Condition of S.F. Jail, 1862
I ran across this report last night and couldn’t resist sharing. Some communities in Humboldt County used a tree to contain their prisoners and San Francisco got creative and built a tunnel–not that it worked that well, apparently.
Elsewhere in the report, the San Francisco Sheriff laments that he has less than forty officers for a city of 80,000, making it impossible for him to keep order. Especially, he stressed , in a gold rush town where passions ran high and everyone was armed. You gotta feel for the guy.
