Domesticity Reigns

I think it is safe to say that in 1849, when the world descended on San Francisco and California, there were a lot more men than women. Multi-national bachelors swarmed the city and surrounding country, madly searching for gold. For my stories, I read accounts from many diaries and research papers that discuss what happens when there so many men scramble to survive in such an environment. Let’s consider a few things.

California was primitive. Conveniences like laundries and restaurants for prepared meals were few and what existed were very expensive. I have an archived blog about the value of money in 1849 but since it’s been a few years, let me update. A dollar in 1849 has the equivalent purchasing power of about $41.75 in 2025. 

One of the biggest shocks to the gold seekers arriving in San Francisco was that their basic kit of a pick, a shovel, and a gold pan was so expensive they had to find other work before they could afford to buy the kit. And the merchants in the San Francisco area couldn’t get enough of the equipment consistently so often there were no shovels to be bought. 

Often the young men were from places where their domestic needs were met by either mothers, sisters, servants or young brides. When they had to do things for themselves, they had a choice to either learn some new skills or be slobs. 

Think of all the things they had to learn and all the roles they had to play! There are stories of mining camps where men rotated the domestic jobs for laundry and meals. There were buttons to be sewn on, pants to patch, etc. When they would want to have fun, men had to learn to how to dance in a woman’s place.  

For some, adapting to having no women around was part of the reason they left their society. In California, they could drink, swear, be filthy, gamble, all the vices that Eastern society, and women, harped against. They just wanted their freedom from women’s expectations. 

Eliza Farnham (archived blog from April 17, 2020) took note of the depravity that existed in California, sailed around Cape Horn to New York and put together a campaign to take young women to California to bring civility to the chaos. Despite her efforts and support from many respected men and women, her effort didn’t work out. 

Initially, the first women who did arrive were prostitutes. They came from as far away as Australia, China, Mexico, Chile and Germany and joined the Americans in the livelihood, but it was the women from France who commanded the highest prices. Prostitutes could make vast amounts where they barely scraped by in the outside world. They could also supplement their income with regular labor of all kinds. But even they were not immune to the high cost of living facing everyone in the area.

As more women arrived, I’m talking about handfuls at a time, they started to notice the lack of domestic services. Laundry services, which factors into both The Gantlet and Kismet, were being shipped to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and cost the miners $1.00 per shirt not to mention the time it took for the laundry to return to them. Would we pay $41.75 per shirt to have it laundered today? I think not. It would be tempting to wear a shirt until it fell off in tatters and many men did. But buying a shirt was just as difficult and expensive as laundering one.

Enterprising women saw the need and filled it by becoming seamstresses, laundresses,

cooks, maids, hotel hosts, bakers - all the jobs that they did for free in their earlier lives. These entrepreneurs had a unique opportunity, and the men respected them for doing these jobs. No longer looked down on, the women experienced a whole new position of power. I mean, they still couldn’t vote but, hey, at least they got the chance to be financially independent, right? There aren’t many records to show for these independent ladies, and no one generated statistics until 1870. By then, societal roles had returned to “normal.”

Of course, all these cultures coming from all over the world brought their cultural bias with them. It wasn’t long before there were targeted attacks on Mexican and Chinese women, and men, for that matter. I’ll talk about how the new California government in 1850 tried to take advantage of these prejudices in an upcoming blog.

For this blog, I relied on information from the historical essay, “Men: Women in Early San Francisco” by Caroline Danielson at www.foundsf.org