SYDNEY TOWN

San Francisco. 1850.

‘It was the end of the continent, nobody gave a damn.’ Jack Kerouac.

This blog comes as a footnote to a previous one, A Free Man, in which I talked about my great,great grandfather, Patrick Bell, taking off to San Francisco. Further research indicates that Paddy may have been a member of a criminal gang called the Sydney Ducks.

The Sydney Ducks  were one of the more violent criminal organisations ever set up in America. They had the dubious honour of been California’s first criminal gang.  The majority of them were Irish who had arrived in Australia during the Irish Famine. Many were labourers. Paddy Bell certainly fitted that demographic. A few were ex-convicts who had served their time in Australia.

When news of the gold discovery in California hit Australia, they were on the next boats to San Francisco.  However, the Australians soon found that mining for gold was for idiots and decided that a life of crime was more lucrative.

The gang set up shop in an area of San Francisco that became known as Sydney Town ( renamed The Barbary Coast in the 1860's). Sydney Town soon became a cesspit of saloons, gambling dens and brothels.  Assaults, murders, looting, robberies and arson happened on a daily basis all over the city.

Arson attacks on businesses was the big earner for the Ducks.  While people were distracted trying to put out the fire, the gang was be looting others.  In one major arson attack, the criminals nearly burnt out central San Francisco. The gang always made sure Sydney Town never burnt;  only lighting a fire when they knew the winds wouldn’t blow in that direction.    

In a few months, a hundred people were murdered. The authorities were either incompetent or corrupt; probably both. The gang members were never prosecuted.   

As Herbert Ashbury, says in his book,' The Barbary Coast'; ‘the nearest approach to criminal anarchy that an American city has yet experienced.’

But the good citizens of San Francisco had had enough. A vigilante committee was formed and soon after, the lynching’s and deportations started. It was all over for the Sydney Ducks.

 Their two year reign of terror that had lasted from 1849-1851, was over.  

A FREE MAN

A FORTY-NINER PANNING FOR GOLD.

‘I came here a free man, under Hugh Glass.’

Those are the distant words of my great, great grandfather, Patrick Bell who arrived in Melbourne after a tragic sea voyage from Ireland.  

Unlike many people coming to this country at the time, he was not a convict but a free settler. He had arrived here under what was called the assisted migration scheme. All you had to do was work off your passage for seven years for an Australian sponsor. In Patrick’s case, that sponsor was Hugh Glass.

Hugh was an interesting character.  He had arrived from Ireland as a poor immigrant in 1840. By the time Patrick stepped ashore, Hugh was one of the largest landowners and best political manipulators in Australia.  As a monument to his wealth, Hugh built Flemington House in Melbourne in the 1850's for 60,000 pounds (now about ten million dollars).  It boasted its own artificial lake, stocked with white swans imported from Ireland. Sadly, he died later, aged only fifty-five and flat broke.

Patrick had left Ireland with his pregnant wife and one child.  Just days out from arriving in Australia his wife went into labor and had a baby boy. The celebration was short lived. Patrick’s wife died from dysentery soon afterwards.

So Patrick was now a widower with two children in a strange land working for Hugh Glass. He wasn’t alone for long.  He soon met an Irish servant girl named Anastasia Grace, got her pregnant and married her. But Patrick couldn’t settle and when he heard of the gold rush in California in 1848, he deserted his expanding family and headed to California. California here I come.

Patrick had an interesting time in California. One night in a saloon, he was playing cards when he noticed that one of the players was cheating. In true Wild West style, he drew his pistol and shot the man in the leg. Violence and death were common on the goldfield. So common, that one in five miners would die from violence, disease and accidents within six months of arrival.

He didn’t get rich but I guess he didn’t die there. He returned to Melbourne and reunited with his wife and family. It didn’t end well as you would have wanted it to. Once, in a drunken rage, he tried to kill Anastasia. The judge ordered him to stay away from Anastasia permanently.  Not long after that, he died from the effects of alcoholism and was buried in an unmarked grave. Patrick was aged only thirty-eight.

His grave is next to the Elvis Presley Memorial; a fitting place to rest for a man who tried to make the big time in America.