Shanghaiing Days: The Thrilling account of 19th Century Hell-Ships, Bucko Mates and Masters, and Dangerous Ports-of-Call from San Francisco to Singapore

by Richard Dillon

  Only a month and a half after his release, he and Abel Farrington were arrested on charges of an attempt to commit robbery. Once again he got off by copping a plea (assault and battery) and got only eight months in jail plus thirty days for carrying a concealed weapon again. On June 8, 1867, an elderly German woman, Mary Martin, was walking down Merchant Street near Battery. A man rushed up, tore the pocket of her dress off, and disappeared. With the pocket went her purse, $25 in cash and a check for $850. Devine was suspected and arrested but soon released on bond. “Nothwithstanding the character he bore at that time.” the Call reported later, “he always found men ready and willing to become surety for him, no matter what the charge was.” The complaining witness could not be found when the case came up for a hearing. Officers searched the city, traced Mary Martin to a house on Powell Street, but lost her. They gathered that she had left town in fear of her life. So Devine escaped prosecution. He wasted no time. While still under arrest and out on bail, he went on board a clipper at the behest of her captain, who was trying to run the ship’s steward off. (The latter would not budge until he got the £35 sterling due him in wages.) On the night of June 11, 1867, he awoke to find Devine standing over his berth with a pistol at his head. The Chicken led him over the side to a small boat and rowed him ashore. He left him on a dock after taking some of his clothes. For this bit of reverse-shanghaiing, Devine was arrested but on charges of robbery. A legal technicality worked in his behalf and he drew but ninety days in jail. (The steward was an interested spectator at his trial.)

  While out on bail on this charge, he was arrested after committing another robbery, but the grand jury, failing to find a true bill against him, let him go. Once again a key complaining witness had disappeared. Around this time Devine was supposed to have as many as seven prostitutes pounding beats for him. Whether this lucky number included Mary Nolan or not is not known but she was his wife. In August 1867 he displayed his chivalry by beating up a Frenchman, Friel, after he was robbed of a gold chain and watch in a “den” kept by his wife. Friel made too much of an outcry after the larceny for Devine’s delicate ears, so he shut the Frenchman up by beating him up. John got fifty days in the county jail for this, mainly because he was too broke to pay a fine of only $100. Mary got a year and six months in the state prison for the robbery.

  On October 29, 1867, Miss Martha McDonald closed the gate of her house and started for a neighbor’s. She was suddenly seized by two men wearing black cloths over their faces. She tried to scream for help but one of the two stuffed a gag in her mouth. They dragged her, kicking and struggling, for two and a half blocks till they reached the bridge over Mission Street at 16th Street. There she heard one say, “Go for the carriage!” and one of the two abductors left. The remaining kidnaper tried to tie her with a strap but she struggled so much he was unable to do it. He next pulled a bottle of chloroform from his pocket to drug her but she caused him to spill it. Then she heard the words, “Kill her! Kill her!” She was thrown off the bridge into the muddy creek. Her voice failed her at first so that when she was able to call for help, her kidnapers were gone.

  On March 10, 1868, Devine and two others were arrested. Miss McDonald was sure that it was the Chicken who had thrown her off the bridge. She could never forget his voice. But Devine had a perfect alibi. He referred the court to the county jail books. He was serving a term in jail at the time, for the Friel assault. He was discharged from custody. Later, it was learned that he was a trusty at the time with the privilege of going outside on errands. On the night of Miss McDonald’s abduction, by coincidence, the Shanghai Chicken happened to be away from his cell on an errand. John Shanghai Chicken Devine was the last such “outside trusty” at the county jail.

  Johnny continued to carry on with a high hand in his old stamping ground, the water front from North Point to Clay Street Wharf.

  Sailor landlords and rival runners feared him, his temper and his lack of tolerance for alcohol. Sometimes fifteen or twenty stout fellows would be playing cards when the warning cry would be raised, “Here comes ‘the Fowl,’ drunk!” The card sharks would scatter like frightened minnows. They respected the Chicken’s knife and his straight razor, both of which he was accustomed to flash when drunk.

  In the summer of 1868, while under the influence, he and Johnny Nyland went to a sailors’ boardinghouse on Vallejo Street. There Devine insulted the boarding master’s wife and was thrown out. He then brawled for a bit in Billy Lewis’s bar and then he and Nyland took over the bar attached to William Maitland’s boardinghouse on Battery Street. (Billy Maitland was the crimp found guilty, with John Smith, in February 1878 of taking blood money for shipping sailors on a British vessel.) While Maitland was snoozing away peacefully upstairs, the Shanghai Chicken was drawing a big knife in the saloon and flourishing it in such a way that the room emptied pronto. In a rage because no one would scuffle with him, Devine struck the edge of the bar a savage blow with the knife. He knocked off a splinter easily two feet long. Maitland was awakened by the hubbub below and came downstairs to see just what was going on. He had hardly time to rub the sleep from his eyes when he saw a ferocious Shanghai Chicken coming at him behind a wicked blade. He instinctively dodged, grappled with Devine and took the knife away from him. But when Johnny made another attack Maitland raised the knife and struck at the Chicken. The latter threw up his left arm to protect his head. The keen edge of the heavy knife cut through his wrist as though it were cheese, and his left hand fell to the floor.

  The Shanghai Chicken was struck mute with astonishment. He left the house but quickly returned to shout, “Give me my fin, you dirty bastard!” at his host. Maitland did not even bother to pick it up. “Take it, and get out of here!” he said, giving the hand on the barroom floor a kick which sent it flying out into Battery Street. The Chicken picked it up with his remaining hand and holding it in place against the stump ran to Dr. Simpson’s drug store at Pacific and Davis Street. He addressed the clerk, “Doctor, can you do anything for this?” “For what?” asked the confused clerk. “For what? Why, for this,” answered John, waving the severed hand at the man. He later tried to get a Dr. Murphy to sew it on but finally settled for the county hospital where the left hand was taken away from him and his bloody stump dressed.

  Maitland was arrested and charged with mayhem but he was soon freed on grounds of self-defense. Surprisingly, as the California Police Gazette noted, the Shanghai Chicken appeared to bear him remarkably little ill will. “The cases of William Maitland, charged with mayhem in cutting off the hand of John Devine, alias the Chicken, and Johnny Nyland, charged with assault and battery, were dismissed, no one appearing to prosecute. Devine was called to testify and made a statement saying that he was very much to blame and that he did not desire to prosecute the matter, and so the defendant was discharged.” But Maitland, playing it safe, left the country for the time being.

  The boarding masters, boatmen and shipping masters took pity on one-handed Devine now and contributed to a purse of $860 to set him up with a cigar stand. He accepted the money, promised to become an honest tobacconist, and then squandered the money. He had the guts to go to one man who had contributed $50, to put the bite on him for $2 more. The man, understandably, replied, “I’ve given you enough and I’m not bound to give you any more.” The grateful and gracious Chicken thereupon spat in his face and bade him adieu with a “Go to hell!”

  For actions of this sort, Chicken Devine began to lose the few friends he had. He went back to “work” and in February 1869 was arrested for burglary, but there was no proof which would stick so there was no indictment. Between that February and December of the same year he was arrested for twenty-eight different offenses. In April he got thirty days for beating Mary Nolan, released from the pen. Only five days after serving his term for this tantrum, he was sent to jail for fifty days more for beating her up again. In August he was arrested for mayhem after biting chunks out of John Mur
phy’s cheek and arm. However, Murphy asked that the charge be dismissed. Murphy himself was arrested for assaulting Devine at the same time but he was discharged when the Chicken refused to prosecute. Devine said, “It was only a friendly fight.” And he added that Murphy had got the worst of it, anyway, so he was satisfied.

  In January 1870, Devine was arrested for garroting, robbery and larceny when he appropriated W. J. Canning’s gold watch. Allowed to make a Guilty plea to petty larceny charges, he went to jail for six months. In February of the next year he went to jail for a month for committing the most petty of larcenies—swiping three pigs’ feet from a lunchroom! And this was the man whose mug shot was one of the first to be incorporated in Police Chief Burke’s radical new rogues gallery of photographs! (The Shanghai Chicken was the only crimp so honored.)

  One of the San Francisco papers observed that “Were a detailed account of all the crimes he committed—those for which he was arrested and those for which he never was taken into custody—to be published, the array would be terrifying.” Among the crimes not recorded were his frequent shanghaiings. Of course, crimping in the San Francisco of the Shanghai Chicken’s day was more extralegal than illegal, no matter what the law books might say on the subject. He was only caught once, when he tried to shanghai a handcart man, Holland, and three others aboard the David Crockett. This one time he was apprehended in the act and the men released. The legend is that Shanghai Kelly eventually found him too undependable and determined to get rid of Devine by shanghaiing him out of Frisco himself. After several abortive attempts, he was dragged to a boat landing but he slipped out of the ropes which bound him and beat up on his captors with the hook which replaced his lost left hand. When the crimps had fled, he took Shanghai Kelly’s boat down to another wharf and sold it for whiskey money.

  Only a few weeks after being released from jail for his pigs’ feet pilfering, the Chicken shot and killed a young German, August Kamp, on a hill in Visitacion Valley near the San Bruno Road. The date was May 15, 1871. Kamp had come to San Francisco from Antioch, where he had worked for several months. He had about $120 and, according to his contra costa employer, the reputation of being frugal, sober and industrious. He might have added “naïve.” Kamp met and was taken in by the Chicken. Devine first promised him a berth on a fishing boat and then borrowed $20 from him. When Johnny failed repeatedly to return the loan as he promised and re-promised, Kamp, in disgust, decided to leave town. Devine hurriedly said that he could get the money for the lad if he would accompany him to his mother’s ranch beyond Bay View. So the two men walked to the Long Bridge where they boarded a car of the Bay View Railroad. They got off at the end of the line, passed Five Mile House and hiked across a field to a hill. When they reached the top of the hill they came to a fence and as Kamp stooped to go through, between two of the fence rails, Shanghai Chicken Devine pulled a five-shot Remington pistol from his pocket and blew the German’s brains out. On a nearby slope a French shepherd looked up from his flock of sheep and saw the affair. Devine left the scene of his crime quickly and briefly panicked. He entered the house of a Mrs. Murphy where he hoped to hide. When she rebuffed him he blurted, “God damn you! I’ve shot a man and I’ll shoot you!” But he did not carry out his threat. Instead he went aboard the steamer Wilson G. Hunt which was ready to sail from Meiggs Wharf. There John Coulter of the San Francisco police force found him hiding. He was still wearing Kamp’s cap. He made no attempt to deny his guilt at the time, saying only to Coulter, “John, you’re a damned good fellow, but I’m afraid you’ll have me hung.” “Why so?” asked the patrolman. “Well, I shot a son of a bitch at Bay View yesterday and I think they’ll make me swing for it.”

  While in jail during the trial, Devine made two escape attempts with another felon. Once they suspended a sheet from the ceiling in front of the window with a barred window drawn on it, in hopes a guard would glance quickly in and think the cell empty. When he would enter, they would spring on him from behind the sheet. Their art work was too crude, however, and the false wall of the sheet fooled no one. Devine’s second scheme was better. He made up a dummy and suspended it so it would look as if he had committed suicide by hanging. His cellmate would scream for the guard and when the latter would enter, Devine would spring on him from the corner of the cell where he was crouched. But this plot failed too; the effigy simply was not good enough to fool the policeman.

  Meanwhile, the papers surveyed the life and times of John Devine, the Shanghai Chicken. One reporter remarked, “Death on the gallows will be a fitting termination to his career... The writer of this account has sought for the record of a single good action performed by ‘Chicken’ while in this city, but his labors have been in vain.” During his thirty-one years of life, he was arrested seventy-nine times—once for fighting, once for assault with a deadly weapon, three times for malicious mischief, twice for carrying concealed weapons, twice for assault, once for assault with intent to commit murder, once for attempted robbery, once for a misdemeanor, once for violating a city ordinance, six times for using vulgar language, thirteen times for assault and battery, three times for defaulting, three times for robbery, once for defrauding a bondsman, once for kidnaping, once for burglary, once for mayhem, once for petty larceny, once for disturbing the peace, once for grand larceny, and once for murder. His other arrests are unrecorded.

  When you consider that this is only a record of the crimes at which he was caught—surely a minority of the total committed—Shanghai Chicken Devine emerges as the outstanding shanghaier-criminal of the era. He was less skilled than some criminals and some crimps, for that matter, but he was an all-around criminal rather than a specialist. He was reasonably adept in almost any sort of mischief.

  On February 28, 1872, John Devine was found guilty of the murder of August Kamp. On March 6 he was sentenced to be hanged. He protested his innocence loudly when a reporter said, “Well, ‘Chicken,’ they have found you guilty.” “Yes.” he retorted, “they can find anybody guilty on perjured testimony. This jury has convicted an innocent man. But I don’t care a damn, anyway.”

  “Do you think you will get a new trial?” asked the man from the Call.

  “Yes, I haven’t the least doubt of it.”

  He was right. His date with the gallows was April 26, but his counsel asked for a new trial and got it. However, on his second trial, begun March 1st and concluded on the 28th, he was again judged guilty and resentenced to death. Now he was deadly pale and when he spoke his voice was husky with emotion—“I am accused of this crime and I knew nothing about it. I have been very badly abused, and falsely represented for no cause.” His attorney, Tyler, had really fought tooth and nail for him, in so doing managing to tar the “tyrannical” police department as an agency with the sole intent of “trying to dissect the ‘Chicken’” Devine said, “I am perfectly satisfied that Mr. Tyler has done all that could be done by a good and honest man, and I did not expect half what he has done for me. And if it is any satisfaction to your Honor, and I am positive it is not, to send me or any innocent man to his cold and silent grave without any cause or provocation, I have no more to say.”

  At the sentence, Devine’s toughness evaporated. His voice was choked with emotion and tears filled his eyes when he heard the words “that you be taken by the Sheriff of the City and County of San Francisco to some place in said county and there hanged by the neck till dead, and may God have mercy on your soul.” But when he got downstairs to the city prison, his old bluster returned and he was heard to say “It’s rough on a fellow to be hanged for killing a Dutch son of a bitch and not get the money, after all!”

  On the 8th of May he was granted a five-day stay of execution but on the cold and gloomy afternoon of May 14, 1872, John Chicken Devine was hanged by the neck until dead on the gallows erected in the upper corridor of the county jail. The night before the trap was sprung he had a restful sleep and he ate a hearty breakfast of boiled
eggs, tenderloin steak and coffee on his last day on earth. Judge Tyler came to visit him at 11 a.m. but Devine refused to see him. He was pale faced but he walked with a light spring to his step and he wore a smile as he approached the gallows, carrying a crucifix. Father Spreckels held the crucifix to Johnny, dressed in black and in loose slippers. Devine kissed it and said, loudly, “Sweet Lord Jesus, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” An artist, Mr. Smith, of Leslie’s Magazine was sketching the scene, and a crowd of ticket holders gawked at the condemned crimp and murderer. Just before 1 p.m. the trap was sprung. The career of San Francisco’s most colorful shanghaier was ended.

  The body was taken to McGinn’s undertaking rooms on Market Street where another crowd of the curious and morbid gathered. The Shanghai Chicken was buried in Old Calvary Cemetery near Masonic Avenue; as near the potter’s field as he could possibly be placed and still remain in the respectable graveyard. For a time, curiosity brought visitors to see his last resting place. They found his grave backed with the blank crosses of Frisco’s pauper dead. By the 1880s his own cross had fallen into the nettles and weeds which flourished there. Some wag wrote his epitaph on his cross, number 5, 608, in pencil—“Chicken Devine got his neck broke, because he shot another bloke.”

  Shanghaiers like John Devine and his cohorts thrived and controlled American seaports simply by creating a demand—by running men off ships—and then filling this demand, by hook or by crook. It was that simple. But by the 1890s complaints against the labor monopoly, the virtual domination of major American ports by crimps, began to flood into the British Parliament. The reason was simple; most of America’s commerce was being carried in British bottoms, not American. The American merchant marine was ailing as usual. Alfred C. Barrett’s letter was typical of these complaints. It began, “Every time I have visited San Francisco, the boardinghouse masters have enticed men away from my ship….”