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William Greer Harrison was a prominent Irish-born citizen in San Francisco during the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century. By profession, he was an insurance agent, but is remembered for his associations with the Bohemian Club, the Olympic Club (for which he was a president), and for his civic contributions.
William Greer Harrison was born in County Donegal, Ireland in 1836. He spent his early manhood in New Zealand and afterwards emigrated to San Francisco, United States in the 1870s.
From 1879, he was the manager of the Thames & Mersey Marine Insurance company's underwriting agency in San Francisco. The company had opened its office there in 1876, trading under the name "Messrs. Cross & Co". The early history of the office was chequered, for the agency was held by three representatives in three years. Greer Harrison was the last and most successful of these, building a large and profitable portfolio. During one period of twelve months in the ’eighties, the "Thames & Mersey" insured every shipload of wheat that sailed out of San Francisco without loss. The profit on this alone equalled the whole of the company dividend that year. [1] During this time he resided at 806 Stockton Street, San Francisco. [2] William Greer Harrison retired after 27 years as the senior official of the "Thames & Mersey" on the Pacific Coast of North America, and was succeeded by Louis Rosenthal, who was in turn destined to represent the company there for 34 years. [3]
In 1895 William Greer Harrison was the source for an alleged conversation with a Dr Howard in the Bohemian Club, linking the 1888 "Jack the Ripper" murders in Whitechapel, London with an unnamed prominent London physician. This conversation was reported in a number of newspaper articles across the United States, including the Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel (24 April 1895), [4] the Fort Wayne Weekly Gazette (25 April 1895), [5] the Ogden Standard , Utah, [6] the Williamsport Sunday Grit (12 May 1895); [7] the Hayward Review , California (17 May 1895); [8] and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (28 December 1897). [9]
According to Harrison's account, Howard claimed that the murderer was a "medical man of high standing" whose wife alerted his colleagues and the police after becoming alarmed by his erratic behaviour during the period of the murders. Dr Howard "was one of a dozen London physicians who sat as a commission in lunacy upon their brother physician, for at last it was definitely proved that the dread Jack the Ripper was a physician in high standing and enjoying the patronage of the best society in the West End of London." The article goes on to allege that the preacher and spiritualist Robert James Lees played a leading role in the physician's arrest by using his clairvoyant powers to divine that the Whitechapel murderer lived in a house in Mayfair, London. He persuaded police to enter the house, which turned out to be the home of the physician, who was allegedly removed to a private insane asylum in Islington, London under the name of Thomas Mason.
In 1904, Harrison was elected as a Director and subsequently Vice-President of the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco. Daniel H. Burnham, the American architect and urban planner, was invited to prepare a plan, which he completed in September 1905, and which was accepted by Mayor Eugene Schmitz. [10] The plan was abandoned after the San Francisco earthquake the following year.
On 19 April 1906, following the San Francisco earthquake, William Greer Harrison was one of fifty citizens nominated by Mayor Schmitz as a Committee of Safety, to oversee the provision of relief to earthquake victims and the restoration of public services. [11]
Harrison died on 3 December 1916 following a paralytic stroke. [12] The press report of his death noted that, despite his advanced age, Harrison participated the previous New Year's Day in the Olympic club's customary cross city run, ending with a plunge in the surf. A bust of him dressed in a runner's uniform was commissioned by the Olympic Club in his memory, by the sculptor Haig Patigian, a member of the Bohemian Club. This was unveiled on the sixth anniversary of his death on 3 December 1922 and is currently displayed in the West entrance lobby of the club, between Taylor and Madison Streets. [13]
William Greer Harrison made a number of attempts at a literary career, as a composer of verse, as a playwright and finally as a writer of factual sports and travel literature.
William Greer Harrison was commissioned by James O’Neill (father of playwright Eugene O'Neill) to write The O'Neill, or the Prince of Ulster — a play based on Hugh Ó Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, who resisted English authority in Ireland.
In 1894 Harrison wrote Runnymede, a play based on the story of Robin Hood and written for the Shakespearian actor Frederick Warde. [14] Harrison's treatment portrayed Robin Hood's band not as outlaws, but as loyal subjects of Richard Coeur de Lion, in opposition to John of Anjou. The story was based on the attempts of John to destroy Robin and to gain possession of Marian Lea, Robin's affianced bride. A secondary romance was woven around the love life of Little John of Robin Hood's band and Margery Josselyn, Marian's companion. Harrison introduced some changes to historical fact for dramatic effect – for example, King Richard I was murdered by his brother John; and having become King, John's death sentence upon Robin Hood and Friar Tuck was frustrated by his having just signed the Magna Carta.
The play opened in New York in 1895 and closed shortly afterwards, having been severely scorned by the New York critics. [15] Upon his return to San Francisco, Harrison explained that the play's failure was due to the cultural deficiencies of New York society. He is quoted as saying:
The Bohemian Club of San Francisco represents more refinement, more intelligence, and more culture than can be found in the whole City of New-York, so far as it is possible for a visitor to see it. Judging from such opportunities as I had of seeing New-York mean, and I saw them in the best of their clubs, they do not know what is really meant by culture. Novelty and sensation they understand. I say this not from any hard feelings toward New-York, for the cause of their lack of knowledge is readily seen. It arises from their slavish life. They are slaves to their business, and when they go to the theatre they want to see something that will make them laugh. [16]
William Greer Harrison wrote a number of travel and sports books, including The Outdoor Life of California (1905) and Making a Man; a manual of athletics (1915).
Ambrose Bierce, satirist and fellow Bohemian Club member, was a long term critic of Harrison, likening his verse to "a roadside pump replenishing a horse trough" [17] When the young Jewish poet David Lesser Lezinsky shot himself on 4 July 1895, [18] Bierce was widely blamed, being accused of mocking the young writer for anti-Semitic reasons. William Greer Harrison joined in the criticism though a series of angry letters published in local newspapers. [19]
After Harrison's death in 1916, Bierce wrote an obituary parodying his literary style and mocking his alleged use of his wealth to buy approval:
Here lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked louse
So small a tenant of so big a house!
Who loved to loll on the Parnassian mount,
His pen to suck and all his thumbs to count.
What poetry he'd written but for lack
Of skill, when he had counted, to count back!
Alas, no more he'll climb the sacred steep
To wake the lyre and put the world to sleep!
To his rapt lip his soul no longer springs
And like a jaybird from a knot-hole sings.
No more the clubmen, pickled with his wine,
Expand their ears and hiccough: "That's divine!"
The genius of his purse no longer draws
The pleasing thunders of a paid applause.
All silent now; nor sound nor sense remains,
Though riddances of worms improve his brains.
All his no talents to the earth revert,
And Fame concludes the record: "Dirt to dirt!
Sir William Withey Gull, 1st Baronet was an English physician. Of modest family origins, he established a lucrative private practice and served as Governor of Guy's Hospital, Fullerian Professor of Physiology and President of the Clinical Society. In 1871, having successfully treated the Prince of Wales during a life-threatening attack of typhoid fever, he was created a Baronet and appointed to be one of the Physicians-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria.
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Called the "Sweet Singer of California", she was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state.
The Devil's Dictionary is a satirical dictionary written by American journalist Ambrose Bierce, consisting of common words followed by humorous and satirical definitions. The lexicon was written over three decades as a series of installments for magazines and newspapers. Bierce's witty definitions were imitated and plagiarized for years before he gathered them into books, first as The Cynic's Word Book in 1906 and then in a more complete version as The Devil's Dictionary in 1911.
Charles Gilman Norris was an American novelist. A native of Chicago, Norris worked as a journalist for some years before finding success as a novelist and playwright. His first book was The Amateur (1916). His other novels include Salt (1919), Brass: A Novel of Marriage (1921), Bread (1923), Pig Iron (1926), Seed: A Novel of Birth Control (1930), Zest (1933), Hands (1935), and Flint (1944). He also published three plays: The Rout of the Philistines, A Gest of Robin Hood, and Ivanhoe: A Grove Play (1936).
George Sterling was an American writer based in the San Francisco, California Bay Area and Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was considered a prominent poet and playwright and proponent of Bohemianism during the first quarter of the twentieth century.
A series of murders that took place in the East End of London from August to November 1888 was blamed on an unidentified assailant who was nicknamed Jack the Ripper. Since that time, the identity of the killer or killers has been widely debated, and over 100 suspects have been named. Though many theories have been advanced, experts find none widely persuasive, and some are hardly taken seriously at all. Due to the extensive time interval since the murders, the killer will likely never be identified despite ongoing speculation as to his identity.
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution is a book written by Stephen Knight first published in 1976. It proposed a solution to five murders in Victorian London that were blamed on an unidentified serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".
Francis Tumblety was an Irish-born American medical quack who earned a small fortune posing as an "Indian Herb" doctor throughout the United States and Canada. He was an eccentric self-promoter and was often in trouble with the law. He has been put forward as a suspect for the notorious and unsolved Jack the Ripper murder spree in Whitechapel, London, in 1888.
Oakley Maxwell Hall was an American novelist. He was born in San Diego, California, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and served in the Marines during World War II. Some of his mysteries were published under the pen names "O.M. Hall" and "Jason Manor." Hall received his Master of Fine Arts in English from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
The Wasp, also known as The Illustrated Wasp, The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, The Wasp News-Letter and the San Francisco News- Letter Wasp, was an American weekly satirical magazine based in San Francisco. Founded in 1876, it closed in 1941, the name of the magazine having been changed several times in the interim.
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
This Committee of Fifty, sometimes referred to as Committee of Safety, Citizens' Committee of Fifty or Relief and Restoration Committee of Law and Order, was called into existence by Mayor Eugene Schmitz during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The Mayor invited civic leaders, entrepreneurs, newspaper men and politicians—but none of the members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors—to participate in this committee in whose hands the civil administration of San Francisco would rest.
William Herman Rulofson was a Canadian-American photographer, who along with his partner, H. W. Bradley, was considered one of the leading photographers in the city of San Francisco, California. He was also the brother of Edward H. Rulloff, a notorious murderer who was hanged for his crime in 1871.
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature", and his book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900.
Daniel O'Connell (II) (1849 – 23 January 1899) was a poet, actor, writer and journalist in San Francisco, California, and a co-founder of the Bohemian Club. He was the grand-nephew of Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847), the famed Irish orator and politician.
James F. Bowman was a journalist and poet in Northern California, and a co-founder of the Bohemian Club. Bowman served on several newspapers in Placerville, Sacramento and San Francisco during a 24-year career. Through his contacts among San Francisco journalists, Bowman befriended Mark Twain, artist William Keith, critic Ambrose Bierce and a great many others.
Robert James Lees was a British spiritualist, medium, preacher, writer and healer of the late Victorian era and early twentieth century known today for claims that he knew the identity of Jack the Ripper, responsible for the Whitechapel murders of 1888.
Lyttelton Stewart Forbes Winslow MRCP was a British psychiatrist famous for his involvement in the Jack the Ripper and Georgina Weldon cases during the late Victorian era.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians is a collection of short stories by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce, also published under the title In the Midst of Life. With a stated publication date of 1891 the stories describe unusual incidents in the lives of soldiers and civilians during the American Civil War. Tales of Soldiers and Civilians was named by the Grolier Club as one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900, stating "These short stories are among the finest, and best known, in American literature. ... Written in a clear simple style, with each phrase contributing to the total effect, Bierce's tales pointed the way for the American short-story writer." Bierce's famous story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is included in this collection.
The Montgomery Block, also known as Monkey Block and Halleck's Folly, was a historic building active from 1853 to 1959, and was located in San Francisco, California. It was San Francisco's first fireproof and earthquake resistant building. It came to be known as a Bohemian center, from the late 19th to the middle of the 20th-century.
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