By: Jim Waddell
Robert Pinkerton knew a good detective when he saw one and in his opinion, Isaiah Lees was the best of the breed in 19th century San Francisco. With detective work hardly ever seen during these times, Lees snuffed crime in San Francisco, using methods that were followed and copied far into the 20th century. Lees put a lid on crime in one of America’s wildest cities of the time.
Charlie “Scratch” Becker,
Lees broke the mold of the fabled lawmen of the Old West. In one of his last cases in the mid-1890’s, Lees, through cunning detective work, doggedly brought to justice, Charlie “Scratch” Becker, one of the most notorious forgery artists of all time. Becker had a price on his head in both America and Europe. He spent a week raising a $12 check to $22,000. He passed it to a cohort who had established a phony business and bank account in San Francisco. The check was passed to a bank in nearby Woodland. The two conspirators “high-tailed” it out of town and it was several weeks before the crime had been discovered. Lees worked long and hard in following up leads and through persistent detective work, the suspects were brought to justice.
The California Gold Rush brought all sorts of people to San Francisco, most of them for the same reason: To get rich and get rich fast. A few hit it big in the Sierras digging for gold, but many more found it to be too much like work or they looked in the wrong places. Many had better success in relieving the gold nuggets and dust from the miners by stealing, swindling and scheming. Pickings were so good that many went west, only with the intent on engaging in a life of crime. Before long, nobody was safe on the streets of San Francisco.
San Francisco circa 1851
Among the new arrivals was Isaiah W. Lees who came west from New Jersey in 1849 at the tender age of 18. At the time, San Francisco was nothing more than a collection of tents and clapboarded shacks. They were filled with new arrivals from every corner of the globe. Lees looked around at this and knew he was where he wanted to be.
For a short time Lees ventured into the gold country, doing some gold panning and a little placer mining. Having obtained limited results, he returned to San Francisco. He went to work in a blacksmith shop, turning out stoves, cooking wares and ironically, he made the locks for the new city jail. Lees had worked in Samuel Colt’s factory in Connecticut before traveling west which gave him the necessary experience for this trade.
Joseph Duncan, the father of famed dancer Isadora Duncan, was arrested by Lees for embezzlement. After four hung juries, the charges were dropped.
In 1853, Lees took a job as patrolman with the newly formed San Francisco Police Department. One of his first incidents was when he saw a local thug heave a cobblestone through a window of a saloon. He followed the man to a back alley and told him he was under arrest. The man pulled a short barreled revolver and shot at Lees, hitting him 5 times. Lees took the gun away from the man and proceeded to beat him senseless with his own gun. After depositing the man in the lock-up, he consulted a doctor for his wounds. As luck would have it, Lees had been protected by heavy clothing and had only five red, painful welts on his torso.
By this time, Lee’s days of walking a beat were already numbered as his investigative skills were already apparent. He was promoted to Assistant Captain in 1854. One of his early cases involved the case of the Chinese Moles. A patrolman was assigned to watch one of the local gambling halls. He saw a customer with a diamond stickpin, trying to trade it for cash. A Chinese man quickly snatched the pin from the customer and ran from the building. The officer chased him to a Chinese lunchroom and into the basement where the kitchen was. The thief disappeared through a door. The officer kept a vigil on the door and had someone nearby summon more help.
Cordelia Botkin, who killed her lover’s wife with poisoned chocolates, was another criminal brought to justice by Det. Lees.
One of the arriving officers was Isaiah Lees. He proceeded to arrest every Chinese in the room and had them all carted off to jail. When he opened the door, he found numerous rice sacks. It was discovered the sacks were full of dirt. Further investigation found the group of Chinese had been tunneling underground into a nearby bank. When Lees entered the tunnel, he was attacked and struck by a crowbar from one of the men inside. Lees promptly shot him and dragged the wounded man out. After searching him, he found where the Chinese man had hidden the stolen stickpin in his hair.
Lees put this gang out of business but his real harvest was being recognized as a master detective by his superiors in the police department. Lees received nationwide notoriety when he solved a case where a saloon-keeper threw a caustic chemical in the face of a local prostitute. The two had been quarreling and it didn’t take Lees long to solve the crime. Even though the saloon-keeper denied involvement, Lees, through painstaking efforts and his master detective skills, convicted the culprit and sent him to San Quentin for a ten year sentence.
The Confederate ship J.M. Chapman, the smaller ship to the right, was captured by Lees’ detective work.
At the onset of the civil war, Captain Lees received information that a Confederate schooner was armed and set to raid coastal shipping. In March of 1863, word leaked out and Lees went into action. He placed an around-the-clock watch on the boat and was alerted when it set sail. Lees, with a handpicked crew, shoved off in a tugboat and quickly seized the vessel. Although the crew had already started destroying evidence, Lees was able to seize enough to convict the conspirators and Lee’s exploits made national headlines.
Lees continued to solve numerous, tedious and high profile cases throughout his career. These cases involved everything from bank robberies to political crimes where he uncovered corruption at all levels of the government. Lees was rewarded for his years of amazing service when he was made chief of the department in 1897. He spent his three year term battling politicians and the negative reporting of William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner which was pioneering sensational journalism at the time.
After his three years were up, he retired to become a private citizen. When the greatest criminal catcher died in 1902, his funeral was one of the largest the city had ever seen. Even the Examiner joined the outpouring of praise for the man who had found San Francisco a lawless place and left it one of the most orderly, anywhere in the American West.
Jim Waddell is a retired law enforcement officer and graduate of the FBI National Academy. In his nearly 40 years of service he worked for two sheriff’s departments and was a chief of police. Jim is a firearms instructor and competed in many statewide pistol matches. He lives in central California where he grows almonds.