1. Personal communication, Bob Browning, U.S. Coast Guard historian, Washington, D.C., and Wayne Wheeler, president of the U.S. Lighthouse Society, San Francisco.
2. Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 126–127.
3. Ibid., pp. 274–279.
4. More San Francisco Memoirs, 1852–1899: The Ripening Years, ed. Malcolm E. Barker (San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1996), pp. 269 and 225–226. (The English novelist Anthony Trollope was unimpressed. “There is almost nothing in San Francisco that is worth seeing,” he said. “There is an inferior menagerie of wild beasts, and a place called the Cliff house to which strangers are taken to hear seals bark.” He added that the only noteworthy city feature was its stock exchange, which he pronounced even more “demoniac” than the one in Paris.)
5. Ibid., pp. 265–269.
6. Ibid., pp. 207–217.
7. For the flavor of immigrant life, see Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
8. Barker, ed., More San Francisco Memoirs, pp. 237–239.
9. George Rathmell, Realms of Gold: The Colorful Writers of San Francisco, 1850– 1950 (Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Co., 1998), pp. 174–176.
10. Philip P. Choy, Lorraine Dong, and Marlon K. Hom, The Coming Man (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), p. 85.
11. Ibid., p. 92.
12. Joan B. Trauner, “The Chinese as Medical Scapegoats in San Francisco, 1870–1905,” California History 57, no. 1 (Spring 1978): 70–87 (published by the California Historical Society).
13. “The hoodlum is a distinctive San Francisco product,” wrote a writer for Scribner’s named Samuel Williams. “One of his chief diversions when he is in a more pleasant mood and at peace with the world at large, is stoning Chinamen.” Other etymologists trace the word to a mispronunciation of the Bavarian word hodalump, or the Irish noodlum, a corruption of the surname Muldoon. See Barker, ed., More San Francisco Memoirs, pp. 228–231.
14. Charles F. Adams, The Magnificent Rogues of San Francisco (Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1998), p. 196.
15. “Wing Chung Knew the Game, But a ‘Tin Roof’ Came High,” San Francisco Examiner, May 13, 1900.
16. Rathmell, Realms of Gold, pp. 77–78.
17. Harriet Lane Levy, 920 O’Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 1996), pp. 144–145.
18. Report of the Special Committee on the Condition of the Chinese Quarter, San Francisco Municipal Reports for the Fiscal Year 1884–1885, published by order of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (San Francisco: W. M. Hinton & Co., 1885). Thanks to the Reverend Harry Chuck, Donaldina Cameron House, San Francisco, Calif., for sharing this document.
19. Bess Furman, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798–1948 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1973), pp. 230–231.
20. “Why San Francisco Is Plague-Proof,” San Francisco Examiner Sunday Magazine, February 4, 1900.
21. Vernon B. Link, “A History of Plague in the United States,” Public Health Monograph no. 26 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Public Health Service, 1955).
22. Quarantine Officer Joseph Kinyoun thought the Australia was likely to have been the ship that introduced the plague that caused the March 1900 outbreak in San Francisco. See Joseph J. Kinyoun, Letter to Dr. Bailhache, August 9, 1900, p. 16, Joseph J. Kinyoun Manuscript Collection 1860–1913, Ms. C. 464, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Md. For descriptions and photos of the Australia, thanks to the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park Library.
1. “Old Year Tooted Out, and the New One Noisily Welcomed,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 1, 1900, p. 12.
2. Theodora Lau, The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (New York: Perennial Library, 1988), pp. 35–48.
3. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), p. 171.
4. “The Story of Wong Chut King,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900, translated by Prisca Hui. (Readers should note that the name of Wong Chut King varies in English-language newspaper accounts as Wing Chut King or Chick Gin, reflecting different pronunciations and transliterations. Regarding his village and district, Chinatown historian Him Mark Lai notes that speakers from Canton mingle their “n” and “l” sounds, so Ling Yup should be Ning Yup, short for Sunning district. The village of Pei Hang is a mingling of Cantonese and Mandarin. In this village, also known as Bak Hang, Wong was the dominant surname.)
5. Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 308–322.
6. Descriptions of the pathology of plague and the progression of patients from infection to death, recounted by Gregg in Plague, pp. 113–128.
7. “The Story of Wong Chut King,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900, p. 1. For explaining the significance of coffin shops and the meaning of sau pan po, or long-life boards, I am indebted to translator Prisca Hui. Historian Him Mark Lai adds his insight on cultural meanings of coffins and burial. Sau pan or sau baan means coffin, literally a longevity board. “Po” means store. He adds a better term might be Cheung Sang Po, which denotes a store for both long life and coffins.
8. “Quarantine of Chinatown,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 7, 1900, p. 1. Translated by Prisca Hui.
9. “Burning of Dead Body,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 21, 1900, p. 2. Translated by Prisca Hui.
10. “The Story of Wong Chut King,” Chung Sai Yat Po, March 8, 1900, p. 1. Translated by Prisca Hui.
11. “No Results from Tests of Bacteriologist… Chinese Merchants Will Seek to Enjoin the Maintenance of
