Name: San Francisco once pioneered America's cruelest legislation: Ugly laws
Brand: sfgate.com
SKU: sfgate-com-252
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

San Francisco once pioneered America's cruelest legislation: Ugly laws

preview

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIn 1867, San Francisco went on crusade — not against murder, rape or assault — but against the scourge of public ugliness.Even those who have heard of “ugly laws” may not realize America’s first was passed in San Francisco. Decades before ugly laws were common in American cities, San Francisco pioneered the legal justification for forcing marginalized people off its streets.San Francisco in the late 1860s had a unique set of conditions that made it ripe for such a law. In the aftermath of the Gold Rush, the city was filled with men for whom no fortune had materialized. Some were Chinese immigrants, who nativist Californians already stereotyped as lazy and disease-infested. Street conditions worsened after the end of the Civil War when disabled veterans, many of them amputees, returned home unable to work.“San Francisco seems destined to become a ‘city of refuge’ for all the lazzaroni of the Pacific Coast,” complained one 1860s editorial in the Weekly Mercury. “As one treads our streets, the eye is shocked at the frequent appearance of maimed creatures, whose audacity is only paralleled by the hideousness of their deformities.”“Until the Almshouse is completed, some refuge should be found for these deformed ‘objects of horror,’” it recommended.It was a common sentiment, echoed often by callous local newspapers. That same year, the Daily Alta California wrote about an Italian immigrant with “neither feet nor hands ... disgustingly fond of exhibiting her stumps” who they were excited to report had been arrested in Nevada.“It is to be hoped that she will never be allowed to return to San Francisco,” the story ended.In July 1867, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved Order No. 873. The order banned “street begging” and — here’s where the “ugly law” part comes in — restricted “certain persons from appearing in streets or public places.” Violators were hit with a $25 fine (about $460 today), 25 days in jail or both.Enforcement was difficult, as what constituted “diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed” varied in the eye of the beholder. But there’s no question San Francisco did use Order No. 873 to incarcerate disabled individuals. Some went to jail, others were sent to a massive almshouse, which is today the site of Laguna Honda Hospital. The only “crime” many had committed was being a disabled person in public.California’s self-made attitude perhaps made its citizens particularly unsympathetic to the less fortunate. Those unable to emulate that bootstrap attitude, despite crippling physical limitations, were cast as pathetic and wasteful. Although some San Franciscans expressed skepticism that disabled panhandlers were actually Civil War veterans — and there are cases of men pretending to be war heroes in order to make money — they didn’t appear particularly sympathetic toward actual soldiers either.A July 1867 San Francisco Call story tells the story of Martin Oakes, a “half demented fellow” who was paralyzed while fighting for the Union. Under the new ugly law, he was arrested and jailed while awaiting the completion of a new almshouse. By 1892, the Laguna Honda almshouse housed almost 800 “inmates,” the majority of which were over 60 years old and physically unable to work.As the century went on, ugly laws modeled after San Francisco’s spread throughout the country. Many big cities implemented them, as did communities along railroad lines like Denver, Omaha and Reno. They got even more popular in the 1890s when a severe depression hit the nation. Stories of its implementation are heartbreaking. In 1916, a Portland, Ore., was paid by the city to leave because she was “too terrible a sight for the children to see.” She took the money and moved to Los Angeles.Ugly laws slowly stopped being enforced, particularly after World War I when, at last, laws discriminating against war veterans became politically unpalatable. But many stayed on the books well into the 20th century, including San Francisco’s.The last known case of an ugly law arrest occurred in Omaha in 1974. A policeman, looking to arrest a homeless man but without a clear means of doing so, found the ugly law in the city code. The man was arrested for having “marks and scars on his body.”Unsurprisingly, the case didn’t get far.“What’s the standard of ugliness?” a judge memorably asked. “Does the law mean that every time my neighbor’s funny-looking kids ask for something I&nbsp;should have them arrested?”The city prosecutor declined to press charges and no one, in the United States at least, has ever attempted an ugly law arrest again.Katie Dowd is an SFGATE Senior Digital Editor. Contact: katie.dowd@sfgate.com | Twitter: @katiedowd

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateIn 1867, San Francisco went on crusade — not against murder, rape or assault — but against the scourge of public ugliness.Even those who have heard of “ugly laws” may not realize America’s first was passed in San Francisco. Decades before ugly laws were common in American cities, San Francisco pioneered the legal justification for forcing marginalized people off its streets.San Francisco in the late 1860s had a unique set of conditions that made it ripe for such a law. In the aftermath of the Gold Rush, the city was filled with...

public

Katie Dowd

KatieDowd

News. Culture. Sports. Opinion. All the journalism that matters from San Francisco & the Bay Area. Newsletters: http://sfgate.com/newsletters IG: http://instagram.com/sfgate

San Francisco once pioneered America's cruelest legislation: Ugly laws

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS