Chapter 5
Shanghai Chicken
John Devine—San Francisco
People from around the world have made it their goal in life to move to California and enrich their lives from the harvest of the golden land. Before the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, the easiest way to get to San Francisco was by sea. Historians basically agree that the sheltering waters of the San Francisco Bay were one of the major reasons that American politicians were so eager to make California a state. The discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1848 allowed California to skip over territory status and enter the Union as a state in 1850.
The discovery of gold also brought thousands of ships loaded with cargo and passengers to San Francisco, where there was a shortage of just about everything. Outrageous prices could be had for ordinary objects, as California did not have a manufacturing base and had to depend on imports from other parts of the world. The lure of California gold was too strong for most of the arriving sailors, and, by 1851, hundreds of abandoned ships dotted San Francisco Bay, as not enough men were available, or interested, in manning them. San Francisco was turning into a one-way trip for shipmasters, who often could not hire a crew to sail outbound.
The problem was solved by the age-old crime of shanghaiing, the forcible kidnapping of men to work on ships. It was a simple crime, carried out by men who had no qualms about killing a man who resisted. Usually the shanghaied men, preferably experienced sailors, were unconscious, knocked out with drugs slipped into their drinks or cigars at drinking establishments that catered to seamen. Dumped through a trapdoor onto a dirty mattress, the hapless sailors were kept sedated and confined until they were taken at night to a waiting ship. Sometimes, it would take as much as three years before the shanghaied would make it back to San Francisco.
The men who shanghaied for a living were called crimps and their procedure was diabolical. While an inbound ship waited for a berth at the crowded docks of San Francisco, runners in sturdy Whitehall boats would row up to the ship with rotgut whiskey, cigars, and Victorian pornography to offer the entertainment-starved sailors. If the captain was weak, the runner would board the ship and get the men drunk before convincing them to abandon the ship and enjoy the sins of the City of Saint Francis. Once ashore, they would be brought to a seedy waterfront bar, where they would be given knockout drops in their drink. They would awake to find themselves aboard an outbound ship in the Pacific Ocean.
John Devine was one of the worst crimps in San Francisco. Born in Waterford, Ireland, on June 19, 1840, he arrived in San Francisco around 1860 and was almost immediately shanghaied. Arriving back to San Francisco in 1863, Devine had decided during his long, imposed voyage that he would never go out to sea again.
Devine took up professional boxing as a lightweight under the London Prize Rules. The rules were simple: two men fought bare-knuckled in a ring until one of them could not fight anymore. Biting, gouging, or hitting below the belt was not allowed, but these rules were universally ignored.
Devine picked up the name “Shanghai Chicken” because he was brave and foolhardy, like a Shanghai rooster. The slightly built Irishman was quick with his fists and surprised his opponents with swift uppercuts. The Shanghai Chicken’s last fight was against Soapy McAlpine in San Bruno in 1866. It went one hundred sixteen rounds before Devine could not continue.
Touting his reputation as a tough-as-nails fighter, Devine started working as a runner for crimp Johnny Walker. It was the perfect job for his degenerative character and gave him plenty of free time to pursue his other criminal activates as a thug-for-hire, burglar, pickpocket, and pimp.
Devine moved on to work for the king of crimps, Shanghai Kelly. One of the most notorious crimps on the Pacific Ocean, Kelly’s saloon and boardinghouse was at 33 Pacific Street. The three-story wooden building was built over the tidal flats, perfect for secret boarding of a Whitehall boat.
Shanghaied to Shanghai
During the Gold Rush, ship’s captains could not hold onto their crews once they docked in San Francisco. The sailors would jump ship and run off into the gold fields and as a result the bay was littered with anchored ships. Enterprising criminals saw a great opportunity. Charging a hundred dollars a head, crimpers would work with San Francisco’s bars and boarding houses to supply the ships with unwitting crews. Sailors and ordinary people were rendered unconscious with either a club or opium-laced drink, bundled up and rowed out to waiting ships. The shanghaied men would wake up as the ships were out at sea. They had to work as a crewman or starve. To get back to San Francisco, the shanghaied men, who often found themselves on a ship to Shanghai, had to work their way back as sailors, which sometimes took years.
The greatest story about Shanghai Kelly is when he had a huge order of sailors to fill and had trouble crimping enough men. He sent out open invitations to San Francisco’s drunks and riff-raff to attend his birthday party. Kelly rented a ship, the Goliah, stocked it with cheap whiskey, allowed ninety men onboard and cast off for an around-the-bay leisure excursion. Soon, the partiers got groggy and passed out. The Goliah chugged out through the Golden Gate strait and rendezvoused with several crewless ships, where the unconscious men were hauled aboard. Kelly received ninety dollars a head. As luck would have it, a ship had just docked at San Francisco with the survivors of a shipwreck, and nobody noticed the empty Goliah, as it docked at the wharfs.
On one occasion, while Devine worked for Kelly, he convinced a minister that sailors anchored in the bay needed some spiritual guidance. Devine rowed the minister up to a ship and crimped him out to the captain for sixty dollars.
Devine quickly rose to become Kelly’s second in command. His area of expertise was to attack competing runners and hijack their kidnapped sailors for Kelly to crimp out to sea captains. Devine was not beyond shooting the rival crimp for his quarry.
Notorious 1890s crimp Calico Jim is said to have shanghaied six different San Francisco policemen who were sent to arrest him. They were knocked out, one after another and sold to waiting captains. Years later, after they worked their way back to San Francisco, they officers found out that Calico Jim had left town shortly after they were shanghaied. After getting a tip that Calico Jim was somewhere in South America, they pooled their money together, chose one of the members by lot, and sent him searching for the crimp. After a few months of searching, the officer found him in Callao, Chile. He shot Calico Jim six times, one for every shanghaied officer.
In 1867, Devine and two other men were accused and arrested for the gang rape and attempted murder of Martha McDonald, a young Scottish woman. After the men were through violating her, they threw her off the bridge at Mission and 16th streets into Mission Creek. McDonald told police that Devine had wanted to kill her, but Devine’s accomplices disagreed. The case never went to trial because Martha McDonald was never seen or heard from again.
Devine started to fall out of favor with Kelly and was fired. Devine turned the tables on Kelly by shanghaiing him in the spring of 1868. On June 13, 1868, Devine and his new partner in crime, Johnny Nyland, got word that Shanghai Kelly had been killed in Peru, and the two men hit the Barbary Coast to celebrate.
The Shanghai Chicken and Nyland did not celebrate like normal people. Nyland was carrying a huge knife and Devine was packing a pistol. They commemorated the night by shooting and stabbing innocent barhoppers, while they made the rounds of Barbary Coast nightspots. The two laughed as they burst into several sailors’ boardinghouses and beat up anyone they met.
This walking cyclone of violence went on uninterrupted until they entered a saloon attached to Billy Maitland’s boardinghouse at Front Street near Vallejo Street. Nyland cleared their path inside with his knife and Devine started shooting at bottles of liquor behind the bar. Maitland heard the commotion and immediately disarmed Nyland of his knife and kicked him out onto the street. As Maitland stepped back into his saloon, Devine pointed his pistol at him. Maitland, with Nyland’s knife in hand, lunged at Devine, who raised his left arm in front of himself to protect his throat. Maitland sliced Devine’s hand clean off at the wrist. While Devine screamed in pain, Maitland picked him up, threw him out onto the street alongside Nyland, and slammed the door.
Devine sat on the sidewalk holding the stump where his hand had been seconds ago and screamed obscenities at Maitland. The door opened, and Maitland tossed Devine’s severed hand onto the sidewalk. Nyland helped his friend to his feet and they stumbled into a drugstore at Pacific and Davis, where Devine politely asked the pharmacist to sew his hand back on before he passed out.
At the hospital, doctors gave him painkillers and wrapped up his stump to heal. Devine had a custom-made prosthetic hook with an extremely sharp point on the end to attach to his stump.
Devine was reduced to petty robberies and theft after his amputation. He was still a dangerous man, but his stamina was weakened by his extended recovery. He may also have become addicted to narcotics during his recuperation. Unable to pay off the proper authorities to continue his life of crime relatively free of retribution, Devine increasingly found himself in front of judges who were tired of the murdering cretin. His bail was being set higher and higher, and it became more difficult for him to raise the cash. The Shanghai Chicken found himself frequently caged in the city jail.
The turning point in the life, times, and crimes of John “Shanghai Chicken” Devine was May 15, 1871, the day he shot August Kamp near Devine’s mother’s ranch in Bay View. Devine had borrowed money from Kamp and did not want to pay him back. Not only did Devine shoot the young German in front of two witnesses, he also left his hat at the scene of the crime.
Devine was arrested the next morning on the steamer Wilson G. Hunt, which was docked at Meigg’s Wharf and ready to steam out of the bay. In his pocket was the pistol that he used to shoot Kamp, with two spent rounds in the chambers. Kamp lived for ten more days before dying of infections, but at one point Kamp was well enough to pick Devine out of a police lineup.
The trial was quick and Devine was convicted and sentenced to death. He rediscovered his long-lost Catholic faith while waiting his execution and took his last walk at one in the afternoon on May 14, 1873. Four hundred people received invitations to the execution. He was carried to his burial place with the coffin lid open, to satisfy the curious and to the relief of many.