Although an abundance of literature exists regarding criminal justice matters during Gold Rush San Francisco, most of it concentrates on the affairs of the famed Vigilance Committees of 1851 and 1856. Until now, this preoccupation has crowded out any study of the regular criminal justice system which was, after all, a primary institution of social control In this fascinating new study, Kevin Mullen, a retired San Francisco police office, provides a fresh historical interpretation of the era as he concludes that the legends of raging violent crime in early San Francisco are overblown, and that the institutions of justice were perhaps not as black as previously painted. Let Justice Be Done is the first study of the establishment and development of San Francisco’s courts, police, and jails from the American conquest in 1846 through 1852. The book also includes extremely thorough documentation of the frequency of crime that occurred during this period.

In 1851, according to conventional interpretations, a group of public-spirited citizens, outraged by the city’s rampant crime and the inability or unwillingness of the regular authorities to do anything about it, took the law into their own hands, By examining, for the first time, exactly how much predatory crime occurred in the Gold Rush city, the author reappraises the activities of the Vigilance Committee of 1851; he concludes that allegations of unchecked crime were used by the vigilante group to justify taking city government out of the hands of the established authorities and politicians in order to institute what they saw as need reforms.         In a larger sense, Mullen shows that San Francisco’s sudden increase in violent crime was not merely an outgrowth of the Gold Rush experience but rather was similar to conditions afflicting other mid-nineteen-century cities across the country. As disparate groups with opposing value systems clashed in the teeming centers of American cities, government institutions designed for an earlier, simpler time were often found wanting. Thus, Mullen provides an accurate record to reinterpret the vigilante movements in San Francisco and to supply a comparative record for historians working on the broader patterns of crime in American urban history.

 

 

“The single most important contribution of the book is its creation of a literally complete record of serious crime in San Francisco from 1846 to 1853. That is a very laudable achievement, and I know on no other book on the history of US urban crime which can match this feat. . . . Mullen’s work blows the usual interpretation of 1851 vigilantism right out of the water.”

__ Roger Lotchin, University of North Carolina. 1989