Deadly Proof: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery (4 page)

Monday, early morning, July 5, 1880

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“By the laws of printing, indeed, a compositor should abide by his copy.” J. Johnson
Typographia
1824

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A
fter paying her fare, Laura Dawson found a seat on board the North and Mission horse car, an extraordinary occurrence. Usually, at ten after seven in the morning, all the seats on cars from the Mission District to the North Beach were completely full. However, many of the city’s places of employment were treating the day after the Fourth as a continuation of the national holiday. But when the forewoman at the Women’s Cooperative Printing Union, where Laura worked, asked for volunteers, she’d felt that having this job was such a wonderful piece of good luck that she had to say yes.

In April, when Laura realized that her savings from teaching weren’t going to cover her expenses this summer, Annie assured her they could work something out. But she didn’t feel right about putting any more financial burdens on her future sister-in-law. At least not now, when Annie was taking the risky move of shifting away from pretending to be the clairvoyant Madam Sibyl as her additional source of income. Laura knew Annie hoped to accomplish this before she got married, and she certainly didn’t want to put any obstacles in the way of that event.

Then, just when she thought she would have to go home this summer, Annie got an accounting job with the Women’s Co-operative Printing Union (known as the WCPU), and Laura asked if there were any job openings with this firm. She’d been recruited three years earlier by the editor of the
San Jose Mercury
to become an apprentice typesetter, and she’d been able to use her new typesetting skills to stay in San Jose each summer she was enrolled in the Normal School. A reference letter from the
Mercury
editor and Annie’s own recommendation were sufficient to land Laura a job with the WCPU. So far, she’d really been enjoying her work as a typesetter for this woman-owned printing company, and she was now making enough to cover room and board and save money for next fall, in case she was able to achieve her dream of attending the University of California at Berkeley.

Nevertheless, rising at six this morning had been difficult.

First of all, her friend Kitty hadn’t dropped her off at the O’Farrell Street boarding house until nearly ten, and she had to stick her nose into the kitchen to let Beatrice know she was home. At that point, Nate, Annie, Barbara, and Kathleen swept in with the boys, who were full of exited talk about the fireworks. Her brother took her aside to tell her about the possible case he might be working on, asking if she knew anything about a local typesetter named Florence Sullivan or the printing firm she worked for. Although she didn’t know either the woman or her employer, thoughts about what this case would mean for her brother’s career kept her awake until after midnight.

As the horse car turned off Geary to do its slow turn north onto Kearny, the horses pulling hard and the wheels squealing on the rails, Laura noticed that the street certainly looked disheveled after its day of glory. The sidewalks were strewn with discarded flags, streamers, bottles, and newspapers, and the street itself was more spotted with horse dung than usual. She would need to be careful of her dress hem when she got off the car at California Street to walk the block over to Montgomery, which was probably as dirty as Kearny since it was the other main branch of the parade.

As she rose to leave the car through the front, the driver slowed down and said a polite good morning to her as she descended to the street. After a month of daily trips on this particular route, Laura was treated by both the conductor and driver as an old friend. Tired as she was this morning, Laura admitted to herself that since she started working as one of the two full-time typesetters for the WCPU in May, she never felt as exhausted as she did all last year as a teacher, first in the one-room school house, then teaching at Clement Grammar.

It wasn’t so much the students; she’d become quite fond of many of her seventh grade students at Clement. It was the constant round of preparing lectures, assignments, and then grading those assignments that was the problem. The work kept her up late each night and filled the weekend hours, leaving her no time for anything––or anyone. In contrast, while typesetting was difficult, when the job was done, it was done, leaving her the time and energy to study for the entrance exams this August for the University.

The Women’s Co-operative printed books, handbills, stationery, legal documents, and two monthly journals, and it occupied the second floor of the three-story building at 420-424 Montgomery Street, midway between California and Sacramento streets. The first floor housed commercial shops that were all still closed, but Iris Bailor, the WCPU forewoman, greeted her at the narrow door that opened into the stairwell up to the second and third floors.

“Well, don’t you look half-asleep,” Iris said teasingly. “I have a pot of coffee going, and Betsy and Beryl will be down to help us in a minute. We won’t see any of the pressmen until after noon, which is just as well, since I suspect they may have celebrated a bit too much yesterday evening to be any good to us this morning.”

Iris Bailor was forty, an experienced compositor, which meant that not only could she set type swiftly and accurately, but she could pull a galley to proof and correct the copy, then make the galleys up into pages, and lock the forms so that they wouldn’t give when they were run through a press. Iris also could run any one of the Gordon jobber presses as well as set up and, in a pinch, operate the larger Koenig cylinder press.

A strong, tall woman, with a mass of dark auburn waves pulled loosely to the top of her head, her oval face and full lips, aristocratic nose, and odd amber eyes rendered her more handsome than beautiful. Laura doubted Iris cared what any person, man or woman, thought about her looks. What she cared about, what she was passionate about, was her work.

She’d told Laura she had been educated for marriage in a local ladies academy but had been rescued from that fate when the Civil War robbed her Vermont home town of all its eligible bachelors. The war also robbed the local newspaper of its typesetters so she’d been hired on as an apprentice, and by the Confederate surrender at Appomattox in sixty-five, she had mastered all the skills of a compositor. However, like many women, she lost her job to returning veterans, and against her parents’ objections, she’d moved to New York City to find work. Since the national Typographic Union at that time refused to admit women, the only typesetting jobs she could get were in badly paying non-union shops.

On one of those jobs, she met Mrs. Agnes Peterson, another compositor, who convinced her to come with her in 1868 on the difficult trip to San Francisco to look for better paying work. When the local typographical union blocked them from being hired by any local firms, Peterson raised the capital from some wealthy women in town and started her own printing company, the WCPU. Iris had worked continuously in this establishment since then. The firm, now owned by Mrs. Lizzie Richmond, grew steadily. Iris, its oldest employee, was now forewoman, supervising two full-time female typesetters, four young female apprentices, and six male pressmen, including two apprentices.

Laura admired Iris Bailor more than any woman she had ever met, except perhaps Annie Fuller.

“So, did you have a good time yesterday, hobnobbing with the rich and famous?” Iris laughed, taking the sting out of her words as she led the way up the stairs.

Laura said, “I don’t know how much hobnobbing I did. But we did have a great view of the procession, although I can’t imagine it was any better than what you could see from your rooms upstairs. You said you were inviting people over to view the parade, didn’t you?”

Iris lived on the top floor of the building, along with her closest friend, Nellie Granger, who had recently started her own engraving firm two blocks north on Montgomery. The four young female apprentices that worked for the WCPU (Iris called them the
four bees
because their names were Betsy, Beryl, Babs, and Bertie) shared the third room in the upstairs apartment.

“Yes, we had a grand party. The girls whipped up potato salad, creamed corn, and steamed oysters. Nellie cooked up her famous sausage rolls, and her brother, who works for Golden City Brewery, brought a small keg and four of his friends, and I made two applesauce cakes. As you might imagine, we were quite a merry little group.”

Laura and Iris entered the company’s main room, which held the type cases, the old Stanhope galley press, two of the smaller jobber printers, and the tables and racks for setting up the galleys and forms. Laura noticed how quiet it was today, with most of the staff off work. Usually, by the time she arrived, at least one of the apprentices was feeding card stock into a Gordon jobber printer, filling the air with sound as the big fly wheel whooshed, the foot pedal thumped, and the inking rollers hit the platen with a steady clink, clink. The noise only increased as the day wore on and all the smaller presses were put to work and the large Koenig went into action in the next room.

Taking off her light wrap and hanging it up on the coat rack, she said, “Iris, is Mrs. Richmond or her son coming in today?”

“Goodness, no. But you may be sure
Willard
left instructions with me on Saturday about what orders he wanted us to fill today.”

While Iris got along well with Mrs. Richmond, she’d confided in Laura that ever since Mrs. Richmond had married Norris Judd, a man nearly the same age as her own son Willard, she’d left more and more of the daily management of the firm to that son. Iris never actually said anything negative about Willard, but just the way she called him by his given name suggested she didn’t think much of him. Since neither Mrs. Richmond nor her son had much direct contact with anyone but Iris, Laura didn’t know what to think of either. But she did wonder if Mrs. Richmond’s decision to hire Annie Fuller to go over their books and make some financial recommendations indicated some distrust of her son’s management of the firm.

She also found it fascinating that Mrs. Richmond continued to use her married name from her first marriage.
I wonder what Annie will do? My parents will have a conniption if it turns out she plans on keeping the name Fuller. As it is, they are having enough trouble understanding the whole Madam Sibyl situation. Of course, I don’t know why Annie would keep her current name since she doesn’t seem to have very fond memories of her dead husband. But then again, since Mrs. Richmond divorced her first husband, I wouldn’t think she’s kept his last name for sentimental reasons, either. It might just be good business sense.

Realizing that Iris had just said something, Laura apologized for not attending and took a thick cotton apron down from a hook. As she put on the apron, she picked up one of the steaming mugs of coffee that sat on a table near the back door and breathed in deeply, feeling the cylinders of her brain begin to tick over more rapidly. Iris would send one of the
four bees
up to make a fresh pot sometime mid morning. Laura suspected she would need a refill by then.

“Hmm, dreaming of the young men you met yesterday at the festivities, were you?” Iris gave another of her full-throated laughs. “Let those dreams go. You have work to do, young lady. For some reason, Willard has decided that he wants us to have all the copy for the next issue of
The Elevator
done today.”

Laura started to tell Iris that young men were the furthest thing from her mind, that she was done with young––or not so young––men, but she stopped herself and said instead, “I thought it didn’t go to press until Wednesday?”

Iris shrugged. “You and I both know Mr. Reynolds won’t have the copy he’s writing about the July Fourth celebrations finished until tomorrow––even more likely––Wednesday morning, but ours ‘is not to wonder why!’ I put the first page copy at your desk. I will work on the ads, and then when Betsy comes down, she can start setting the type for the letters to the editor. That’s pretty straightforward copy. Beryl has some more wedding invitations to get out on the Gordon jobber.”

Laura nodded and went over to where the five compositor’s type cases stood along one wall, proud to have her very own case, its compartments filled with type, called sorts. The whole piece of furniture was wooden, the lower case tilted up at a shallow angle at waist height and the upper case at the back going up at a much steeper angle to the height of her shoulders. Underneath were drawers holding special type faces and characters.

Pulling on the heavy jean cuffs that would protect her sleeves from the ink that invariably clung to the type, she picked up the copy Iris told her about and read through the three pages containing two poems and a short story. She would set the type for each separately, and after they were locked and proofed into a galley, Iris would arrange them together with the masthead and ads into a page ready to be printed on the Koenig.

Mr. Owens, who had trained her in San Jose, said he tried to get women who were studying to be teachers because they were able to proof their own copy before and after they set the type. She certainly liked this part of the job. While a lot of the copy was pretty boring––wedding invitations or handbills announcing a concert––the books ranged from academic subjects to romance novels, and much of the work the WCPU did were legal documents.

These were of particular interest to her, given her ultimate dream of being a lawyer in partnership with her brother. She also liked learning about the different cultural and ethnic groups in the city from the copy for the several weeklies they published. For example,
The Elevator
, which she was currently working on, was a periodical directed at people of color in the city.

Smiling at Iris, who was already at work two cases away, Laura picked up her composing stick in her left hand and reached for the italic letters in the upper part of her case to start forming the title of the first poem. With satisfaction she thought that this was what she dreamed about, satisfying work that would support her future goals for a legal career.
Not some man like Seth Timmons who says he wants to be friends and just disappears.