Joshua Norton in the Census of 1870

Determination that Emperor Norton Was “Insane” and Denial of His Voting Rights Might Have Rested on Little More Than a Chat Between a Census Taker and the Emperor’s Landlord

Biographical accounts of Emperor Norton often mention that he appeared in the U.S. census of 1870 as Joshua Norton — with his “Profession, Occupation, or Trade” listed as “Emperor” and marked also as “Insane.”

Occasionally, if these accounts include images, one sees a cropped detail focusing on the Emperor’s line in the census.

But, page 81 of the U.S. Census for the Third Ward of San Francisco includes many other fascinating details “enumerated” by J. Ellis Hill, the Assistant Marshal — census taker — whose rounds on 1 August 1870 included the Eureka Lodgings, 624 Commercial Street, where the Emperor was living.

Here’s the page:

U.S. Census, San Francisco Ward 3, San Francisco, Calif., 1 August 1870, p. 81. Source: Ancestry.com

The first column, on the left, is titled: “Dwelling-houses, numbered in the order of visitation.”

This tells us that every person listed under “786” — starting with the landlord and landlady, David and Eva Hutchinson — was a resident of the Eureka. Based on San Francisco directory listings of the period, David and Eva had taken over from the previous landlord, Aaron B. Babcock, sometime between September 1867 and October 1868.

Here’s the complete list of people who were living under the same roof as Emperor Norton on 1 August 1870.

From left to right, the information includes their name, age (column 4), race (6), occupation (7) and place of birth (10).

David Hutchinson, 30, white, Keeping Lodging House, New York

Eva M. Hutchinson, 16, white, Keeping Lodging House, California

J.P. Chalmers (male), 54, white, Grain Broker, Scotland

Daniel Grath, 33, white, Sash & Door Maker, New York

Robert Jones, 35, white, Seaman, Scotland

Joshua Norton, 50, white, Emperor, England

J.A. McMillan (male), 38, white, Laborer, Canada

Michael Hagan, 38, white, Clerk, U.S. Post Office, Ireland

Patrick Leonard, 40, white, Laborer, Ireland

William Broad, 37, white, Laborer, Holland

Charles Martin, 41, white, Clerk in Store, [Kingdom of] Hanover

A.B. Woods (male), 54, white, Boot & Shoe Maker, Massachusetts

James Mullin, 35, white, Physician, Maryland

Ferdinand Matznadt, 47, white, Physician, Saxony

William J. Bacon, 41, white, Farm Laborer, Indiana

James Quinlan, 36, white, Tin Smith, Massachusetts

The Eureka Lodgings often is characterized as a 19th-century S.R.O. or, more derogatorily, as a “flophouse.” This suggests that all the residents were transient, indigent or otherwise hard-up.

But, the range of occupations that the census form shows for the Emperor’s 15 neighbors living at the Eureka in August 1870 points to a different story. Yes, there were several laborers and a seaman. But, there also were two physicians; a grain broker; a post office clerk; a retail clerk; and three artisans and craftsmen.

A much more balanced and representative social, educational and economic mix than the word “flophouse” suggests.

Certainly, Emperor Norton had conversation partners in the building.

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LOOKING at the census page, two things jump out pretty quickly.

First: The landlady, Eva Hutchinson, was only 16 in August 1870. This and subsequent censuses have her birth year as 1854. And, we learn from column 14 — which asks anyone married within the previous year to state which month — that Eva and David were married in December 1869, meaning that she could have been 15 then, making her a bit of a child bride.

Second: In Joshua Norton’s listing, we learn in columns 19 and 20 that (a) Joshua was a U.S. citizen but that (b) his “right to vote is denied or abridged on grounds other than rebellion or other crime.” We are left to intuit that Joshua’s voting rights were “denied or abridged” because of the determination, written in column 18, that he was “Insane.”

This immediately raises a host of questions:

• Which was it, “denied” or “abridged”?

• Had the determination of insanity and/or the curtailment of Joshua’s voting rights been made previously? Or was one, or both, of these made as part and parcel of the census?

• Exactly how — and by whom — was Joshua determined to be insane?

• Was the information about Joshua’s psychological and voting status recorded elsewhere, i.e., was it on file at a local, state and/or federal government office? Was the information provided to poll workers on voting days? Or was it simply taken as self-evident that Joshua was insane and not to be provided with a ballot?

• Did Joshua have any way of appealing his apparently official status? Did he ever try?

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CLUES AS TO how Joshua Norton might have been determined to be “Insane” are in the booklet of Instructions to Assistant Marshals that the U.S. Census Office published in 1870 and would have provided to Ellis Hill and every other census taker.

For the purposes of the census, the Eureka Lodgings was a “dwelling-house,” defined as follows:

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 8. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

All the residents of the Eureka were defined as a “single family”:

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 8. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

A single party was to provide census information for everyone in the family — which, in the case of the Eureka, would have meant all the residents:

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 6. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

This party was to be the head of the family:

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 7. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

For a lodging house, like the Eureka, the head of the family was defined as the landlord:

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 9. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Based on the framework outlined here, it appears that the 1870 census information for the Eureka Lodgings — including the determination that Joshua Norton was “Insane” — would have been based solely on a conversation between the Assistant Marshal, Ellis Hill, and the landlord, David Hutchinson.

Now, to the substantive questions of Joshua’s psychological and voting status…

The Instructions provided by the U.S. Census Office defined “Insane” simply as “undoubted insanity,” with no reference to any previous evaluation or record.

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 11. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

Given that Assistant Marshals were enjoined explicitly to determine whether a person was “Idiotic” — a separate classification — by appealing to “the common consent of the neighborhood” rather than “by attempting to apply any scientific measure,” it seems clear that — with respect to Joshua Norton — Ellis Hill was being encouraged to consult with David Hutchinson and for the two non-physicians to apply a “street” or “barstool” sensibility to the question of Joshua’s psychology.

Joshua likely was deemed “Insane” because, Hill and Hutchinson would have rationalized, “it’s obvious,” i.e., “everybody knows” he’s insane.

It’s important to note that, in August 1870, Hutchinson had been landlord at the Eureka for only a couple of years or so and may not, for any number of reasons, have felt himself in a position to advocate for Emperor Norton. By the end of the Emperor’s life in 1880, Hutchinson appears to have grown quite fond of his royal tenant. Maybe he came to regret his role in putting the Emp in a box? Certainly, the fact that the landlord, Hutchinson, provided “Emperor” as Joshua’s “Profession, Occupation, or Trade,” and that the census taker, Hill, entered and certified this information, suggests that both men had a soft spot for the Emp.

But, neither the presence nor the absence of the "Emperor" designation on the census form had the power to affect the Emperor’s citizenship rights in the same way that the "Insane" determination did.

As to the voting rights “question” in column 20 of the census form, the Instructions stipulated that Assistant Marshals were to report “all who come within the scope of any State law denying or abridging suffrage to any class or individual on any other ground than participation in rebellion, or legal conviction of a crime”:

Excerpt from Instructions to Assistant Marshals, Ninth Census, United States, 1870, p. 12. Published by Census Office, Department of the Interior, 1870 [pdf]. Source: U.S. Census Bureau

The preceding passage acknowledges that “[m]any persons never try to vote, and therefore do not know whether their right to vote is or is not abridged” — which suggests that poll workers might indeed have had a “no-fly list” of citizens who were not permitted to vote.

The Instructions go on to say that Assistant Marshals must report “those whose votes have actually been challenged and refused at the polls for some disability or want of qualifications” — which leaves open the possibility that Emperor Norton might previously have tried to vote but been denied.

But, to the material point of State law: It was the 1849 Constitution of the State of California that was was in effect in 1870. According to Article 2 (Right of Suffrage), Section 5, of this Constitution:

“No idiot or insane person, or person convicted of any infamous crime, shall be entitled to the privilege of an elector.”

Given that “insane” was one of only three classes of otherwise-eligible people who prime facie were to be denied the vote under the state Constitution, one has to consider the possibility that the whole point of designating Emperor Norton as “Insane” was to deny him the voting rights to which he otherwise was entitled as a male U.S. citizen over 21 years of age.

The Emperor had not been “convicted of any infamous crime.” So, if Messrs. Hill and Hutchinson were looking for a reason to justify denying the vote to Emperor Norton, they need only have picked between “insane” and “‘idiotic.” By 1870, it had become a commonplace for editors, reporters and elected officials to characterize the Emperor as “insane” or a “lunatic.” So, there was plenty of cover for the two men to agree on “insane.”

If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the choice of "insane" over "idiotic" reflects an acknowledgment that the Emperor was not an idiot.

But, having satisfied himself, after talking to David Hutchinson, that Emperor Norton was “Insane,” the brief Constitutional provision above is all that Ellis Hill would have needed to feel justified in marking the Emperor as having his voting rights “denied or abridged.”

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IF THIS IS all it took, in 1870, to classify Emperor Norton as insane and have him deemed unfit to vote, one has to wonder…

Did the same thing happen in the 1860s — and, if so, by whom?

Well, this much we do know: In January 1867, only 3½ years before Ellis Hill’s visit to the Eureka Lodgings, overzealous “police special” (glorified security guard) Armand Barbier arrested the Emperor and to tried to charge the him with lunacy — the goal being to have the Emp committed to an asylum.

The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin — the same paper that had published Joshua Norton’s original self-declaration in September 1859 — editorialized that the lunacy rap was a “ludicrous charge” and an “outrage.”

The next day, the police chief himself, Patrick Crowley, released Emperor Norton with an apology.

Presumably, if the Emperor already formally was on record as being “insane” or a “lunatic,” Crowley wouldn’t have been able to act so decisively.

Was there any other event between 1867 and 1870, where such a determination was made?

Apparently not. Rather, it appears simply that Messrs. Hill and Hutchinson, acting quietly and in private, were able to tag and cuff Emperor Norton in a way that the police department couldn’t do — especially with the spotlight of a Norton-sympathetic press shining on it.

Having said all that…

The discovery of a voter registration for Joshua Norton, or a processed ballot cast by him, between 1859 and 1880 would cast this whole little investigation in a new light.

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