At half past one on the afternoon of Tuesday, May twentieth, James King died from the wound inflicted by James Casey’s Colt revolver and a dark pall fell on San Francisco. Up until the Sunday that the Committee of Vigilance removed Casey from the county jail King was well enough to remark on the large number of committee members who escorted Casey past his room at the Montgomery Block, but from that time on he began to fail. On Monday his pulse rate increased and he was given chloroform and other care and gained a few hours of relative ease, but then grew worse. After a restless night, his unfavorable symptoms increased that Tuesday morning. As the news spread stores and offices closed, buildings were adorned in black, bells of churches and firehouses rang and flags flew at half-mast across the city and the harbor.
Lone Mountain Cemetery
That evening King’s body was open for viewing in a room at the Montgomery Block and for six hours San Franciscans came to pay respects. Thousands of people waited in lines several blocks long to see him. On Wednesday an autopsy revealed nothing new and on Thursday at noon the funeral was scheduled. But well before that the streets were packed with spectators. His hearse proceeded up Stockton Street to the Unitarian Church for the service and afterwards, accompanied by a procession four abreast and a mile long, he was taken to Lone Mountain Cemetery. It was estimated that nearly every man, woman and child of the fifty thousand or so residents of the city paid their respects. Never in the history of San Francisco had there been such a spectacle.
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