We got contracts to address envelopes and sublet the work to others. We sewed beads on “genuine” Indian moccasins for a concern downtown. Best of all, we bought cheap jewelry from mail-order houses and sold it at a profit to visitors, giving them to understand that it was stolen stuff we had smuggled in with us.
One by one, those whose records were destroyed by the fire made application to have them restored in order to perfect their appeals. In the reconstruction of those records they lost their valuable points on appeal and one by one they were turned down by the higher court. I made no move, but decided to stay in the jail rather than go back to Folsom, although conditions there had been greatly improved by Warden Yell, who soon put Captain Murphy out and won the confidence of the convicts by treating them on the square.
At last a visiting grand-jury committee reported to the district attorney that there was a prisoner at Ingleside whose case had been pending more than six years, and recommended that something be done with it. He at once put me on the docket for restoration of records.
My attorney had retired, and with money I had saved from work and speculations in jail I got a new lawyer. I had all the criminal lawyers in San Francisco doped out like race horses by this time, and my choice was Sam Newburgh. I had seen him beat some of the toughest cases that ever went to trial. Not only that, I had seen him go down in his pocket and give clients money after he got them out. He never weakened, never lay down, or ran out on a man—money or no money.
Newburgh at once threw down a most formidable barrage of objections and technicalities. The prosecution got busy and, as usual, the defendant was lost sight of in the smoke of battle. I had little hope of actually beating the case; the best I could expect was a new trial and maybe a sentence I could do instead of one that would do me.
But while my affairs were at this stage a new hope appeared. I had made a few new outside friends by this time. One of them especially, a fine, noble woman, who was interested in helping us all, concerned herself to do what she could for me.
About this time Fremont Older, now editor of The Call, had helped the late Donald Lowrie, whose writings did for American prisons what John Howard’s did for those of England.
This woman, who was one of Mr. Older’s friends, wrote him and said:
“By way of thanking you for helping Lowrie I am going to give you another man to assist. He is John Black, at the Ingleside jail. I wish you would see him.”
He called at the jail soon, but instead of having me out to the office he came down to my cell, squeezed his bulk through the doorway, and sat down on the edge of my bunk. Waving the guard away, he produced cigars, helped me to a light, and asked, in a voice that rang to me like a twenty-dollar piece, what he could do for me. For once all my mistrust, suspicion, and hatred vanished.