The Evening News. September 28, 1916.

9. Law And Order In The Pueblo. Part I.

History is often but scandal grown old. Now that the youth of San Jose is a molding beneath a hundred years, it is safe to say that the youth of San Jose was shocking, scandalous. The Pueblo people were indolent, shiftless, and addicted to vice. But the Spanish governors at Monterey ruled like Puritans and like Sultans.

In 1799 Governor Borica wrote a stern letter to the San Jose colonists reproaching them because they tilled their lands so badly. He told them they were lazy, and if they didn't have better crops next year he would fine them. Evidently the scolding did the colonists good. In 1800 there was a splendid crop, and the governor in order to show that he could be gracious as well as stern, wrote congratulating the citizens. However, he told Alcalde Vallejo that he was ashamed of the poor hemp shipped to Mexico from San Jose.

Not only the shiftlessness of San Jose troubled the governor, but the morals. In 1790 Governor Fages denounced the people of San Jose for their immorality, but first the Governor reproved Alcalde Vallejo for his own shortcoming. Not only were the Alcalde's private morals undesirable, and an evil example on the community but the governor reproached the Alcalde for allowing people to murmur against those in authority at Monterey. He ordered an espionage system to punish murmurers.

Vallejo was evidently a very unsatisfactory Alcalde, for later in 1799 Governor Borica rebuked him for gambling, The Alcalde of San Jose was even worse than the Alcalde of Los Angeles. Vallejo of San Jose gambled. He won ten dollars from a convict. The governor was so shocked that the Alcalde of the oldest Pueblo in California should have such a passion for gambling that he would even gamble with a criminal in the jail, that he compelled the Alcalde to return the $10.00. He told him that if he didn't behave better, he would compel him to resign. Later this was what Vallejo did.

So incorrigible was San Jose that it built a jail even before San Francisco felt the need of one. In 1822, the governor ordered that one-third of all the tallow be used for the building of a jail in San Jose. San Francisco had no jail, and often borrowed the one in San Jose for the use of her prisoners who were sent here. However in 1836 law and order had so subdued crime that there was only one prisoner in the San Jose jail.

(To be Continued)

Transcribed by Claire Martin, for the Santa Clara Co. CAGenWeb Project. 2007.

Return to When San Jose Was Young Index.