‘Brownie’ Mary faces charges
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1992
Aug. 26: A 68-year-old woman who bakes brownies for AIDS patients appeared in Municipal Court in Santa Rosa on drug charges — the same day that San Francisco supervisors declared “Brownie Mary Day” in her honor. Sonoma County Municipal Judge Knoel Owen ignored the marijuana buttons and emblems that Mary Rathbun wore in his court as he set an October 9 date for her preliminary hearing and refused to reduce her $5,000 bail. During her last court appearance, another Sonoma County judge admonished Rathbun for wearing a necklace depicting a marijuana leaf. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors yesterday unanimously passed a resolution honoring Rathbun, who has admitted providing marijuana-laced brownies to AIDS patients. Rathbun, who has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of possession for sale of marijuana and transportation of the drug, was represented by her attorney Tony Serra. Prosecutor James Casey said that while her intentions were noble, “The Law is the Law.”
1967
Aug. 24: A pair of Market Street old-timers temporarily parted company yesterday. They were the vintage gold-leafed street clock first put up in front of Samuels’ Jewelers in 1915, and Albert S. Samuel, the sprightly, upright and imaginative 84-year-old who designed and built the clock and started it ticking the opening day of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. “This was my invention; I built it with Joseph Mayer of Seattle, who was a mechanical genius,” Samuels said. “I believe that it was the first selfwinding mechanism in the world, and the first street clock in the United States.” Samuels erected his gilded clock first in front of store at 879 Market Street, then, in 1943, “transplanted” it into the sidewalk in front of 856 Market when he moved across the street.
And Samuels feels after six decades on Market that the two are still happy and worthwhile combinations. His gaze cut to construction workers busily creating one of the greatest messes the city has seen, threw off his years and talked of Market Street as “one of the grand boulevards of America, a Fifth Avenue of the West.” The clock was uprooted by a big crane, lowered gently to a flat-bed truck and taken away for refurbishment, made bright as new and put back in place in about two years. Will the octogenarian be there to see it erected again? If it is in the afternoon, chances are he will not. Irene McCarthy, his secretary for the last 52 years, has now become accustomed to answering afternoon callers. Her boss is always out at Lake Merced in the afternoons, getting in those 18 holes. Aug. 24: That loveable landmark on not-always loveable Market street — the handsome 60-year-old clock outside Albert Samuels — was removed yesterday, and that brings to mind a souvenir of San Franciscana; the role of that clock in the trial of Tom Mooney and Warren K. Billings for the 1916 Preparedness Day bombing. As an alibi the defense produced a photo showing Mooney and his wife Rena on a Market St. rooftop many blocks away from the scene. The time was established by the Samuels clock, clearly visible across the street. The prosecution, however, countered that the clock was an hour off, and made the point stick. Undeterred, Rena’s lawyer took a photo of the clock every day for a year, to prove its unerring accuracy, After a final picture, exactly one year after the bombing — when the shadows were in precisely the same — he went into court and won freedom for Rena.
— Herb Caen
1942
Aug. 20: The American Legion, California department, urged today that all Japanese or persons of Japanese ancestry be denied citizenship, that all those now in the United States be placed in concentration camps and deported after the war. Then turning to conscientious objectors, the convention resolved that camps for them should be abolished and a law adopted making it a felony to refuse to serve in the Nation’s armed forces. It favored support of and praised the Soviet war effort, but urged investigation of the delay in deporting alleged communist Harry Bridges, disbarment of lawyers who are communists or identified with subversive groups. Other legislation urged included the universal draft of labor for total war; fingerprinting of all citizens, making the willful slowing of war production treason; requiring all foreign language newspapers to publish adjoining English translations.
1917
Aug. 23: In a day filled with street fighting between United Railroads substitutes and strikers, the Mayor yesterday told Jesse W. Lilienthal, president of the street car company, that service must be resumed if the city itself has to undertake the task. Pitched battles, skirmishes and individual assaults began early yesterday and continued late. All over the city ambulances and patrol wagons were kept busy. The toll of injured for the day was seventeen United Railroads substitutes and one striker. Some of the platform men were seriously hurt. There was no shooting today, the weapons being confined to fists, missiles and black jacks.