Se) NON

Introduction. XV.

Sane ea ere ate RESIS LL ERIM, Re

punishment, he returned to Philadelphia, where he soon became a
captain of police. He consorted with the most dissolute characters in
the city, and, being suspected of complicity in the robbery of the
Chester County Bank, he fled in disguise. He was arrested, but again
succeeded in escaping punishment. Two years later (1849) he arrived
in California, then a wild place. McGowan was amongst the wildest
of the wild. He became a political power, or rather a power politically,
by means of the famous ballot-box with false bottom and sides. He
was soon elected a justice of the peace and, in 1851, an associate
justice of the Court of Quarter Sessions. Resigning this position, he
continued on his downward course and became notorious as the boon
companion of gamblers and thugs and of the denizens, male and female,
of the underworld. In May, 1856, lawlessness reached its height
when James King of William was murdered by James P. Casey. As
a result the Vigilance Committee of that year was organized. One of
its first steps after obtaining Casey was to charge McGowan as acces-
sory to that murder; but he was nowhere to be found. Of him the
chairman said: “The chief of the vultures—the notorious Ned
McGowan—it has been difficult to find. He may be now in some cave
in our midst. Probably he is now in some dark cellar at the base of
Telegraph Hill, or some other invisible place, but he may yet come to
light.”

The note in the Vigilance Committee’s black-list is: “‘ Ned
McGowan ran away about June Ist.” High and low through San
Francisco, but in vain, the “ Vigilantes” sought him. After lying in
hiding for many days and after numerous hairbreadth escapes he
reached Mexico. Even there he was not safe; they followed him;
they tracked him from hiding-place to hiding-place; but he always
succeeded in eluding them. After the excitement had died down and
the Vigilance Committee had disbanded he returned to California.
Through his instrumentality an Act was passed by the State Legislature
under which he obtained a change of venue for the trial of the charge
against him from San Francisco to Napa County. Napa was then a
veritable Goshen for scoundrels of all kinds. The trial of McGowan
as an accessory to the murder of King of William resulted in his
acquittal by a Napa jury.

Then in the summer of 1857 he began the publication of a scur-
rilous paper, which under the names of the “ Phoenix” and the
“ Ubiquitous ” continued until February, 1858. The style of the publi-
cation may be inferred from what has already been said regarding
McGowan’s character, and if more be wanted it may be added that the
issue of February 14, 1858, was seized by the police of San Francisco

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