Charles de Young attempts to assassinate Reverend Issac
Kalloch.
Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper, September 13, 1879.
On August 23, 1879, ten days before
the local election, one of the founders of The Chronicle, Charles de
Young, fired two shots at point blank range into the body of The
Reverend Issac Kalloch, the founder of the Metropolitan Baptist
Church and a candidate for Mayor.
The de Youngs and Rev. Kalloch had
been engaging in a running war of public insults for some months and
the insults finally were directed at the late mother of the de
Youngs and Rev. Kalloch's father. This was too much. De Young took
an enclosed horse drawn "hack" to the Metropolitan Church, waited
outside for Kalloch and shot him in front of a crowd of Kalloch
supporters.
Charles de Young was arrested and
taken to jail and his brother was put in the same cell for his own
safety. Kalloch lay in his temple near death for several days, but
won the election and became San Francisco's 18th
Mayor.
Nine days after the shooting, De Young
was released on bail under a charge of assault and promptly went to
Mexico for a vacation, the start of a four month absence from San
Francisco. Local authorities procrastinated for eight months without
indicting de Young. Meanwhile, de Young had returned to San
Francisco and prepared a scathing and greatly fabricated "biography"
of Mayor Kalloch.
On April 23, 1880, Mayor Kalloch's 28
year old son, Milton, was given an advance copy of the "biography."
Milton got his gun, visited a number of taverns and then walked into
the lobby of The Chronicle and killed Charles de Young. Many
months later a jury acquitted Milton on grounds of self
defense. |