Madman of the People

Going publicly insane may have been the most sensible thing Joshua Abraham Norton ever did. The son of a Jewish merchant in South Africa, he’s said to have arrived at San Francisco in 1849, and grew rich off real-estate investments and commodities trading. “Men called him the merchant with the Midas touch ...,” magazine and radio writer Samuel Dickson recalled in Tales of San Francisco (1947). “They called him a genius; they said he was destined for great things; they said he had the potentialities of an empire builder, the qualities of an emperor.” But after losing a fortune in an 1852 scheme to corner the international rice market, Norton disappeared ... only to return eight years later, wearing a florid blue-and-red military-like uniform and a high beaver hat, plumed with brightly colored feathers, and now calling himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

(Right) Norton I in full regalia.

Norton’s business failure may have unbalanced his mind. Or maybe he was just an uncanny actor and con man. In either event, he was rewarded with 20 years of the most bizarre respect ever shown to an American. On pleasant afternoons, he’d leave his “imperial palace” (a boardinghouse on Commercial Street) and promenade through the thoroughfares of San Francisco, greeting people as if they were his loyal subjects and receiving salutes. Newspapers printed his royal pronouncements, and he regularly attended legislative sessions in Sacramento and counseled lawmakers. He ate free at saloons and restaurants. Theaters loyally reserved three seats in the front of their balconies for use by this benevolent despot and his two constant companions, a part-Newfoundland hound named Bummer and a cur that Bummer had befriended named Lazarus. On those rare occasions when the addlepated monarch actually needed money, he simply had promissory notes printed up in denominations of 10, 25, and 50 cents. And amazingly, people took Norton’s “royal scrip” in exchange for whatever paltry goods he required.

(Above) San Francisco’s belove monarch sups on the public dime with his constant companions, Bummer and Lazarus.

“In what other city would a harmless madman who supposed himself emperor of the two Americas have been so fostered and encouraged?” Robert Louis Stevenson mused in his 1892 novel, The Wrecker. Indeed, San Franciscans saw in Emperor Norton the embodiment of their young city’s charming offbeat character—and loved him for it. After he perished suddenly during an evening stroll on January 8, 1880, the city buried Norton with all the pomp and ceremony befitting a crowned head of state. About 30,000 people showed up for his funeral, and the San Francisco Call opined that “No citizen of San Francisco could have been taken away who would be more generally missed.”

READ MORE: “Emperor Norton” (Weird California).