper in Wildwood’s native Shropshire called “Kohler” his nom de guerre — “effectively creating the impression that he shared some connection with the family of John Augustus Kohler (1805-1878), the London specialist maker of brass musical instruments.“
Skinner notes that, in 1856, Dick Kohler’s younger brother John — known as “Jack,” and also a musician — joined him in Australia. Jack took the alias, too. And, by 1867, the Kohler brothers were prominent musical figures in Australia and New Zealand.
Dick Kohler is on the right in this c.1866 photograph.
Richard Wildblood Kohler (right), probably with Horace Bent, New Zealand, c.1866. Source: Australharmony.
In July 1869 — eight months after the opening of the San Francisco Recreation Grounds — the Marysville Daily Appeal reported that Dick Kohler was headed for the East Coast.
Item in Marysville Daily Appeal, 27 July 1869, p. 3. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection.
Back in San Francisco, in January 1870, the Daily Alta California carried this ad listing Kohler as a member of the orchestra for the San Francisco Minstrels, in a show produced by the city’s inveterate theater owner and impresario, Tom Maguire.
Dick Kohler remained the United States and was active as a musician there for much of the 1870s. He stayed in San Francisco’s orbit during this period and was inducted as a member of the Bohemian Club. (An item that appeared in the Ballarat (Australia) Star of 28 June 1875 excerpted the San Francisco Figaro’s earlier review of a performance Kohler gave at the Bohemian’s Christmas New Year’s High Jinks that year [image and original view (toward the bottom of column 6) via Trove/National Library of Australia].)
In April 1878, he returned to Australia with the United States Minstrels and would remain in the region for the next four-and-a-half years.
Shortly after Kohler’s return to Australia, the Daily Alta carried the following item that offers a colorful window into Kohler’s fondness for San Francisco and his deep connections to the city’s artistic community.
Item in Daily Alta California, 13 October 1878, p.2. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection.
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WE CIRCLE BACK to Emperor Norton shortly. The Emperor, recall, died in January 1880.
To keep his latest musical iron in the fire, Dick Kohler in June 1881 made his way from Australia to New Zealand with his recently formed Hyperion Opera Company.
Shortly after his arrival, Kohler invested in a collection of some 150 wax figures — think “wax museum” — and, in addition to his musical ventures, began showing these in New Zealand.
A year and some later, in October 1882, the San Francisco Examiner reported that the Kohlers were bringing the show to San Francisco.
Item announcing the arrival in San Francisco of Dick and Jack Kohler, brothers, with wax figures. San Francisco Examiner, 22 October 1882, p. 3. Source: Newspapers.com.
On November 5th, the Examiner noted the previous day’s opening of “Kohler’s wax-work exhibition” at Charter Oak Hall, on Market Street.
Item reviewing the opening of Kohler’s wax works at Charter Oak Hall, San Francisco. San Francisco Examiner, 5 November 1882, p. 3. Source: Newspapers.com.
It’s not surprising that concerts were a feature of the entertainment. If, as might be supposed, Dick Kohler saw his investment in the San Francisco Recreation Grounds 14 years earlier partly as an investment in a “delivery system” for live music, perhaps he saw his wax-figure investment in a similar light.
Although the Examiner’s write-up of the opening promised concerts “every day,” the ad below — which, it appears, started running in advance of the opening — mentions only a “Grand Concert” twice every Sunday. Possibly there were daily impromptu mini-concerts to help promote the Sunday “Promenade Concerts.”
Ad for Dick Kohler’s wax works and concerts at Charter Oak Hall, San Francisco. San Francisco Examiner, 10 November 1882, p. 2. Source: Newspapers.com.
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IT STANDS TO REASON that a collection of wax figures purchased in New Zealand wouldn’t have included many — or any — San Francisco-specific people.
This may explain why “Kohler’s Museum,” a little more than a month after opening, added two new figures: Tom Maguire and Emperor Norton.
Item announcing a new wax figure of Emperor Norton at Kohler’s Museum, San Francisco. San Francisco Examiner, 11 December 1882, p. 3. Source: Newspapers.com.
The Museum used its new “Emperor Norton” to advertise, too.
Ad announcing new Emperor Norton figure at Kohler’s Australian Wax Works, San Francisco. Daily Alta California, 16 December 1882, p. 2. Source: Newspapers.com.
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A CLOSER LOOK at the place where the Kohler brothers exhibited their “Emperor Norton” just three years after the Emperor died reveals that what was happening there two years before his death was of particular concern to the Emperor.
The earliest city directory listing for Charter Oak Hall was in 1873.
Listing for Charter Oak Hall in Langley’s San Francisco Directory, 1873, p. 654 (under Halls). Source: Internet Archive.
The site, 771 Market Street, was on the south side of Market, just to the east of Fourth Street — directly across Market from where the Phelan Building now stands and about where there now is a pedestrian plaza immediately next door and to the west of the Four Seasons Hotel.
It turns out that, starting by November 1877 and continuing for a year-and-a-half or so, Charter Oak Hall was the regular meeting venue of both the state Executive Committee and the San Francisco County Committee of the California Workingmen’s Party.
The Workingmen’s Party was the political organization that Denis Kearney (1847–1907) co-founded, used and sought to commandeer as a platform for his virulent, violent strain of anti-Chinese demagoguery — and Charter Oak Hall was a place where Kearney regularly stood before Party regulars to push his agenda.
The Party was unapologetically anti-Chinese. But, there was an internal split about how best to advance that cause. Party leaders and members were increasingly uneasy and alarmed about what Kearney was doing with — and to — the Party, including through his weekly Sunday rallies on the sand lots across from City Hall.
At Charter Oak Hall on the morning of Sunday 28 April 1878, the County Committee issued a formal rebuke against Kearney. Here’s how the Daily Alta reported it on the front page the next morning. (Note the emphasis-added word in the final sentence.):
Item on California Workingmen’s Party rebuke of Denis Kearney at Charter Oak Hall, San Francisco, on 28 April 1878. Daily Alta California, 29 April 1878, p. 1. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection.
MORE BAD WEATHER FOR KEARNEY.
At a meeting of the County Committee of the Workingmen’s Party, held yesterday morning, at Charter Oak Hall, the action of the State Committee, in rebuking Kearney, was endorsed. Mr. McCabe, the Chairman, repeated his denunciation of the Dictator, and declared that the party must be rid of him, or suffer defeat. The terrorism of the sand lots was denounced.
On the afternoon of the 28th, just a few hours after the County Committee’s rebuke, the Emperor Norton showed up at Denis Kearney’s sand lot rally and offered a rebuke of his own — to Kearney’s face and in front of the assembled crowd.
It appears that this encounter — widely reported in San Francisco newspapers over the following couple of days — is the incident that years later was mythologized as the undocumented story of Emperor Norton’s blocking and dispersing anti-Chinese rioters by shaming them with recitations of the Lord’s Prayer.
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AS TO the waxen Emperor…
In early 1883, the brothers Kohler took their wax-museum-and-concert show on the road, doing engagements in San Jose, Santa Cruz and Petaluma in February and March.
Alas, some things cannot last. In late April 1883, the show opened at the Opera House in Napa. To promote the show, the Norton figure was placed in a shop window, where it appears that the Emperor met his match in the sun.
Item on Kohler’s wax Emperor Norton figure. Napa Register Weekly, 27 April 1883, p. 1. Source: Newspapers.com
— A life-size and quite natural figure of Emperor Norton, the well-known local celebrity, who patrolled the streets of San Francisco for many years, stands in Aleck Reed’s shop-window. It belongs to Kohler’s Wax Works, and Saturday afternoon the rays of old Sol proved too much for the cohesive powers of the wax, and one of the Emperor’s thumbs melted off and fell at his feet.
In May, after Napa, the Kohlers set up for what turned out to be a three-week stand at Turner Hall in Sacramento.
Emperor Norton had been a celebrity in Sacramento, in light of his many visits to the capital and to the state legislature during his lifetime. So, one would have expected the Emperor to feature prominently in newspaper coverage of the Kohler’s engagement.
The fact that no mention was made of the Emperor suggests that more than his thumb melted behind that shop window in Napa.
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IN EARLY JUNE 1883, Dick and Jack Kohler opened in Stockton and were there for more than five weeks — their longest run since San Francisco.
But, after shorter, week-long engagements back in Sacramento in September and in Oakland in October/November, ads and news items about the the Kohler wax works vanish from the papers except for the very occasional obscurely worded classified.
One clue as to why may lie in an item that appeared in The Lorgnette, a Melbourne, Australia-based theatrical newspaper, in November 1884.
A private letter lately received, states that Mr. Richard Kohler, the well-known and popular musician, has been placed in a private lunatic asylum in San Francisco as an “incurable.” Years ago, no orchestra in Melbourne was complete without the assistance of genial “Dick Kohler.”
If Dick Kohler was placed in an asylum, this might have been a temporary measure. But, an obituary for Dick’s brother, Jack, that appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on 10 December 1885 leaves little doubt that Dick was was in failing health by late 1884.
Obituary for John Wildblood “Jack” Kohler, San Francisco Examiner, 10 December 1885, p.3. Source: Newspapers.com
The obit notes notes that Dick was “lying dangerously ill at his home in Oakland” and that, indeed, “[f]or the past twelve months, [Jack had] managed the Kohler Wax Works on Market street, in old St. Ignatius Hall.”
In 1885, St. Ignatius College — today known as St. Ignatius College Preparatory — recently, in 1880, had built a new church and campus at Hayes Street and Van Ness Avenue.
The “old St. Ignatius Hall” referenced in the Jack Kohler obit was the old St. Ignatius Church of the previous campus, built in 1862 — at 841 Market between 4th and 5th Streets. This stood on the current site of Westfield Mall — and was just a block to the west of Charter Oak Hall, at 771, where the Kohler wax-and-music phenomenon started in November 1882.
In the years after the new church opened in 1880, the old church came to be known simply as Ignatius Hall. A dispatch that appeared in the Mendocino Coast Beacon of 1 August 1885 explains:
Ignatius Hall on Market street...was formerly St. Ignatius Church; but it has been de-consecrated and is now leased as a sort of variety hall, the good Arch-Bishop stipulating that nothing derogatory to good morals be put upon the stage. It looks odd to see a crimson curtain, stage and foot-lights, where formerly was located the sacred altar. All the pictures were long ago transferred to the new church, but some of the symbolical church emblems still remain on the ceiling....The galleries are not used.
In San Francisco, the Examiner and the Chronicle ran steady streams of advertisements for theater, music, shows and other happenings at Ignatius Hall — but, it appears, no ads promoting Kohler’s Wax Works there. Indeed, given that the Kohler enterprise had gone all-but-dark by the end of 1883, it’s unclear how the year-long St. Ignatius residency in 1885 came together — or whether the wax works was the same kind of commercial venture at St. Ignatius as it had been in other locations, with paying customers buying tickets for admission.
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THE OBITUARY for Jack Kohler that ran on the same day, December 10th, in the Oakland Tribune filled in the detail about where, exactly, Dick Kohler’s “home in Oakland” was.
Obituary for John Wildblood “Jack” Kohler, Oakland Tribune, 10 December 1885, p.3. Source: Newspapers.com
Given that the Emperor Norton lived for 17 years in the Eureka Lodgings, at 624 Commercial Street, San Francisco, it’s a poignant serendipity that Dick Kohler lived at the Eureka Hotel, at Seventh and Washington Streets in Oakland. As evidence by this ad that appeared in the earliest-available Oakland directory, 1869, this Eureka was in operation when the Emperor was making his weekly ferry trips to Oakland and staying at his own Eureka back across the bay.
Ad for Eureka Hotel in Directory for City of Oakland, B.F. Stillwell, 1869, p. 216. Source: Internet Archive
Dick Kohler’s own death appears to have passed without a glance from the Bay Area press. But, an item in the 5 January 1889 number of The New York Clipper — which billed itself as “The Oldest American Sporting and Theatrical Journal” — noted that the elder Kohler had “died at Oakland . Cal., Nov. 26, of general decline” and that “[h]e had been an invalid for a long time.”
SURELY, EMPEROR NORTON would have been gratified that the Kohlers, Dick and Jack, used his bodily image to bring a peaceable spirit to the very place — Charter Oak House — where, just a few years earlier, Denis Kearney had preached xenophobia, racism, discrimination and brutality against the very people — the Chinese — to whom the Emperor was, for years, a courageous friend.
Perhaps, even in death and wax, the Emperor’s watchful presence here helped to disinfect the room.
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