San Francisco History Center’s ongoing exhibition, Company’s Coming: San Francisco Hosts the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, explores the ways that San Francisco locals and visitors took part in the PPIE: as sight-seers, thrill-seekers, workers, and exhibitors. Last month’s post shared the sensational lengths to which some people went just to visit the PPIE. This month, we feature several workers who spent their day-to-day lives at the Exposition, then found themselves embroiled in its fair share of crime.
The Opal Grinder and the Serapi Weaver
Like a sprawling amusement park, the Joy Zone on the eastern part of the Fairgrounds featured concessions, rides, theaters, restaurants, and controversial cultural attractions. It was quite the spot for merriment—not to mention grisliness. More than once, fairgoers and employees met injuries or death in accidents at its concessions. Sometimes, the Zone played host to outright violence and murder. Every sordid tale is documented in news clippings found in the San Francisco Police Department Detective Bureau Scrapbooks.
The portion of the Joy Zone pictured here includes the Tehuantepec Village (far right), where a shooting duel took place. View of the Zone at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Showing the Chinese Village and the Battle of Gettysburg, Alt Nurnberg and Tehuantepec Buildings. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
According to one story published in the San Francisco Examiner, two rival suitors engaged in a shooting duel on the patio of the Tehuantepec Village on August 4, 1915. They were quarreling over Jusus Ontivens, an opal grinder at the concession. King Karlo, the “spieler” of the village, was shot in the hand as he tried to intercede.
Though the serapi weaver Francisco Moreno won Jusus’ favor, he was less lucky than his rival. Moreno was taken into custody following the incident, while Juan Hidalgo, the rejected suitor, merely walked away, with the proclamation that he had “learned about women from ‘er.” Jusus declared she was in no way to blame for what transpired.
The Examiner gives no further details about what else happened that day. But, it notes wryly, “Guests and visitors were given a few thrills when the bullets began to fly.”
This postcard shows the people of the reconstructed Mexican village at the PPIE—perhaps including Jusus Ontivens, Francisco Moreno, and King Karlo. Beautiful Court, Tehuantepec Village, Panama-Pacific International Exposition San Francisco, 1915. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
There had been worse violence, directly against a woman, a few months earlier in another part of the Zone.
The Dancing Girl and the Ticket-Taker
The 24-year-old dancer Zahia Eddie (spelled “Zacharia” and “Eddy” in other accounts) made a living at the Russian Theater in the Joy Zone. On the evening of March 18, 1915, right before a 9:30 performance, her brother burst into the theater and ended her life.
According to an early report from the San Francisco Chronicle, Zahia’s ex-husband, Ameen Lufti, was jealous of the attention paid to her by Joseph Sasso, the proprietor of the restaurant next to the theater. Zahia and Lufti had married in Damascus, but separated several months before Zahia’s killing. They had both found employment in the Joy Zone, with Lufti working as a ticket-taker for the Mysterious Orient attraction.
The day before her murder, Lufti allegedly met Zahia’s brother in the Streets of Cairo and gave him a revolver. Isaack (also identified as “Isaac” and “Esick”) was displeased with his sister’s acquaintanceship with Sasso; he later told the police that he killed her because she wouldn’t give it up.
The Coroner’s report on Zahia Eddie’s death. From San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Records (SFH 30). San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Isaack first attacked Sasso in the restaurant, punching him and shooting his arm in a scuffle. Isaack then went into the theater and gunned down Zahia on sight. An eyewitness told the Chronicle:
I heard a shot outside, probably in the restaurant, and then I saw Eddy come in from a side exit with a levelled revolver. He fired once at his sister without warning… The girl shrieked from the moment of his appearance and cried: ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ She crouched as the shot was fired. A man rushed in from the side door and struck Eddy’s revolver upward when Eddy attempted to fire another shot into his sister’s body. Then the shooting continued, some of the bullets going into the ceiling and walls. Our party fled into the street with the others, just as the guards rushed in.
Isaack was sentenced to nine years in prison for murder. Lufti was arrested as his accomplice, then later acquitted. How complicit was he in the death of his ex-wife? We’ll probably never be sure. In any case, it is notable that at a World’s Fair where there was much attention paid to the safety of middle-class women visitors, the safety of working-class women employees was left so vulnerable.
Coverage of Zahia Eddie’s murder takes up an entire page of an SFPD Detective Bureau Scrapbook. Note the later clippings, following up on the story, pasted onto the original report. From California Books Volume 27, San Francisco Police Department Records (SFH 61). San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Battle at the Laguna Street Gate
Of all the stories of Fairground violence we’ve shared so far, this one may be characterized as the most epic. According to the San Francisco Examiner, a “pitched battle in which heads were broken and guns flashed” broke out just outside the Joy Zone on the evening of August 15, 1915, “when a crowd of seventy-five hoodlums forced an entrance at the Laguna street gates.”
This gateway to the Joy Zone by Fillmore Street was three blocks from the Laguna Street entrance where hoodlums clashed with Fair guards. Entrance to the Zone, near Fillmore Street, at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
After the brawl, Fair guards arrested five youths aged 17 to 19 and brought them to the Exposition station. (One of the boys was under arrest a third time for rushing the gate.) Then, as the Examiner recounts:
As soon as the desk sergeant had booked the youths, a gang of 200 men and boys reassembled within the walls bent upon rushing the guardhouse and effecting a recapture of their companions.
A flying wedge was formed. Just as it precipitated itself against the frame structure a broad-shouldered Deputy Sheriff from Sacramento county… leaped atop of the sergeant’s desk with a revolver in his hand and dared the crowd to proceed. It didn’t.
A riot call brought police aid, and that of every guard at the exposition. For an hour and a half the fireworks ceased to have any interest.
The underside of the PPIE wasn’t always about violence, though; there were other kinds of crime.
Fair guards, such as the patrolmen pictured here, had their hands full during a riot on August 15, 1915. Two Exposition Guards on a Truck at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
The Bell-Boy Bandit
Zelbert Goza, a one-time bellboy at the Exposition’s Inside Inn, was not involved in any cold-blooded shootings at the PPIE; but that isn’t to say his experience at the Fair didn’t drive him to a desperate act. Several days after losing his job on the Fairgrounds, the 27-year-old Missouri native attempted to rob the Niles State Bank in Niles, California (In a twist worthy of Joy Zone entertainment, he was captured by movie-actor cowboys filming in the area).
“I was homesick and desperate,” Goza explained after his arrest, according to the San Francisco Examiner’s news story on March 10, 1915. “I was born and lived most of my life in Missouri… Recently I went to Chicago, and after remaining there for a short time came West to see the Exposition.”
“I went to work at the Inside Inn and after making $10 lost my job,” he said. “I could get nothing to do and had no money, so I decided on the robbery.”
Zelbert Goza (right) upon his arrest for attempted bank robbery. From California Books Volume 27, San Francisco Police Department Records (SFH 61), San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library
Sadly, the Examiner notes that he was expected to go back to work in a few days. His arrest likely jeopardized his chances at immediate re-employment. Less salacious than other crimes linked to the PPIE, Goza’s is another sobering reminder of fates that befell individuals who came to San Francisco for the Fair.
Visit Company’s Coming: San Francisco Hosts the Panama-Pacific International Exposition to learn more about the wide spectrum of people who shaped and served the PPIE, left their mark on it, or were forever changed by it. The exhibition is currently on view in the Skylight Gallery, on the 6th floor of the Main Library.
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