Battle For Roseblood
Above are two photos taken of me in Christine Rosamond Benton’s studio. She went by Presco. She had not met Garth Benton. I was going to be her first male portrait. She took photographs of me with her expensive camera, When she developed the film. she freaked! There was a electrical energy around me! She abandoned the project. There is a fight over Rosamond’s Art. People are stealing my energy.
I was twenty when I lived with The Loading Zone in the Getto of Oakland. I slept in the attic of a beautiful Victorian. I am reading a book on the Indian religion, when I hear domeone call my name. I look up, and it is Larry Sidel, Shannon’s father.
“What are you doing here?” he asks. Before I can answer, the woman with him says;
“There’s a gold aura around that man!”
Larry is a surfer and member of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. He came up to make a purchase. Did any of Thomas Pynchon’s charaters – take LSD? How about Tom? Did he…..drop? He born a drug hero, that Paul Anderson turned into a White Hero in love with a Black Woman. They have a child.
What about Kamala Harris? How many world leaders wish she had beat Donald Trump? How many hundreds of billion of dollars is Trump losing. Did Donald ever take LSD? I have wondered if he takes acid – every damn day.
Little Mae was a Modoc, and took me to the Golden West bar on Twelfth street at 6:00 A/M.Mae rescued me. She was the Downtown Mascot. I was in like flint. Her man was…….Bolagard! Here he come in the door wearing his wool overcoat.
I lived at the Will Rogers Hoterl that was renamed the Saint George, which was the hotel I lived in in New York, that was my first home.
John Presco
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Explore 12th. with this link. I would love to live here, and eat.
Golden West Hotel
The Golden West Hotel opened in 1906 at the northwest corner of 8th and Franklin. It shared the building with the Oakland Tribune from 1906 until 1918 when the Tribune moved into its signature building at 13th and Franklin. The building was demolished in 1957. 1
When constructed, the building was referred to as the New Tribune Building as they were arranging the construction. The timing of its completion was fortunate, as the 1906 earthquake happened and forced numerous businesses and government offices from San Francisco. Within days of the quake, W.R. Grace, a large commercial firm in S.F. opened an office there, 2 as did commissioner W.V. Stafford of the State Bureau of Labor. 3
19081911 Sanborn excerpt1950 Sanborn excerpt
Links and References
Links and References
- Razing of Hotel Stirs Memories Oakland Tribune July 19, 1957 (photos)
- Grace Co. Locates Oakland Tribune April 22, 1906
- Get Work For Unemployed Oakland Tribune April 23, 1906
- San Francisco Blue Book 1907
https://pcad.lib.washington.edu/building/17452/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKsJRxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFzT1FuUXhyYko1alFod2lVAR6K3Lv5V4bLV6R67HB8KgNRIYHsKd2e0PBX3RWF5FJPVewxnqHJ9S8LUffJfg_aem_tkGicAE8pqd95O-zYWQyFg
Hotel St. George
The Hotel St. George was located at 371-75 Thirteenth Street, Oakland, California, and is currently the site of the Clarion Hotel. The Colonial Revival – Mansard hotel building was designed by Walter J. Mathews, who was the builder as well from 1906-1908. It was constructed in part to house the Winedale Company and initially completed in 1907.
An August 1909 classified for the St. George describes it as “just opened”, 2 though it may have been operating under a different name before that. Ironically, a fire had destroyed the St. George Hotel in San Francisco a few months before.
In 1911, Peter Andrews, a teamster from Contra Costa, fell to his death in the light well. His death was determined to be accidental. 3
It was the Will Rogers Hotel from at least 1944 to 1967. 5,6
Building
This is a six story mansard roofed brick masonry hotel and store building with simple Classical ornamentation, on an interior lot. The facade is four bays wide, in a three part vertical composition with a commercial ground floor base, a three story, stucco surfaced shaft, a one story capital, and a one story attic with a sheet metal mansard roof with four pedimented dormers. Windows are set singly in slightly recessed molded bays. A molded belt course and modillion block cornice articulate the capital. The ground floor storefront has been altered; wood clerestory windows remain on the left side above the entry and lobby window of the residential hotel.
This building was developed by capitalist and wine merchant Charles Jurgens as a “lodging house,” perhaps originally for 1906 earthquake refugees, and also housed Jurgen’s wine business headquarters. The mansard top story, a rarity in Oakland, appears to have been added in 1907-1908. It is an unusual design by Oakland’s prolific and influential early architect Walter J. Mathews. 1
This historic building is #38 on the list of District Contributors for the Downtown Oakland Historic District Registration Form.
Links and References
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Downtown Oakland Historic District
- classified ad Oakland Tribune August 7, 1909
- Coroner Probing Teamster’s Death Oakland Tribune August 22, 1911
- ohrphoto.dpoa4.062 Oakland History Center, Oakland Public Library
- Oakland Directory 1944
- Oakland Directory 1967
From Fairmont to Belmont
Posted on March 5, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
1 / 9
I am now going to put forth a proposal for a film titled
From Fairmont to Belmont
It will be about the history of Bohemianism in Oregon, California, and NewYork. The movie ‘The Barbary Coast’ is from The Bozone. It is the model for my life. It is Victor Hugo Presco marrying Melba Charlotte Broderick the granddaughter of Augustus Janke of Belmont whose father built Belmont, and helped rebuild this famous Bohemian Capitol after the 1906 earthquake. My father’s mother is name after Charlottenburg Palace. The Stuttmeister lived on a street they made, at No.1 Berlin Way. They developed about fifty homes in the town of Fruit Vale, that like Fairmont, was swallowed up. Berlin Way is on my birth certificate. But, what is still blowing my mind, is where Wensel Anton Braskewitz-Prescowitz came from. He was born in Bohemia.
This is why I was anxious to find a backer to buy the old telephone exchange in Crockett. I wanted to live in a gallery-museum. Rosemary told me Victor Hugo gambled in the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. I found an address on Mission Street. Victor Hugo (named after the famous author) worked on Eddy Street. This Raymond Chandler and Norbert Davis. You can’t get any sleazier than this.
There was a sign over a street in San Francisco called ‘The International Settlement’. What went on there far surpasses the Tell-all permission given to Stacey Pierrot and her bevvy of ghost writers (by Robert Buck) one who says Ron Schwary “optioned” the story of our “Rosamond”. Is this true? How do I find out? Maybe Belmont will swing wide their golden gates for Julie Lynch who invented the testimony of Christine’s kindergarten teacher. Does this constitute stalking – and child abuse?
The International Settlement must rise again from the ashes of the plague, or, we are dead! I inherited the Bohemian Blueprint. That no one will fund me – spells DOOM!
“Rosebud!”
Rose Mont
John Presco
Copyright 2021
Victor Hugo Presco a Bohemian | Rosamond Press
The Royal Crockett Gallery | Rosamond Press
La Belle de San Francisco | Rosamond Press
Julie is a writer, producer and director, obsessed with movies that matter.
As a screenwriter, Julie has been commissioned and optioned several times.
Her biopic on the artist Rosamond was optioned by Oscar-winner Ron Schwary (Ordinary People).
Julie’s legal thriller, 27, placed second out of three thousand scripts in the IndieProducer Screenplay Contest. Julie and Vicki Light are producing.
Julie’s romantic thriller, Dark Desire, starring Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy) and Michael Nouri (Flashdance), was bought by LIFETIME and garnered excellent ratings.
Down For The Count On Eddy Street
Posted on October 2, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
My grandfather worked for Max Silver at 186 Eddy Street. He lived at the infamous Thomas Hotel that caught fire and killed 20 people. At 891 Mission Street, elderly folks were jumping out windows on to piles of mattresses the fireman had made in order to save their lives. How many millions of us had visualized doing this – as kids? To do so as abandoned seniors your brats don’t care about, is the height of existentialism.
“To jump, or, not to jump? Is it better to be consumed in the fires of hell, or, survive to suffer the indignation of your daughter and son-in-law not coming to visit you in the hospital, which tells you they wanted you to perish so they can be free of you – alas!”
Victor Hugo Presco jumped from the Roof of Life, and made sure he landed at the Very Bottom of Life. He quit! He was once a house painter, but, knocked that shit off. If he was an artist or a poet, then he would have owned A Life Excuse.
I have been drawn to this man I met, once. That was enough for him. Hugo was not a family man. Had he found the Buddha? Did he get a secret teaching from the owner of a Chinese Laundry on Mission Street? Was he an opium addict? He was a professional gambler. Did Max run a secret card room? There is a movement afoot to rename Eddy Street, that is farcical. One father sends out a warring to stay away from Eddy Street.
Victor Hugo of the Barbary Coast
Posted on May 26, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
My brother, Mark Presco, described Melba as a ‘Control Freak’. Coming from a master control freak, this is quite an honor. Mark stopped seeing our grandmother, because she put him to work every time he did. That was my experience. Vic was the same way. This is why I almost conclude the Stuttmeisters were Prussian Royalty. Vic and Melba have the look and baring. Hugo could not hang!
Rosemary Rosamond made porno movies for Big Bones Bremmer. Later, she was a high class hooker working out of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hollywood Stars has seen he infamous movies. Our mother was hardly ever home. I was the family cook. Christine watched me render large canvases in the little studio I built in the back of our home on Glendon.
There are blue-eyed Austrian Jews. I was befriended by one. Hugo had amazing blue eyes. After getting away from the ‘Control Freak’ he moved to the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. When he discovered he was a great poker player, we will never know. He made a living sitting at a table with gamblers. Victor Hugo Presco, was a professional gambler of the Barbary Coast. You can’t get any more Bohemian than this. Did he have a room above the Hippodrome? I would. When evening falls, I would put on my best duds and head for a card room. Who wants to get stuck with a bossy bitch and her spoiled brat – who demand all your attention? Victor Hugo – is my main man! I’m going to hang with his memory – till I die! We would have made great pals. Screw the Hansons!
1849: Badly drawn paintings of nude women adorn the walls of the best cafes in the city. Prostitutes begin to arrive from the east. They are frequently auctioned off from the decks of the arriving ships. Cafe owners often hire them to pose nude in displays in the dining halls. Gambling houses were everywhere. At the El Dorado it was reported that $80,000 once changed hands on the turn of a single card. Liquor and female companionship were often provided free of charge by the house as an incentive to frequent patrons.
This place was the Sin City of the world. It had an international reputation. It made the Capitol of Bohemianism, great. If we were told the truth, then we would know from where the dilemma came that ruined out lives. Melba’s father ran the California Barrel Company and delivered wood barrels to Bootleggers all over America. Rosemary made porno movies for Big Bones Remmer, the only Mafia boss working the West Coast out of Emeryville. Hugo and Rosemary would have gotten along great. Did they ever meet?
Men wanted to get drunk, see naked women, and get laid. There is nothing new under the sun. They also wanted to be bedazzled and entertained. I love the pic of the Bella Union Dance Hall. Looks like an exotic dancer sitting on a crescent moon. Human beings also love to dance. Here is the rebirth of Ancient Rome. Here is the new Hippodrome. Then came Bill Graham and the………..
THE HIPPIEDROME
Then there was the Red Mill, later called ‘The Moulin Rouge’. We Prescos got it covered. The Faux Caretakers have destroyed us. I will sell our True Story to HBO! We will be reborn. We will dance naked again, in the woods with the Woodminster and the Faun. Did Hugo meet any artists?
Captain Gregory
Copyright 2016
http://hoodline.com/2015/04/art-supply-store-artist-craftsman-has-storied-barbary-coast-past
Interior of the Moulin Rouge nightclub in the Barbary Coast, 1911
555 Pacific was such a place, going through multiple iterations of clubs and dance halls. The existing building is pretty much a reconstruction of a saloon that was there before the earthquake, but was known as the Red Mill, later renamed in French to Moulin Rouge in attempts to class up the joint. The exterior was covered in plaster reliefs of satyrs chasing naked wood nymphs. By the late 1930s, the Hippodrome moved into the spot.
http://sf.curbed.com/2013/5/24/10239866/have-a-good-time-at-the-hippodrome-on-terrific-street
BARBARY COAST
Historical Essay
Barbary Coast, 1909.
The Hippodrome by day, c. 1900-1920.
Photos: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
1849: Badly drawn paintings of nude women adorn the walls of the best cafes in the city. Prostitutes begin to arrive from the east. They are frequently auctioned off from the decks of the arriving ships. Cafe owners often hire them to pose nude in displays in the dining halls. Gambling houses were everywhere. At the El Dorado it was reported that $80,000 once changed hands on the turn of a single card. Liquor and female companionship were often provided free of charge by the house as an incentive to frequent patrons.
1860-1880: It was in the mid-1860s that the term “Barbary Coast” came into being. It derived its name from its similarity to the notorious Barbary Coast in Africa, and stretched from Montgomery to Stockton along Pacific Street, with branches off into Kearny and Grant Ave. The area had already been cleaned out twice before by the Vigilantes, but once again it began to grow with dives gambling halls, and houses of prostitution. One particularly dangerous block on Pacific between Kearny and Montgomery was known as Terrific Street. A writer in 1876 described the area:
The Barbary Coast is the haunt of the low and the vile of every kind. The petty thief, the house burglar, the tramp, the whore monger, lewd women, cut-throats, murderers, are all found here. Dance halls and concert-saloons, where blear-eyed men and faded women drink vile liquor, smoke offensive tobacco, engage in vulgar conduct, sing obscene songs and say and do everything to heap upon themselves more degradation, are numerous. Low gambling houses, thronged with riot-loving rowdies, in all stages of intoxication, are there. Opium dens, where heathen Chinese and God-forsaken men and women are sprawled in miscellaneous confusion, disgustingly drowsy or completely overcome, are there. Licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, loathsome disease, insanity from dissipation, misery, poverty, wealth, profanity, blasphemy, and death, are there. And Hell, yawning to receive the putrid mass, is there also.
–from Lights and Shades of San Francisco by Benjamin Estelle Lloyd, 1876.
One of the more colorful and memorable characters of the Barbary Coast was a one-time actor whose only name was Oofty Goofty. Oofty Goofty’s great claim to fame was his insensitivity to pain. For many years he made his living along the Barbary Coast by being the willing victim of physical abuse. For ten cents a man might kick Oofty Goofty as hard as he pleased; for a quarter he would let himself be hit with a walking stick; and for fifty cents he would take a blow from a baseball bat.
The Old Hippodrome and Bella Union Dance Halls at 557 Pacific Street between Kearny and Montgomery. Jesse B. Cook on sidewalk, February 1925.
Photo: Jesse Brown Cook collection, online archive of California I0050526A
Hippodrome, early 1930s.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
Those who escaped the clutches of the crimps and runners trying to shanghaithem frequented the dance halls of the Barbary Coast, where “dancing” with a woman could take any form or degree the patron wished. Those who desired serious drinking could choose from a variety of establishments, the most dangerous of which was The Whale–as tough a bar-room as San Francisco ever boasted. The most famous criminals of the time could frequently be found there, as for the most part, even the police were afraid to enter. Another famous drinking establishment was the Cobweb Palace, run by Abe Warner, a lover of spiders, who let them spin their webs without interference. The webs hung were festooned across the ceiling and down the walls. Liquor was especially cheap at Martin and Horton’s, where one of its most infamous patrons was a shy little man who tended to sit unobtrusively at the back of the room. He was in fact, Black Bart, the highway bandit who held up stages with an unloaded gun and always left behind a bit of poetry signed “Black Bart the PO8.”
The primary industry of the Barbary Coast was prostitution. Three particular types of brothels were to be found: the cow-yard, which served as both apartment building and brothel; the crib, the lowest and most disreputable of the houses; and the parlor house, whose employees were considered the “aristocracy” of San Francisco’s red-light district.
The women who worked in the dives, regardless of their age, were called “pretty waiter girls.” They were usually paid $15 to $25 a week to serve as waitresses, entertainers and prostitutes. For a small fee a man could view any pretty waiter girl free of her clothing. During the 1870s one Mexican fandango den dressed its girls in no more than red jackets, black stockings, garters and slippers. This dress code was abandoned in a few weeks due to overwhelming and uncontrollable crowds.
More often than not the owners of these brothels, regardless of what kind of house they operated, came away with great fortunes. The more frequented parlor houses seemed each to have its own speciality. Madame Bertha, who ran a parlor house located in Sacramento Street, in addition to the usual activities of such an establishment, gave organ recitals on Sunday afternoons to specially invited guests. The prostitutes sang popular songs while Madame Bertha accompanied.
Madame Johanna employed three French girls who gave erotic exhibitions and were known as the Three Lively Fleas. She was also the originator of “direct mail advertising” for brothels, sending pictures of the naked girls to specially procured mailing lists.
Little Egypt on the Barbary Coast, 1890
The bagnio owned by Madame Gabrielle at Geary and Stockton featured a weekly show in which the participants were black men and white women. Frequently a parlor house had its own particular motto which could be found framed in every room. The motto of a California street house was What is Home Without Mother?Each of the parlor houses in Commercial Street boasted a chamber called the “Virgin Room,” where a gullible customer could be accommodated at double or triple the usual price. Usually the room was staffed with a girl young enough, and enough of an actress to simulate fright and bewilderment. She was usually paid slightly more than the other prostitutes.
The Hippodrome in 1890; Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
A frequent patron of these house was San Francisco’s most notorious murderer of the time, Theodore Durrant. When not frequenting prostitutes or murdering them, Durrant spent his time as a medical student and an assistant superintendent of Sunday school, prominent in the work of the Christian Endeavor Society. His modus operandi was to bring a small bird to the parlor house and at some time during the evening slit its throat and let the blood drip over his body.In the cribs and cow-yards, customers were not permitted to remove their shoes, or often any garments at all–except for their hats. Only a specific kind of crib, called a “creep joint” permitted the removal of clothing, and the reason for that was in order that an accomplice could steal all his money and valuables. It was, however, customary to leave a shiny new dime in the customer’s pocket. The origin of the custom is unknown–perhaps it was left as car-fare.
Cribs were located throughout the Barbary Coast, but black and Hispanic establishments were concentrated on Broadway between Grant and Stockton. The French houses could be found primarily in Commercial Street.
1900: Three blocks of dance halls with the loudest possible music blasting forth from orchestras, steam pianos and gramophones in such establishments as The Living Flea, The Sign of the Red Rooster, Ye Olde Whore Shop. Extended from the foot of Telegraph Hill to the shoreline, largely along Pacific Street and Broadway. The Dew Drop Inn, Canterbury Hall and Opera Comique all specialize in erotica of a high order. Dead Man’s Alley, Murder Point and Bull Run form a secret network of tunnels through which people as well as booty were smuggled. The area takes in Chinatown, and Asians are often blamed for this blight on the city.
The San Francisco Examiner, the newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, is nicknamed The Whore’s Daily Guide and Handy Compendium due to the thinly disguised ads for prostitutes in the classified section.
Dancers at Spider Kelly’s on the Barbary Coast, 1911.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
The worst of cribs were to be found on Morton Street (now ironically enough called Maiden Lane). The most notorious was the Nymphia on Pacific Street, the Marsicania on Dupont Street (Grant Ave.), and the Municipal Brothel on Jackson Street near Kearny. On a slow night the pimps might sell the privilege of touching a prostitute’s breasts for the fee of ten cents. On a good night a prostitute might service as many as a hundred men.
The Nymphia, a three-story building with about a hundred and fifty cubicles on each floor, was erected in 1899. The intention of the owners was to name the place the Hotel Nymphomania and to stock it with women suffering from that condition. When the police refused to permit that name, the owners compromised, calling it the Nymphia. Each female resident was required to remain naked at all times and was obliged to entertain any man who called. For a dime a customer would view the activities in any room through a narrow slit in the door. The place was first raided by police in 1900 and after several legal battles, finally closed down in 1903.
The San Francisco Call described the Marsicania as “one of the vilest dens ever operated in San Francisco.” Its population was about 100 prostitutes, each of whom paid $5 a night rental cost. It was opened in 1902 and enjoyed a period of prosperity when the police were legally restrained from blockading or entering the premises except under extreme emergencies. This decision was overturned in 1905 and the Marsicania was forced to close.
On Jackson Street the Municipal Brothel or the Municipal Crib was called so due to the fact that most of its profits went into the pockets of city officials and prominent politicians. It was build in 1904 on the site of the underground Chinese tenement known as the Devil’s Kitchen, or (with great sarcasm) the Palace Hotel. The women were graded by floors with the Mexican prostitutes in the basement, and the black women on the fourth floor. In between a variety of nationalities were represented. The Municipal Crib was protected from police raids until the prosecution of formerMayor Eugene Schmitz and Abe Ruef, who had received regular payments from the profits.
When it was at last closed in 1907, the Municipal Crib was the last significant cow-yard to operate in San Francisco. For all intents and purposes the flesh-pits that were the Barbary Coast were wiped off the face of the map by the great earthquake and fire of 1906.
The opium dives, slave-dens, cowyards, parlorhouses, cribs, deadfalls, dance-halls, bar-rooms, melodeons and concert saloons were all turned to ash. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was called by the clergymen. The day following the great fire, men lined up for blocks in order to patronize the brothels of Oakland. The slave-trade of Chinatown came to an end and the opium dens were never rebuilt. But the entrepeneurs of the Barbary Coast were determined to rebuild the quarter upon the ruins of the old. By 1907 it was once again in full operation.
While the city of San Francisco officially disdained the goings-on of the Barbary Coast, it took a secret pride in this area widely proclaimed as the wickedest town in the U.S.A. After the great earthquake and fire, the Barbary Coast became more of a tourist attraction than its predecessor. Such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt and ballet dancer Anna Pavlova were known to frequent the area. British poet John Masefield is to have said immediately after disembarking, “Take me to see the Barbary Coast.” Dance-floors and variety shows designed to shock the tourists replaced prostitution as the chief business. Indeed, many of the dance crazes that swept America during this period were originated in this section of San Francisco: the turkey trot; the bunny hug; the chicken glide; the Texas Tommy, the pony prance, the grizzly bear, and other varieties of semi-acrobatic dancing. Among the many dance halls on the Barbary Coast, the Thalia, on Pacific between Kearny and Montgomery, remained the most popular. It usually featured a “Salome dancer” or strip-tease artist.
The number of women working on the Barbary Coast during this period ranged from 800 to 3,000. They were paid from $12 to $20 a week to dance and drink with the customers and to appear on stage in ensemble choruses. Many engaged in prostitution but usually in their after hours. Their dress was described as “of the cheapest fabric, many of them torn and stained, none reaching below the knees, and here and there hooks missing and bodices yawning in the back, but always the silk stocking as the inevitable mark of caste.” [San Francisco Call, 1911] Often the girls were barely in their teens, and the dance-halls frequently served as recruiting agents for the brothels.
Barbary Coast after the ’06 quake
The first dive to open after the earthquake, and perhaps the most notorious establishment on the Barbary Coast of the post-earthquake period, was the Seattle Saloon and Dance Hall, in Pacific St. near Kearny. The women employed there were paid from $15 to $20 a week, and following the custom of an earlier deadfall, they were forbidden from wearing underwear. Advertisements of this feature were discretely passed around the saloons of the city. The women were also paid a slight percentage of the drinks they sold and entitled to half of whatever they might pick from the pockets of their dance partners. (The proprietors often complained that the girls were dishonest in reporting the true amounts they had stolen.) But the women of the Seattle soon developed another source of income by supposedly selling their house keys to drunken patrons who would pay from $1 to $5 each for a key. The keys of course were bogus, and the police soon put an end to this practice after receiving numerous complaints from homeowners about drunken men searching hopelessly in the middle of the night for locks their keys might open.
When the Seattle was sold in 1908, its name was changed to the Dash. The waitresses were replaced by male cross-dressers who for $1 would perform whatever sex act was requested. It was soon revealed that the new managers were two officers of the Superior Court under Judge Carroll Cook. The place was closed six months after it had opened.
1910-1920: In 1911 the Board of Health established a Municipal Clinic which compelled every prostitute to submit to examination and necessary treatment for disease. Prostitutes were required to carry a booklet listing her record of medical examinations, and no woman was permitted inside a brothel without a medical certificate. The Clinic existed for only two years, but in that time reduced venereal disease in the red-light district by 66 percent. The Clinic was fought bitterly by nearly every clergyman in the city. Mayor James Rolph, Jr., who had gone on record as supporting the work of the clinic, eventually succumbed to the political pressure brought to bear by the clergymen and ordered police protection withdrawn from the clinic. Soon afterward the Clinic closed its doors and diseases once again raged unhindered throughout the red-light district.
The defeat of the Union Labor Party in 1911 marked the beginning of the end of the Barbary Coast. Gone was the general feeling of Gold Rush days that San Francisco must remain a “wide-open” city. In 1912 the new Police Commissioner Jesse B. Cook launched a direct attack on the Barbary Coast publishing his plans in the newspapers:
1) All dance-halls and resorts patronized by women in Montgomery Avenue (now Columbus) west of Kearny Street and on both sides of Kearny Street to be abolished.
2) Barkers in front of the dance-halls in Pacific Street to be done away with and glaring electric signs forbidden.
3) No new saloon licenses to be issued until the number had been reduced to 1500 which was to be the limit in future.
4) Raids to be made against the blind pigs.
In February of 1913 another resolution was adopted:
Resolved, That no female shall be employed to sell or solicit the sale of liquor in any premises where liquor is sold at retail to which female visitors or patrons are allowed admittance. The enforcement of this resolution proved completely futile, but it did send out the message that the Barbary Coast of old was not to be tolerated.
But it was the San Francisco Examiner under the leadership of William Randolph Hearst which led the crusade that eventually brought down the Coast. Many churches and welfare organizations promptly jumped on the Examiner’s bandwagon, and on September 22, 1913, the Police Commission adopted the following resolution:
Resolved, That after September 30, 1913, no dancing shall be permitted in any cafe, restaurant, or saloon where liquor is sold within the district bounded on the north and east by the Bay, on the south by Clay street, and on the west by Stockton Street. Further Resolved, That no women patrons or women employees shall be permitted in any saloon in the said district. Further Resolved, That no license shall hereafter be renewed upon Pacific Street between Kearny and Sansome Streets, excepting for a straight saloon.
In September of 1913 the Thalia displayed the following sign:
THIS IS A CLEAN PLACE FOR CLEAN PEOPLE — NO MINORS ALLOWED.
This sign perhaps more than any other signalled the end of the Barbary Coast. Even the most notorious of the dance halls now had trouble attracting enough customers to stay in business.
The Thalia Dance Hall at 732 Pacific Street, with Jesse B. Cook on sidewalk, February 1925.
Photo: Jesse Brown Cook collection, online archive of California I0050528A
In 1914 the Red-Light Abatement Act gave the city authorities the right to impose civil court actions against any property used for purposes of prostitution. Also during this same time a young Methodist clergyman, Reverend Paul Smith, took it upon himself to launch a tireless campaign against whatever sin and vice yet remained on the Barbary Coast. (It was reported that his sermons were so provocative that prostitutes flocked to the vicinity of his church after the services, where they found eagerly aroused customers). Rev. Smith’s campaign against immorality came to a head on a January morning when more than 300 prostitutes dressed and perfumed in their finest marched to the Central Methodist Church to confront the minister. When admitted to the church they posed the question, “How are we to make a living when all the brothels have closed?” The Rev. is said to have replied that he would work tirelessly to establish a minimum-wage law and would assist the women in finding new employment. He claimed that a virtuous woman with children could live on $10 a week. “That’s why there’s prostitution!” came the reply, at which point the ensemble left the church in disgust.
January 25, 1917, three hundred prostitutes march to Central Methodist Church to protest anti-prostitution campaigning by Rev. Paul Smith.
In 1917 the Supreme Court rendered its final decision on the Red-Light Abatement Act. Dancing was now prohibited in all cafes and restaurants anywhere in the vicinity bordered by Larkin, O’Farrell, Mason and Market; all private booths were removed in establishments where liquor was sold; and unescorted women were to be ejected from such premises. These regulations effectively closed down such notorious Barbary Coast establishments as the Black Cat, the Panama, the Pup, Stack’s, Maxim’s, the Portola, the Louvre, the Odeon and the Bucket of Blood.
1920s: In one final gasp at life, the Barbary Coast recalling its former glory as the most notorious section of San Francisco, once again attempted to resurrect itself in 1921. The Neptune, Palace, Elko and Olympia again opened their doors, selling near beer and featuring a few dancing girls. But the watchful eye of Mrs. W. B. Hamilton, Chairman of the Clubwomen’s Vigilante Committee, soon saw to it these newly opened dens of iniquity were not to be endured. She reported to the newspapers, “I have visited dancing places in Honolulu, Tahiti and various islands of the South Pacific, but I saw nothing in those places more obscene and morally degrading than I saw in the Neptune Palace.” The police took immediate action and the Barbary Coast was at last closed down for all time.
Patrons in the Hippodrome, 1934.
Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library
1940s: U.S. military insists on shutting down brothels and bars around the city as tens of thousands of soldiers pour through San Francisco en route to and from the Pacific Theatre of War.
1950s: Mayor George Christopher appoints a beat cop as police chief and Chief Ahern instigates a crackdown on police corruption and vice tolerance.
Pacific Avenue looking west between Montgomery and Kearny, November, 1953.
Photo: Charles Ruiz collection
The Old “International Settlement” sign at Kearny and Pacific just before its final removal, June 6, 1957.
Photo: Bancroft Library
1960s: Carol Doda takes off her top at the Condor Club at Broadway and Columbus. She becomes a big celebrity and contributes mightily to San Francisco’s now-restored reputation as a town where anything goes.
1970s: Pornography industry gets a big boost by the entry of two Bay Area brothers, the infamous Mitchell Brothers. Their first feature porn film, Behind the Green Door, brings hardcore pornography into wide circulation. Their club on O’Farrellendures hundreds of raids by SFPD Vice officers, but is never shut down. “Lap Dancing” and other forms of nude entertainment are accepted in the City.
Living At The Moose Club
Posted on February 23, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
The Moose Club
At the end of my first session with my woman therapist, I almost asked;
“Have you seen ‘The Sopranos’? They are fictional characters. The Prescos are-were, for real. I’m the last man standing.
Alas with the discovery of ‘The Artist’s Tea Room’ scow, I got my McGuffin. Everything I write, everything I do, is going to come out of there.
When Rosemary stabbed Vic between the eyes, and drove him from our home, he moved into a crash pad on Ashby and Telegraph with his best friend, Pat Burns. Captain Vic took us there. Everyone was hung over. Someone had done a painting on the window shade. There were poker chips on a table. We picked up the deck of cards, and looked at The Nudies. I am sure Vic and his Bohemian Brotherhood, were smoking weed. This is 1959. Instead of our father helping us with our pubescence, our coming of age, we are drafted in the struggle to give Vic a second chance, another childhood. Maybe this time he will get it right. When he did not pay a dime of childhood, our mother cut him off. She forbad him to see his children again. That ban, is legend!
When Pops came to visit me at Peter Shapiro’s house, he spotted a piano and sat down.
“Can you teach me to play the piano? I always want to play?”
There was a set of drums that Big Kid got behind, and he picked up the sticks. Peter and I lived together with The Loading Zone in a large Victorian in downtown Oakland. Vic got himself a crash-pad on Alice Street with Dirty-DeeDee who was the craziest woman I ever met – after Laurie Landis. On Alice, I got a Royal Flush in Spades while playing with bad dudes connected to the Mexican Mafia. Vic loved this place. Everyone got it, what this place was: This was the home of Wolf Larsen. Go down Alice street seven blocks and you are in the heart of Jack London Square. Directly across the bay is Dogpatch, where the California Barrel Company was located. Vic’s grandfather was an executor at this company.
The Moose Club is next door to Captain Larsen’s pad. I lived at the Moose when I had to get away from bad-ass Laurie, who one morning, early, climbed the fir escape six floors…to take me out for a drink. It was 5:00 A.M.
I made a point to keep Vic and Laurie, apart. I wish I had taken Rena to meet my Old Man of the Sea, and then, walked out of his life – forever…..A Man?
Six months ago I talked with an attorney about a guy connected to Meg Whitman using my copyrighted name California Barrell Company that is now associated with Crocket’s floating bordellos. This company is real Bay Area History that needs to be preserved. We got chase out of San Francisco by a famous Earthquake and Fire. We co-founded Fruit Vale, that was consumed by the City of Oakland.
John Presco
Copyright 2020
My father, Vic Presco, told me Garth Benton’s father served time in the Fed lock-up for making a False Deed of Trust. Two weeks after Christine drowned, Stacey Pierrot told me on the phone Garth’s father was coming into the Rosamond gallery, and, making her nervous. Before the funeral, Vicki Presco told me Garth was in a lot of trouble. Garth and his buddy, Lawrence Chazen, tried to become the Executor of my sister’s estate. The Benton divorce was just finalized. Chazen got his antique furniture back after he filed a lein. Christine filed Bankruptcy. The Benton’s were on file as the owner of Vic’s house in Lafayette that he claimed he owned. He built a large addition to house his fiancé and her six kids that was going to smuggle across the border in a marijaha shipment.
I told this guy that met Chazen at an foreclosure auction, that my father met him at the Copper Penny bar&grill where all the Realtor’s hangout. If you have a California Real Estate license, you can make Home Loans. How are the recorded? Can you stay under the radar? You could keep track of home owners in trouble, right there in the bar! Chazen and his Team makes high interest loans, then, wait for the new owner to default, and run the scam again, and again. Then, you bundle these loans up and sell them overseas to big European banks. MELTDOWN!
Oakland, Fairmont, and Harris
Posted on August 14, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Kamala Harris is for Oregon and we are for Kamala.
I was born and raised in Oakland and took part in this cities redevelopment.
The Promoter of Fairmont
Posted on February 4, 2019by Royal Rosamond Press
The Lost Promoter of Fairmount
March 17, 2014
George Melvin Miller was titled ‘The Prophet of Lane County’. Lane County was named after Joseph Lane who ran with John Breckenridge for the White House. John is my kindred via John Preston who is kin to Jessie Benton Fremont who authored her husband’s journal about his expedition into the Oregon Territory.
San Sebastian Avenue
by
John Presco
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
On February 19, 2026, I contacted, and spoke with one person about contributing some, if not all, my family history to the Oakland History Center.
Hello Aaron:
“Hello: My name is John Presco and I am four generations Oakland. I am the President of Royal Rosamond Press, which may be the largest blog in the world. I am 80, and am looking at Oakland History Center as the place that will archive my family history.”
Vice President, Kamala Harris, worked in Oakland’s District Attorneys office, with Frank Coakley. We Presco children were close with his daughter, who lived at the top of San Sebastian, on Hollywood. The related Coakley, Merritt, and Sedgewick families, bring Andy Warhol, and Edith Sedgewick, to Oakland, where the world famous artist, Christine Rosamond Benton, grew up. Add to this the fact our great grandparents were the Founders of Belmont, where Jack London lived and worked, then my family history is
THE HISTORY OF THE BAY AREA!
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Hello: My name is John Presco and I am four generations Oakland. I am the President of Royal Rosamond Press, which may be the largest blog in the world. I am 80, and am looking at Oakland as the place that will archive my family history.
Hello Aaron:
Here is my childhood friend, Nancy Hamren nee’ Van Brasch, who lived on Stowe Avenue. She was a good friend of Ken Kesey. A yogurt was named after her, She worked at the Springrield Creamery forever!
Above is a pic of my ex-wife, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, who lived with Thomas Pynchon for a coup of years, including in Oakland.
Here is a pic of John Presco and his sister Christine Rosamond Benton
.
I Am Related To Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor
After my minor sixteen year old daughter was lured away, and disappeared from my life for two years, I discovered from my kindred, Jimmy Rosamond, that the three of us descend from the same great grandfather, James Rosamond. This puts us in a rosy family tree with many actors and actresses, one of them being Carrie Fisher, who wrote a famous book about substance abuse. Liz was the muse of Andy Warhol, and encouraged Michael Jackson to take up art.
Jon Presco
Emmanuel Dunand/Getty Images
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The True Story of Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol
Alice Sedgwick Wohl’s new memoir pulls back the curtain on her celebrity sister’s story
Ella Feldman – Daily CorrespondentAugust 18, 2022
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Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, model, and socialite. Best known as a Warhol superstar, she gained widespread recognition as a style icon; in 1965, Vogue magazine named her a “Youthquaker,” recognizing her influence on youth culture.[1]
Sedgwick starred in several of Andy Warhol‘s underground films, including Poor Little Rich Girl (1965) and Beauty No. 2 (1965). After leaving Warhol’s Factory scene in 1966, she pursued acting and modeling independently but never regained the same level of prominence. Her mental health deteriorated from drug abuse, and she struggled to complete the semi-autobiographical film Ciao! Manhattan (1972). Sedgwick died of an overdose in 1971 at the age of 28.
Early life and education (1943–1964)
Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California, the seventh of eight children of Alice Delano de Forest (1908–1988) and Francis Minturn Sedgwick (1904–1967), a rancher, sculptor[2] and member of the historical Sedgwick family of Massachusetts. Sedgwick’s mother was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest, the president and chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad.[3] Her maternal great-grandfather, Reverend Endicott Peabody, founded the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts.[4][5] She was named after her father’s aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes, who was painted with her husband, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, by John Singer Sargent.[6] She was of English and French Huguenot ancestry.
Christine Rosamond (October 24, 1947 – March 26, 1994)[1]—who became known by her middle name, Rosamond — was an American artist made famous by her paintings, watercolors, etchings, lithographs, and acrylics.[2] Born Christine Rosamond Presco in 1947, she is best known for her use of negative space and the predominance of women in her pictures.[3] Some of Rosamond’s most familiar pieces are “Blue Ice”, “Autumn”, and “Denim and Silk.” At one time, Rosamond’s public works sold in the millions.[1] In the early 1970s, when Rosamond’s name was a household word, it was extremely unusual for a woman to rise to this kind of prominence in the art scene.[4]
Early life
Rosamond was born in Vallejo, California to Victor and Rosemary Presco on October 24, 1947.[5] Rosamond was the third of four children who grew up in an extremely dysfunctional household. Both parents were alcoholics who often failed to feed their children. All four children eventually became alcoholics themselves, though Rosamond and her brother John later joined Alcoholics Anonymous. John’s artwork was chosen twice to tour the world in a Red Cross show, when he was thirteen, and again when he was sixteen. Rosamond and John were pioneers in the Hippie Movement. They lived in a famous commune with the daughters of Jirayr Zorthian, who has been titled “The Last Bohemian”. After seeing the large portrait John did of his muse, Rena Easton, Rosamond took up art in 1972 to support herself and her young daughter, Shannon Rosamond.
Career beginnings
John and his friend—and Rosamond’s eventual lover—Bryan MacLean were the school artists at University High School in West Los Angeles. Bryan became a roadie for the Byrds when he was seventeen and would later play with the rock group Love. Bryan’s father was an architect for the stars, and had designed Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor’s home. Through him, Bryan knew the Hollywood crowd. In 1964, Rosamond accompanied her brother and Bryan on the Monday Night Art Walks on La Cienaga Boulevard, during which Rosamond learned much about art and galleries.
Attending minor art classes at UCLA, Rosamond saw her career begin to rise when her then-partner, Scott Hale, encouraged her to display her paintings at the 1972 Westwood Art Fair. Priscilla Presley bought one her works, which got the attention of gallery owner Ira Cohen. Ira purchased all of Rosamond’s work and commissioned her to complete a painting for him on a weekly basis. Being a single mother, this was a hard contract to meet. Rosamond purchased a projector and according to her ex-husband, Garth Benton, employed images of models she cut out from fashion magazines, then broadcast them on empty canvas. Nevertheless, her immense talent, combined with the climate of the era and the 1970s feminist zeitgeist, had Rosamond selling millions of her paintings around the world. A Rosamond print was a symbol of affluence.
Rise to fame
Though Rosamond saw massive success during her time working for Ira Cohen, she also felt as though her work was being devalued; she believed her art belonged in galleries and not simply on merchandise. In an attempt to elevate her work from poster to fine art, Rosamond began a working relationship with the art printer Jack Solomon, owner of Circle Gallery in San Francisco. Solomon commissioned painters for lithographs, and in this environment where Rosamond’s art was not only appreciated but celebrated, she experienced her most meteoric rise to fame of her young career. For a brief period, she was known as “the most published artist in the world.”[6] She continued to paint and release images as lithographs under the banner of her company to keep artistic control. Rosamond spent four months in Paris, completing four new lithographs with the prestigious Atelier Mourlot.
Rosamond had a falling out with her brother John when he met her new husband, Richard Partlow, a Grammy-winning foley artist. After the failure of that marriage, Rosamond would later marry Garth Benton, cousin of the muralist and artist Thomas Hart Benton, who was the teacher and friend of Jackson Pollack.
Death
Just weeks after Rosamond’s last art expo in 1994, she was invited to stay in a famous home twenty miles south of Carmel at Rocky Point. As reported in the Carmel Pinecone, Rosamond had nightmares about a giant wave causing her demise. On March 26, 1994, Rosamond, her sister, Vicki Presco, her son, Shamus Dundon, and Christine’s daughter, Drew Benton, were getting ready for a party that Stacey Pierrot was going to attend. The four were not exploring tide-pools, because there are none at Rocky Point. How Christine ended up in the ocean remains a mystery. The claim that a rogue wave, “unusual for that time of year”, took her out to sea is unsupported. There is no season for rogue waves. Rosamond was 46, and was celebrating her first sober birthday. She was very protective of Drew, and due to her nightmares, would not let her near any large body of water. The person who invited her to stay at this home is not known.[6]
Further reading
- Lynch, Julie (2010-03-27). Rosamond: A Complete Catalogue Raisonne, 1947-1994. Illustrations by Christine Rosamond. Rosamond Publishing. ISBN 978-0615359892.
- Snyder, Tom (2000-09-05). When You Close Your Eyes. Rosamond Publishing. ISBN 978-0972517508.
References
Merritt – Sedgwick – Coakley
The Sedgwick family married into the Samuel Merritt family a mayor of Oakland who made Lake Merritt where Bill Arnold and I spent most of our time, he living a block away on Athol. Kay Coakley befriended the Presco children, she the daughter of J. Francis Coakley, Oakland’s famous DA who went after Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement, Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, as well as bootleggers and prostitutes in Emeryville. I believe Coakley kept Rosemary out of jail after she was busted for making porno movies for Big Bones Remmer. The Coakleys claim they descend from Fair Rosamond.
Kay had a huge landscap of Lake Merritt in her dining room that should have been in a museum. Rosemary told her children the Coakley family owned allot of property around this lake.
DA Frank Coakley and The Blue Angel
Frank Coakley’s daughter saw the Blue Angel my sister’s saw, that I believe is Angel Moroni. When Kamala ran for office, she had worked as a DA in Oakland. It was this history I was sharing with my friends, Ed Howard, and tried to share with the Belmont Historical Society. Kay Coakley was going to adopt Vicki Presco, and make her her heir. Vicki’s great, great, great grandfather, is Carl Janke. She disrobed the Blue Angel standing at the foot of her, and Christine Rosamond Benton’s bed.
Win or lose, or even become the Presidential Candidate, or, President if Biden, passes away, Kamala’s History is my families history, and the History of Belmont California.
John Presco
Copyright 2024
As DA, Coakley returned to the trial courts in 1955 to prosecute Burton Abbott in one of the most highly-publicized cases in the history of California. Abbott was charged with abducting and murdering 14-year old Stephanie Bryan as she was walking home from school in Berkeley. Abbott was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber in 1957. For Coakley and the DA’s Office, the 1960’s were a particularly difficult time because of civil unrest and criminal acts associated with the free speech movement, Vietnam War demonstrations, and the emergence of the Black Panther Party in Oakland.
Kamala Harris and the Noble Path of the Prosecutor
November 20, 2020
In the opening of her memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” from 2019, Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris writes that, as a law student, she found her “calling” while interning at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, in Oakland, California, in 1988. Harris then spent nearly three decades in law enforcement, referring to herself as “top cop,” rising from local prosecutor to district attorney of San Francisco and then attorney general of California—the first woman and the first Black person in these jobs—until she joined the U.S. Senate, in 2017.
Merritt – Sedgwick – Coakley
Posted on August 12, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
The Sedgwick family married into the Samuel Merritt family a mayor of Oakland who made Lake Merritt where Bill Arnold and I spent most of our time, he living a block away on Athol. Kay Coakley befriended the Presco children, she the daughter of J. Francis Coakley, Oakland’s famous DA who went after Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement, Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, as well as bootleggers and prostitutes in Emeryville. I believe Coakley kept Rosemary out of jail after she was busted for making porno movies for Big Bones Remmer. The Coakleys claim they descend from Fair Rosamond.
Kay had a huge landscap of Lake Merritt in her dining room that should have been in a museum. Rosemary told her children the Coakley family owned allot of property around this lake.
J. Frank Coakley
James Francis Coakley was born and raised in Oakland, California, and educated at St. Mary’s College, Stanford University, and Boalt Hall law school of the University of California at Berkeley. In later years he taught law at both Boalt Hall and St. Mary’s.
Frank joined the Alameda County prosecutor’s staff on February 21, 1923, as a deputy district attorney, following his graduation from Boalt Hall. He served under three predecessors: Ezra Decoto, Earl Warren and Ralph Hoyt. Under Warren, Frank served as assistant head of the Criminal Division. Later, under Hoyt, he served as chief assistant.
Having served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, participating in the expedition to Vladivostok, Frank was recalled to active duty during World War II as a Commander in the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General service, serving as chief prosecutor for court martial cases in the 12th Naval District. Following the war, Frank briefly entered private practice with his brother, Thomas, who later became a Superior Court judge in Mariposa County. That interlude was short-lived, as Ralph Hoyt soon decided to move on to the bench himself. Frank was called to take over for Hoyt immediately. Although Frank had discovered private practice to be more lucrative, he knew his heart was with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, and that was where he belonged.
During his tenure as district attorney, he maintained his record as a great trial lawyer, conducted the civil business of the county with efficiency and imagination, contributed significantly to the legal growth of the state of California as chairman of the Law and Legislative Committees of both the District Attorneys Association and the Peace Officers Association, and built his office into one recognized publicly by the American Bar Association as the nation’s finest.
Three California Picks
Posted on July 5, 2024 by Royal Rosamond Press
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has been embarking across the U.S. in an effort to raise his national profile (Image credit: Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
If Biden can not continue, there are discussions Kamala and Newson may pick up the gauntlet. Why not Eric Swalwell? The new government in Britain would love to see more prosecution ofTrump.
John
California Picks
Posted on January 23, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
Crack open the case with Swalwell and Harris! Time to dine on Russian King Crab! Who better to show us how to use The Letter and Tools of the Law – to get all the Meaty Lies out of the Putin Trumpeters – then these two Representatives from California. Put on your bibs and line them up! It’s a…………Californian Red State Crab Fest!
Yeeeehaw! Bring on them Treacherous Red Traitors. Let Kamala and Eric use their Liar Tools on them! As President and Vice President, they’ll get those Russian King Crabs down on their knees begging for mercy! We want THE MEAT!………………….ALL THE MEAT!
John Presco
Bonds With Angels In Oakland
Posted on October 28, 2011 by Royal Rosamond Press
Frank Coakley helped oppress Mario Savio’s FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT. His daughter saw the Angel Christine and vicki saw. When Kay Coakley wanged to go shopping, a Oakland Police squad car took her.
The Police in Oakland went nuts again, and hurt a ex-Marine. I want to be there, and am.
I posted the follwoing in 2002
Jon
‘Bonds with Angels’ Message List
Reply Message #120 of 7395
FORWARD
‘Bonds with Angels’ is the story of two creative siblings and their
quest for a spiritual and creative Sanctuary. Published in
installments under the banner of, Royal Rosamond Press, named in
honor of the author and poet, Royal Rosamond.
This biography of Christine Rosamond, and, John Presco, was began in
1989 when I had two years of Recovery in AA, CODA, and Adult Children
of Alcoholics. It was to be the biography of all four Presco
Children, it my hope we would all get into a Program, as all six
members of my family suffered from the disease of alcoholism, and all
the abuses that are associated with this life-threatening tragedy.
On the morning of March 26, 1994, my beloved sister, Christine, known
around the world as the artist, Rosamond, was swept off treacherous
rocks near Carmel by the Sea, and drowned. This day was her first
Sober Birthday in Alcoholics Anonymous, she due to recieve her One
Year Coin that had this message upon it; “Unto thy own self be true.”
This story is on the verge of not being told as it should be. It is a
tale of Insanity, Magic, and Wonder, almost beyond belief!
Two weeks ago an attempt was made to get me to sign a paper giving
exclusive rights to a writer hired by Stacey Pierrot the owner
of ‘Rosamond Publishing’ preventing me from telling the truth about
my late sister. There are members of my family, and others, who would
use my sister’s fame for only making a profit, and for hiding the
terrible wounds an incestuous family system does make, behind all
those Masks, the angelic faces of those beautiful ‘Rosamond Women’.
It is time to unmask this secret wounding of children so the true
story of the ‘Rose of the World’ can emerge.
Our bonds with angels began early one Saturday morning when Christine
and my younger sister, Vicki, came rushing into the Boys Room at the
first sign I was awake. I was ten years old at the time, Christine
nine, and Vicki, five. Getting them to calm down, their faces lit-up
with excitement, they told me one of the strangest things I have ever
heard in my life. They told me in the middle of the night they had
woken to behold a powerful blue light filling their room, and in the
middle of the light, was a beautiful woman standing at the foot of
Christine’s bed looking down on her. She was in a long flowing gown,
and if she had wings, my sisters did not say; but they reasured me,
begged me to believe; “She was an Angel!”
Some of us are never called upon to believe in anything so
extraordinary, and as the morning progressed I had trouble with, her,
I not being a witness – and if I had been? In studying my sisters, I
saw they did not quite know where to put it, her, and I felt sorry
for them.
I then got a call from Kay Coakly who lived just up the street, and
who had befriended all the Presco children. She was stricken with
Parkinson’s disease when she was young, brought on by a car accident
at her coming-out party, she the daughter of a famous Judge in
Oakland Claifornia. The Coakley family owned large tracks of property
down by Lake Merrit where Jack London used to sail. Kay was a real
life Crone, and she wanted me to come fix her radio, the atenae that
she attached to her bedsprings prone to come loose. After seeing it
was still attached, I saw her looking tentively out the window. I
asked her what was wrong. She told me she was awoken in the middle of
the night by a powerful blue light – so powerful it burned holes in
her lace curtain; “Come take a look. I think it was those bad-boys
across the canyon shining a spotlight in my window.”
With the hair on the back of my neck, up and alert, I went over to
the window and beheld a ring of tiny burn holes about the size of
one’s head, and no bigger then the tip of your baby-finger. I looked
out the window, stood on my tip-toes, and told Kay; “You can’t even
see the canyon from this window. It couldn’t have been the boys.”
Kay did not say anything, repute my innocent deduction, she already
figuring this out, and, somethings in life do not have an
explination, and defy all attempts to clarify and classify the truly
extraordinary. Such is the nature of this story, and my Family, no
one quite able to believe. But, they did, and they still do. This
story is for them.
Jon Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Copyright 2001
Chapter One
“Don’t tell your mother you’re doing this.” Having given this gruff
command, our father, Victor William Presco, turned and walked out of
the huge factory, his heavy footsteps echoing as I studied my older
brother’s stoic grimace as we grabbed the ears of a hundred pound
sack of patatoes and lifted it up to the edge of the barrel-shaped
patatoe peeler, our traditonal two months of summer labour now under
way, we expected to do a man’s job, as we had long ago been
informed; ‘There’s no free lunch in this family!”
TO BE CONTINUED
Here is an exert from the excellent Coakley/Colclough family
genealogy that says there is a family legend Fair Rosamond Clifford
raised her two sons disguised as shepherds so they could not meet any
harm. But, at least another Clifford ancestor did the same two
hundred years later. In studying the mystery of the Pirory de Sion, I
have come to believe the ‘Sheperdess’ is the Shekinah ‘The Light of
God’ also known as ‘Rosa Mundi’, and the Angel Christine Rosamond saw
was the ‘Rosa Mundi’, which is the White Rose seen of the black flag
Death is carrying in the terrot card “Death”. This card has its roots
in the plague that swept through Europe, which brought about the
appearance of the ‘Rosary’ which consisted of rose petals rolled in a
ball and strung on a rouge string. They were alternating red and
white petals signifying the Apothecary Rose that has been called
the ‘Rosa Mundi’ of ‘The Rose of Provins’. In the War of the Roses
the House of York was the White Rose. I am convinced the Sheperdess
is Rosa Mundi, and the Virgin Mary, who is more then a mother to
those who have found their way into the Labyrinth, but literally a
Spirit that will never die, and a guide to all who seek the Truth.
There is an epidemic of Child Incest in this country, if not the
world, much of this abuse feuled by the disease of Alcoholism. As a
Bishop in my Nazarite Church, I bid those who suffer to take the oath
of the Nazarite and never ingest alcohol again.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
Founder: ‘Rose of the World Foundation’
http://members.fortunecity.com/chtii/colclough/Cap1.htm
Choo-Choo Joe and Blair House
Posted on December 11, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
J. Frank Coakley
James Francis Coakley was born and raised in Oakland, California, and educated at St. Mary’s College, Stanford University, and Boalt Hall law school of the University of California at Berkeley. In later years he taught law at both Boalt Hall and St. Mary’s.
Frank joined the Alameda County prosecutor’s staff on February 21, 1923, as a deputy district attorney, following his graduation from Boalt Hall. He served under three predecessors: Ezra Decoto, Earl Warren and Ralph Hoyt. Under Warren, Frank served as assistant head of the Criminal Division. Later, under Hoyt, he served as chief assistant.
Having served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, participating in the expedition to Vladivostok, Frank was recalled to active duty during World War II as a Commander in the U.S. Navy’s Judge Advocate General service, serving as chief prosecutor for court martial cases in the 12th Naval District. Following the war, Frank briefly entered private practice with his brother, Thomas, who later became a Superior Court judge in Mariposa County. That interlude was short-lived, as Ralph Hoyt soon decided to move on to the bench himself. Frank was called to take over for Hoyt immediately. Although Frank had discovered private practice to be more lucrative, he knew his heart was with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, and that was where he belonged.
During his tenure as district attorney, he maintained his record as a great trial lawyer, conducted the civil business of the county with efficiency and imagination, contributed significantly to the legal growth of the state of California as chairman of the Law and Legislative Committees of both the District Attorneys Association and the Peace Officers Association, and built his office into one recognized publicly by the American Bar Association as the nation’s finest.
Active in civic as well as public life, Frank served as chairman of the St. Mary’s College Board of Regents and was an active member of the local council of the Boy Scouts of America. He was awarded the International Civic Award of the Fraternal Order of Eagles in 1958 and in 1965 was honored as “Outstanding Prosecutor in the United States” by the National District Attorneys Association, a group he was instrumental in founding in 1950, and which he served as its first president. Following his retirement, the NDAA presented him with its “Furtherance of Justice Award”. In giving him that award, the NDAA said, “To this man the words, `Furtherance of Justice’ became the foundation on which he built his life.” In the years that followed, he served as then-Governor Ronald Reagan’s appointee to the California Commission on Interstate Cooperation, and the Commission on Uniform State Laws, and as the director of curriculum and president of the Board of Regents of the National College of District Attorneys, which he also helped found.
In 1952, on his way to the Republican National Convention as a candidate for President of the United States, then-Governor Earl Warren detoured to the annual convention of the California District Attorneys Association at Santa Cruz. In addressing this convention, Governor Warren said:
Frank came to the District Attorney’s Office in Alameda County in 1923. I was a deputy myself at that time in the office and for fifteen years he and I had a deep association that was most pleasant to me throughout. I want to say to you that I believe in the last quarter of a century there is no man in this state who has contributed more to good law enforcement than has Frank Coakley.
Upon his retirement in 1969, the Oakland Tribune said:
Coakley, who has served longer in his post than any other man–an unprecedented six terms–is regarded nation-wide as the dean of American district attorneys.
Alameda County Supervisor Emanuel Razeto summed up the sentiments of his fellow supervisors:
The highest compliment that can be paid to you, Frank, is that you kept this county clean.
According to Frank Coakley’s successor, Lowell Jensen (who later became head of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney General’s Office and then Deputy U.S. Attorney General under another Coakley-trained prosecutor, Edwin Meese III:
The District Attorney’s Office is really the pivotal office in the whole criminal justice process. . . . The district attorney is a discretionary executive officer who makes the decision as to what offenses are prosecuted and how they are disposed of. The standard of law enforcement in the county is to a great extent dependent upon what the district attorney does. Under Frank Coakley . . . there was a standard of law enforcement which was as tough as you could get. As far as Coakley was concerned, you don’t have consumer fraud rings, you don’t have organized crime and you don’t have corruption in governmental functions. He viewed the role of district attorney as one that was absolutely incorruptible and fearless.
Frank Coakley embodied integrity, dedication, and determination in public service. He stood personally for the highest degree of respect for law and the pursuit of justice. Office policy was that no one should be charged in a case unless the evidence supported a guilty verdict. If, during a trial, Frank came to believe the defendant innocent, he would seek his vindication just as earnestly as he would have sought his conviction had he believed him guilty. The objective was not a conviction, but rather justice. Throughout his life, J. Frank Coakley stood as a tough and aggressive advocate for justice. . . For the People.
Jan. 13, 1907
Alameda County
California, USA
Death:
Apr. 23, 1996
Alameda (Alameda County)
Alameda County
California, USA
Kathleen Coakley – wife of James; mother of Thomas and Clare Coakley-Klinge. Kathleen was preceded in death by her mother, Minnie Wrinkle.
Coakley
I was born in Oakland, California, just a few blocks from here at Seventeenth and Grove.
Although my name is James Francis, it was abbreviated to Frank Coakley because of the fact that my father’s name was James and my mother, I guess, rather than be calling two James around the house, decided to call me Francis. She had a brother whose name was Thomas Francis.
When I got to grammar school, St. Francis de Sales Grammar School, Hobart and Grove, Twenty-first and Grove, Oakland, I just simply had the name Francis Coakley. This is how I was known, on my report cards and so on. That just kind of stuck with me, and after I went to high school out at St. Mary’s High School on Broadway in Oakland, I was Francis Coakley. I continued that way through St. Mary’s College. It was abbreviated to Frank. People, instead of calling me Francis, called me Frank. I guess I’m better known as Frank Coakley, or J. Frank Coakley.
Father
Feingold
Your father, you said, had the same name as you?
Coakley
Yes. My father’s name was James Coakley. He was born in Ireland, County Cork near Bantry Bay, in a small
― 2 ―
village called Skibreen, a short distance from Bantry Bay, in the southwest corner of Ireland.
Feingold
How did he come to the United States?
Coakley
He came to the United States by ship. In those days people from Europe, particularly from Ireland, coming to the United States — those who were unable to pay, and most of the young folks from Ireland were unable to pay — would sign an agreement withe steamship companies, a promissory note which obligated them to pay back to the company the cost of their transportation as soon as they could after getting a job in the United States.
My father was born in 1868. Of course Ireland was very poor at that time, and had been very poor for centuries. The Irish, particularly the Irish in the southern part of Ireland, that is to say, south of what is now North Ireland, were ground down and persecuted and discriminated against by the British in a very, very flagrant manner. They were murdered and massacred just for going to church. It’s one of the blackest and most sordid things in the history of civilization, particularly of the British Empire.
So anyway, the average young Irish boy was poor. My father had two brothers and two sisters. He had an uncle who had come to this country earlier, and who, by the way, I’m infomred, and I think reliably informed, crossed the United States to California on horseback in the very early days. The uncle settled around here, around Oakland. He liked the climate and so forth, and he wrote back, and my father’s oldest sister, who was a schoolteacher in Ireland, came out here. Then my father came out. He was seventeen years old. Imagine leaving Ireland and coming to California in 1883 at seventeen. He had no idea what he was getting into.
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt900006nw&brand=calisphere&doc.view=entire_text
I didn’t have an automobile. I lived on the other side of Lake Merritt, and I would take a streetcar in the morning. I would have to take a streetcar about 6:30 or a quarter to seven, come down, get off on Broadway, and take a streetcar on Broadway then out College to the University, which would take about an hour.
I had 8:00 classes, from 8:00 to about eleven. Occasionally I might have a class from 11:00 to 12:00. Then I’d study from 11:00 until 3:00. At noontime I’d run down to Barney’s Beanery, which was about where Sproul Hall is now, and get a bowl of soup or a dish of beans, and then dash back and start studying again. I couldn’t fool around.
At 3:00 I’d take a streetcar. The streetcar would go down to Oakland and I’d transfer over to Eighth Street, get off at Eight and Adeline and walk from Eighth Street down to the estuary to the shipyards, punch a time clock and go to work. Work from four in the afternoon on til midnight, eight hours, an eight hour shift. Then at midnight I’d walk up to Eighth and Adeline, get another streetcar, come up to town,
― 22 ―
transfer to another streetcar, and go home. I worked six days a week. On Saturdays our shift started at noon time. I worked from noon to 8:00 on Saturdays.
I found I was riding streetcars three hours a day, and I was working in Moore’s Shipyard eight hours a day. That’s eleven hours. Six times eleven is sixty-six hours a week. And going through law school.
Feingold
I don’t know when you got any sleep.
Coakley
Well, I didn’t get too much sleep. I did a lot of concentrated studying. Then I did another thing, which I’m rather proud of. I crammed over the holidays of 1921 — I was in my third year at Boalt — December 1921, over those holidays. I crammed, and I took the California bar exam the second of January, the day after New Years. It was a three day examination. In due course I got word that I had passed it. I was still going to Boalt.
When my father came to this country — in those days and for a long time afterwards, throughout the United States, and particularly in this county, there was a lot of bigotry against Catholics, against Irish. There was a lot of discrimination against Catholics,
― 32 ―
against Irish. There was a lot of discrimination against Catholics, against particularly Irish Catholics. Factories used to have signs up, “Let no Irish apply.” “Let no Irish apply.” This was just the Protestant tradition. There was a big lot of it in this county, quite an undercurrent. I don’t know that it’s all dissipated even yet, but it’s certainly not anything like it used to be. I think maybe, as far as bigotry is concerned, these people may have transferred their affections to certain other ethnic groups.
Feingold
Yes. It sort of moves down the line.
Coakley
It’s sort of phased out as far as the Irish, and as far as the Catholics are concerned.
But as I said one time, I was making a talk two years ago, while I was still district attorney, to a group of young Negro professional men, to an organization known as the “Men of Tomorrow.” They used to meet once a month down on Jack London Square. I was invited to talk to them one month. I was telling them, I said, “Well, there’s always been a certain amount of discrimination and bigotry in this country, and I guess maybe in other countries too, but I know it was here because I witnessed it. I was on the receiving end of it on occasions.” I said, “I can sympathize. I have an understanding of these things. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now.” It’s an unhealthy thing, and unfortunately, every once in a while it comes out. This polarization that you see in the country, I think, is the same sort of thing, you know. It’s too bad.
Well, to get back now to after Warren became district attorney. He increased the personnel. It didn’t take very long to discover that Becker was taking money from gamblers. The rumors were pretty strong. There was a still operation down in south county.
The board of supervisors gave Warren investigator help, undercover help, and he was beginning to find out what was going on. The office prosecuted the Santuccis, an Italian family who were running a pig ranch, and on the pig ranch they had a still. I suppose Oscar Jahnsen told you about that, the Santucci case. The pig ranch caught on fire while the raid was going on.
Feingold
I didn’t hear about that.
― 33 ―
Coakley
Oh yes. Earl Warren’s men, the investigators were out there making the raid on the pig ranch, and the still blew up. It started a fire and a lot of the bigs were burned. It’s quite a story.
Well, Warren was a very aggressive district attorney, what you could call a crusading district attorney. He was pretty well entrenched, he was very strongly entrenched politically, because he had the Knowland people behind him and he had the strong support of the legal profession, judges, and the better elements of the county. He fought this corruption in the sheriff’s office. He had his men raiding bootlegging places, places where they were selling liquor. He also raided the Chinese lotterires out in Emeryville, and the houses of prostitution in Emeryville.
The Sheriff Becker Case
Feingold
Were you involved in these cases?
Coakley
I prosecuted some of these cases. The sheriff’s office, I prosecuted. First, the sheriff’s office case was presented to the grand jury in 1930. The first time around the grand jury refused to indict Becker, the sheriff. They indicted the under sheriff, a man named Shurtleff, and two of his deputies, Davis and Collier. So, I went in and prosecuted the under sheriff, Shurtleff, and Collier, and Davis. They were convicted.
No connection as far as I know. Louise Browne Sedgwick Merritt who d. in Santa Rosa was only there at end of life because her daughter had settled there. She had married, and divorced, Frederick Augustus Merritt of Oakland – he was of the same pioneer family there for whom Lake Merritt and Merritt College are named. While he’s easy to find on Ancestry, he’s not my relative (she is) and I have done nothing on his forebears or collateral relations…..He was born in Maine.
A Sedgwick Genealogy: Descendants of Deacon Benjamin Sedgwick
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purple heart, Philippine Liberation ribbon, two battle stars, one arrowhead, and an Asiatic Pacific ribbon with two battle stars.
B21,123.
Louise Browne Sedgwick, 3d child of John Sedgwick (B21,12) and Malvina (Davis) Sedgwick, was born December 25, 1871, at Stockton, Cal., and married April 15, 1891, at Oakland, Cal., Frederick Augustus Merritt, born January 11, 1855, at Bath, Me., son of Hannah Ann and Captain Isaac Merritt. He was connected with western railroads and died May 19, 1925, at Berkeley, California. She lives at 838 Hyde Street, San Francisco. Children, all born at Oakland (Merritt):
1. Marguerite, b. August 3, 1983. (B21,123,1)
2. Mary Burd, b. August 20, 1896. (B21,123,2)
3. John Sedgwick, b. January 8, 1900; d. July 11, 1903, at San Francisco.
B21,123,1.
Marguerite Merritt, 1st child of Louise B. (Sedgwick) Merritt (B21,123) and Frederick Augustus Merritt, was born August 3, 1893, at Oakland, Cal., and graduated, B.A., at the University of California at Oakland in 1917. She majored in bacteriology. She married April 8, 1936, at Reno, Nevada, Clarence Conrad Austin, son of Dr. Malcolm Osgood Austin and Lillian Hotaling Austin. He is business manager of the Southern Pacific Hospital. In the first World War he was Sergeant in a motor transport unit. They reside at 45 Loyola Terrace, San Francisco. Child (Austin):
1. David Hampton, b. February 18, 1938, at San Francisco. (B21,123,11)
B21,123,2.
Mary Burd Merritt, 2d child of Louise B. (Sedgwick) Merritt (B21,123) and Frederick A. Merritt, was born August 20, 1896, at Oakland, Cal., and graduated at Lux School of Domestic Science at San Francisco. She married George Herbert Dunlap of Berkeley, Cal., son of Dr. John Barr Dunlap and Mary (Stoaks) Dunlap. George is a builder and contractor. They live at 1400 Oakland Avenue, Piedmont, Cal. Children, both born at San Francisco (Dunlap):
1. George Herbert, Jr., b. April 17, 1919. (B21,123,21)
2. John Merritt, b. August 9, 1920. (B21,123,22)
– I see you mentioned a Merritt associated with Santa Rosa. As I have a Merritt side who settled in Petaluma, I just thought I’d check to see if there’s a connection. John Merritt came here with his father Charles Merritt, and his wife Sarah Elizabeth Wilfley, and his mother, Jemima Lehman, by wagon in the 1850s. Charles and wife settled in Analy Township (now called Sebastopol) and John and his wife settled in Petaluma in a house that’s still there at the corner of Stony Point Road and Pepper Road. John and Sarah had John Thomas Merritt (my great great grandfather, whom my mother knew), Edwin B Merritt & Ida Jane Merritt, born in 1856, 1862, and 1869 approximately. The original John (my great great great grandfather) had at least one sibling who came also. John T Merritt settled in Petaluma, traded livestock to San Francisco (by boat down the Petaluma River) and lived until the late 1930s. His children were George Merritt, Lyle Merritt (whom I remember – principal of Petaluma Intermediate School, I believe), Ruby Merritt, and my great grandmother Ethel Merritt.
John N. Merritt (1820 – 1895)
John N. Merritt was born on August 03, 1820 in Newburgh, New York, USA, The Son of Josiah Merritt and Elizabeth Demott.
John N. Merritt married Cornelia Sedgwick.
John N. Merritt married Hannah Weddle.
John N. Merritt had 12 children. Their names are Phebe A Merritt, Harriet Sedgwick Merritt, Flora Merritt, Edward S Merritt, Caroline Merritt, Flora Merritt, Edward S Merritt, Caroline Merritt, William H. Merritt, Francis Maria Merritt, Mary E. Merritt, and George N. Merritt.
William Sedgwick (1804 – 1877)
William Sedgwick was born on August 08, 1804 in Bristol, Hartford, Connecticut, USA.
William Sedgwick married Laura Ann Case.
William Sedgwick had 1 child. Her name is Cornelia Sedgwick.
William Sedgwick passed away on February 26, 1877 in Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York, USA.
Sedgwick was born in the Litchfield Hills town of Cornwall, Connecticut. He was named after his grandfather, John Sedgwick (brother of Theodore Sedgwick), an American Revolutionary War general who served with George Washington. After teaching for two years, he attended the United States Military Academy, graduated in 1837 ranked 24th of 50, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s artillery branch. He fought in the Seminole Wars and received two brevet promotions in the Mexican-American War, to captain for Contreras and Churubusco, and to major for Chapultepec. After returning from Mexico he transferred to the cavalry and served in Kansas, in the Utah War, and in the Indian Wars, participating in 1857 in a punitive expedition against the Cheyenne.[1]
In the summer and fall of 1860 Sedgwick commanded an expedition to establish a new fort on the Platte River in what is now Colorado. He was greatly handicapped with the non-delivery of expected supplies which were to be forwarded by wagon-train from the nearest fort in Kansas, but managed to erect comfortable quarters for his men before cold weather set in. These buildings were constructed largely of stone with timber for roofs and doors. It is difficult to realize the remoteness of this post but there were no railroads west of the Mississippi River and communication with St. Louis and Kansas City was by river boat and west of that by wagon train or horseback.[2]
Dr. Samuel Merritt, a mayor of Oakland who owned property at the shore’s edge, was keen to get the body of water cleaned up so that it could become a source of civic pride. In 1868, he proposed and funded a dam between the estuary and the bay by which the flow of water could be controlled, allowing the water level inland to rise higher and become less saline, turning the tidal lagoon into a lake. Sewage was to be redirected elsewhere by two new city projects, though these weren’t completed until 1875. The resulting body of water was called variously “Lake Peralta”, “Merritt’s Lake” and later Lake Merritt.[5][7]
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Biography
Biography of Dr. Samuel Merritt
Samuel Merritt, M.D. was born in 1822 in Harpswell, Maine, and graduated from the Medical School of Maine at Bowdoin College. After practicing medicine in Plymouth, Massachusetts for three years, Dr. Merritt joined the great migration of 1849 to California. Here he made his fortune as a businessman and his reputation as one of the leading founders of the Bay Area.
When Dr. Merritt died 40 years later in 1890, the Oakland Tribune called him “the man most prominent in the establishment and building of the City of Oakland.” He had touched every aspect of public life here, serving as the 13th Mayor of Oakland, and one of the original Regents of the University of California. Dr. Merritt played a significant role in the creation of Lake Merritt and the construction of the Oakland Public Library and City Hall. As the first president of the Mountain View Cemetary, he continued to influence the architectural landscape of the city. Importantly, in his will he provided for the establishment of Samuel Merritt Hospital and the training school for nurses that have now evolved into Samuel Merritt University.
Dr. Merritt died before Samuel Merritt Hospital and its School were built, but his fortune and far thinking made the founding of the institution possible. Today the women and men who carry on his mission-as students, faculty, and staff-are looking ahead to the next 100 years. The transformation of Samuel Merritt University in the 21st century continues in the tradition started long ago by this extraordinary individual who had a great vision for the quality and well being of the East Bay community.
Universalis Centralis
Universalis centralis is the kinetic sculpture found at the entrance of the Health Education Center on the Oakland campus of Samuel Merritt University. The sculpture is the central icon for the institution, designed to reflect the ever-changing world of health care in which we and our graduates serve. The universalis centralis symbolizes change, growth, and learning. Importantly, the sculpture captures the need to stay abreast of innovations in health care. The symbol is used as the University’s logo.
The universalis centralis is a polished stainless steel outdoor sculpture created by Jerome Kirk in 1986. Signed by the artist at its base, it is approximately 14 feet by 9 feet.
As a young physician in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Merritt attracted the attention of Daniel Webster when he successfully performed a difficult operation on Webster’s neighbor. Webster encouraged him to come to California, saying, “Go out there, young man. Go out there and behave yourself, and free as you are from family cares, you will never regret it.” Webster gave him letters of introduction to friends in California, Merritt bought a ship of 140 tons, loaded it with general cargo, and set sail from New York for California at the end of November in 1849.
His arrival on May 5, 1850, was at an auspicious time, as one of San Francisco’s frequent “great fires” had occurred the previous day, allowing him to make a considerable profit on the goods he had in his hold. With these funds he chartered a brig for $800 a month and put it in the profitable Humboldt Bay – San Francisco lumber trade run.
While practicing medicine in San Francisco he increased his involvement in the lumber trade by expanding to Puget Sound. In 1852 he started buying and selling real estate in San Francisco and Oakland with great success. The first year he made $100,000 in San Francisco real estate alone. That same year he bought large acreage along the shores of what is now Lake Merritt for the total price of $6,000. He subdivided this land and built and sold several “elegant” homes in the area of Jackson, Lake, Oak, and Madison Streets. In 1853 he traveled east to order the building of the first two barks to be built expressly for the coast lumber trade — in this case, San Francisco to Portland.
Merritt served as a member of the Vigilance Committee of 1856, was a San Francisco supervisor, and although he declined to serve as San Francisco’s mayor in 1858, did fill that position in Oakland in 1868. That same year he was named a Regent of U.C. by Gov. Henry Huntly Haight. Merritt was a founder of the Oakland Bank of Savings and the California Insurance Company. In 1888 Robert Louis Stevenson chartered Merritt’s yacht Casco for his famous trip to the South Seas.
Merritt became embroiled in a scandal when the Board of Regents, instead of hiring a supervising architect, put him in charge of overseeing the construction of the campus’s second building, North Hall, which they were anxious to have completed in record time. The State Assembly investigated charges that Merritt and some friends in the building industry had taken advantage of his unusual authority, that Merritt had profited financially in the venture, and that the University had acquired a building of inferior quality at an exorbitant cost. The Committee determined that the building cost $24,000 more than it was worth. Merritt immediately resigned from the Board of Regents and refunded the University his lumber yard’s profits of $867.
One contemporary account describes Merritt as “6’3” and weighing 340 pounds when at his best.” It is small wonder that this admired specimen of Victorian manhood (great girth was considered manly) developed diabetes which complicated a case of uremic poisoning, causing his death.
The plaque on the huge granite tomb reads: “Physician, shipmaster, philanthropist, Regent of the University of California, mayor of Oakland, founder of Samuel Merritt Hospital.”
Elizabeth Josephine Clifford (1874 – 1950)
Found 10 Records , 10 Photos and 997,006 Family Trees
Born in Kerry, Ireland on 7 May 1874 to Jeremiah Clifford and Hannah Reidy. Elizabeth Josephine married Michael Coakley and had 8 children. She passed away on 28 May 1950 in Oakland, California, USA.What was going on with Edie sedgwick in Warhol’s loft, was small patatoes compared to the Revolution taking place in Oakland and Berekely – that the wrold famous artist, Christine Rosamond Benton, was very much a part of. Too bad her fake biographers were so intent on rubbing me out of the picture, or, the world would have gotten this information. Now, the world will get a full picture of how real creative people are supplanted with imposters. That my daughter signs legal papers in order to get me out of her screwed up picture, will be a famous document one day because the history of the oppression of the Bohemian Free Speech Movement – is real – and not a fake deal like the Mormons and Evangelcial cosmologies.
Jon Presco
“Fair Rosamond” Clifford had two sons by Henry II and to protect these from
kidnapping or murder by the minions of Queen Eleanor they were brought up in
concealment in the forest. Writers in later centuries have identified them with
Sir William Longsword and Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, but the Dictionary of
National Biography points out that both these were born before their supposed
mother. Fair Rosamond died in 1177 but the Colclough family was firmly
established in Suffolk long before she or Henry II was born and there is no
record of any unaccounted additions to its numbers at the end of the 12th
century. However American genealogical researchers have determinedly traced the
Colclough origins to her.”
And so, around towards midnight, we did get word through the walkie-talkie that the police were coming. Now in the building, when I learned that things were becoming tense, I was told that the students would be sitting-in on the two upper floors of the building. None would be on the main floor. They expected the police to come in on the main floor and I would be stationed down there to meet with them. They would send certain people down from upstairs for me to persuade to leave the building — people who were under eighteen, who didn’t have constitutional rights like other people, and who, if there was a trial, wouldn’t have a right to a jury trial, that sort of thing. Mario Savio wanted all those people out. Also, anybody who had dope on them they wanted out. So people would straggle down, and I would arrange for them to leave the building with the campus police there.
There were two other people on the main floor — one of them was Ed Meese and another one was Lowell Jensen. Lowell Jensen is now a federal judge; Ed Meese and he were deputy district attorneys, deputies of Frank [J. Francis] Coakley, who was the extremely reactionary right-wing District Attorney who had held that office for about sixteen years. I knew Jensen fairly well, having tried a murder case against him, in which he was prose- cutor. I didn’t know Meese at all because Meese wasn’t in court very much. Meese spent most of his time in Sacramento as a lobbyist for the Police Officers’ Association, and the D.A.’s Association, trying to get tougher legislation. The joke used to be that he was trying to get the Legislature to prescribe the death penalty for possession of marijuana.
Alameda and San Francisco County’s resident Lucky Luciano’s La Costa Nosta crime
boss was a man called Elmer “Big Bones” Remmer of Emeryville. Bones Remmer
controlled all the after-hours joints, brothels, gambling houses, extortion,
loan-sharking, bookies and Murder, Inc. in Emeryville, Oakland and San
Francisco. Along with witting politicians, cops, and various shady lawyers and
bagmen, Big Bone’s mob operations remained unmolested by local law enforcement
agencies in Alameda and San Francisco County.
Fed up with crime, corruption and Murder, Inc. in Alameda County during the
1940-50’s, the California State Attorney General had to come to Oakland to try
to shut down the mob’s operations. The Attorney General’s office indicted and
proceeded to prosecute some of Oakland’s mob figures. Under D.A. Coakley, the La
Costa Nosta just didn’t exist in the county. Just imagine of all people that
could have showed up in Oakland to defend the mob, it was the who’s who of Mafia
Boss Meyer Lansky’s crime syndicate, another infamous underworld character by
the name of Murray Chotiner. The noted Author Dan Moldea reported that Murray
Chotiner, and his brother Jack, handled 249 cases of mob figures arrested or
indicted between 1949 and 1952. [13]
It was D. Lowell Jensen and Edwin Meese that sent former Mayor John Houlihan and
Huey P. Newton to Prison. Jensen also directed the CIA cover indictment of
Eldridge Cleaver to send him on clandestine military intelligence worldwide trek
to disrupt and discredit America’s Black Nationalist Movement. Jensen engineered
the conspiracy theory (conspiracy prosecutions) under which targeted Blacks,
Leftist and Anti-Vietnam War activists could be convicted of felonies and given
long prison sentences if it can be proved they conspired to commit even a minor
conspiracy. [22] Jensen also had links to the medical-industrial-military
complex handmaiden U.C. Berkeley. Jensen had graduated from U.C. Berkeley in
1949 and Boalt Hall School of Law in 1952. Meese also obtained his law degree
from the University of California Boalt Hall School of Law at Berkeley in 1958.
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One response to “Merritt – Sedgwick – Coakley”
Royal Rosamond PressFebruary 24, 2019 at 6:05 pmEditReblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:After we hear Cohen testify, the Republicans will not be able to employ their Law&Order Trick.
The Coakleys and the Angels
Posted on October 28, 2011
by Royal Rosamond PressMy Godfather, Sargeant Skip Sutter, led fifty Oakland Cops against the Hell’s Angels, raided their clubhouse with gloves on, and ended up in the hospital for a week. Skip and Vic went to Oakland High School, and were pals of Tom McKinny the ex-president of TransAmerica Title, who was dismissed for Loan Scams in the late seventies – along with Skip – who wanted my fahter to come sit atop the pryamid building in SF, too.
Above is a photo of me with my siblings, Mark and Christine taken in 1950. According to Stacey Pierrot, and Julie Lynch, I am looking at Christine in a suspicious manner, because I suspect she is hiding in a closet with a flashlight, competing with me to become a world famous artist! I mean, look at her. How old is she, and where is she? Can Julie tell us? How about, Showtime?
While real villians are bringing down the world, the Gallery Gargoyles go after a four year old boy – and demonize him! Are you kidding me!
Above is a photo of Andrew Cuomo of HUD who went after Lawrence Chazen, the No.1 creditor in Rosamond’s probate for Loan Sharking. He hauled off Christine’s antique furniture. Show time is not interested in Larry, a partner of the Getty and Pelosi family- just that evil little boy trying to get his share of the milk for his cereal. No wonder my nieces have mental problems, don’t have a very good grasp of reality! Guess who is to blame for that!!!!!!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011
Coakley the Cailleach and the Oakland Cops
Having read all the Grimm¡¯s Fairytales when I was eleven, I can say
the best stories begin with the appearance of an Old Hag. Most
children of my generation expected to be approached, or beckoned by
an Old Hag, or Witch, at some time in their life, thanks to Walt
Disney, the darling of Rightwing Conservatives who had the hots for
Davey Crockett, who would give the Republicans ‘Frontier America’Reply
Rosamond Press 
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