Page:California Historical Society Quarterly vol 22.djvu/123

Rh But however much he preferred a staid middle course, the tranquil re- corder was destined to have a most untranquil term of office. Less than a month after he held his first court, fire wiped out about three-quarters of the town southeast of the City Hall. It started in a paint factory on the opposite side of the Plaza, three blocks south of the City Hall, and burned everything, including the planked streets, from the Plaza to the bay. Noth- ing remained east of Kearny Street but the far end of Long Wharf, isolated beyond ash and debris strewn water and the charred stumps of the piles upon which that part of the town had rested. With the usual blithe reaction of the frontier this remnant of former splendor was named Pile Island. That was on May 4, 1851, the anniversary of the great fire of May 4, 1850.

Just about two months after the judge took office, a big six-foot Sydney cove named John Jenkins was caught stealing a safe down on the far end of Long Wharf, in the Pile Island region. The Committee of Vigilance went into action, and before morning Jenkins' great hulk was dangling from a rope flung over a beam on the south porch of the old adobe on the upper slope of the Plaza.

Twelve days later a fire started on Sunday morning in a house some four blocks due west of the City Hall on Pacific Street. When it had spent it- self. Recorder Waller was without a courtroom and the town without a City Hall. For the remainder of his term Recorder Waller held court in rented rooms, for it was not until the following year that the Jenny Lind Theatre opposite the Plaza was finally sold to the city and made over into a City Hall.

History records one interesting meeting of Recorder Waller with the Committee of Vigilance in 1851. That occurred in August. Judge Waller had accompanied the Rev. Albert Williams, his pastor and good friend, to the jail for religious services, which Williams held there every Sunday at 3:00 P.M. The judge wished to study the reactions of hardened criminals to the softening influence of the Holy Writ.

This visit was shortly after Samuel Whittaker and Robert McKenzie, accused murderers and notorious gangsters, had been forcibly removed from the Vigilance Committee rooms by Governor John McDougal, Mayor Charles J. Brenham, and Sheriff John C. Hays. The raid by the law had taken place at 2:00 A.M., and all but five of the temporarily unvigilant Vigilantes had been sound asleep.

With Recorder Waller and the good Mr. Williams on their pious visit to the jail were the son and daughter of the Presbyterian pastor. It was not a party capable of coping with such scenes of insurrection and violence as soon developed. The dignified gentlemen were mildly surprised but not suspicious when they found a half dozen local citizens waiting in the office of the jail. The men were known to Waller and Williams, but they further explained their presence by announcing that they too had come to study the