Jim Flood's Girl

Three decades had passed since muddy San Francisco had been transformed to a city built on nuggets and gold dust. A new social order was being created; life was becoming stable; respectability and stolidity were in the air. But there were still those who lived high, wide & handsome. The old Poodle Dog, Tail's, the Cliff House and Coffee Dan's had no lack of carefree customers.

A leader of the merrier element was James Leary Flood. In his blood was an instinct for the fleshpots; in his bank, money for it. His father was James Clair ("Bonanza King") Flood, onetime saloon keeper, later owner of the Comstock Lode with William S. O'Brien, James G.

Fair and John W. Mackay, father of Postal Telegraph's Clarence Hungerford Mackay. Said to be richest claim in the world, the Comstock yielded $340,000,000 pay dirt between 1864 and 1884, brought Fame & Fortune to the combination of Mackay, Flood, O'Brien & Fair.

Jim Flood inherited the bulk of his father's estate in 1889. All San Francisco knew of his high living, of the beauty of "Jim Flood's girl, Pete Fritz," a German girl who got her start in Shanghai. In the same year his father died San Francisco was scandalized to hear that Jim Flood's girl had left her widely known occupation, that he had married her. His friends avoided him for a while, but he and his Girl lived together happily, adopted a child called Constance May. When Rosina ("Pete") Fritz Flood died her husband promised to marry her sister Maude Lee. The second Mrs. Flood was a plump, quiet homebody, well-liked in San Francisco. Yet scandal does not die. In the little Redwood City court house (in the fashionable Peninsula district) spectators thronged last week to hear the Flood Affair dragged into the open. It was story-of-the-week for the newspapers.

Cause of last week's ado was Baby Constance May. now Mrs. John P. Gavin, 38, wife of a Los Angeles bank teller. Since 1925 Mrs. Gavin has claimed to be Jim Flood's illegitimate daughter, has sought a daughter's share (two-ninths) in his $18,000,000 estate. At first she named the first Mrs. Flood as her mother. Later she claimed as her maternal parent a Mrs. Eudora Forde Willette, onetime music hall girl.

Heading the counsel for the defense were venerable, silver-haired, massive Garrett William McEnerney, once Jim Flood's personal attorney, and stocky, nervous Theodore Roche. Their arguments were that the first Mrs. Flood would not have adopted her husband's bastard, that Jim Flood would have given an adopted daughter all the affection and kindness which Mrs. Gavin said proved she was his real daughter. Thus did they refute old Flood retainers, coachmen, gardeners, nurses & neighbors who testified he had often called Constance May "My baby," "My little daughter."

A star witness for the defense was Alfredeta Forde, 93, grandmother of Constance May, an oldtime actress. Carried into court on a chair last week, this ancient dame, alert of eye, answered questions with the dramatic articulation of the 1860 stage. She stuck to her contention that the father of her grandchild was James Cannon, property man at the old Grove Street Theatre, San Francisco. Garrulous, she insisted on telling how she had shaken President Lincoln's hand in Ford's Theatre, Washington. When the plaintiff's counsel John Taaffe tried to cross examine her she screamed at 84-year-old Superior Judge George H. Buck: "I want protection from this man. Why should he come here and question me like this?" Judge Buck smiled and said, "Take this old lady home."

If the grandmother was a star witness for the defense, Constance May's mother was a planetary witness. In a stage-Bostonian accent she told of how she went to the theatre every night with her mother, met Mr. Cannon. In a defiant voice she recounted visits to his rooms; of never telling him she had borne him a child.

Under the guidance of her bright young attorney, Maxwell McNutt, Mrs. Gavin told, in carefully cultivated tones, a story in the best tradition of romantic tragedy. She described her life at the Flood Mansion, her dog, her pony, the caresses of her father. Then she recounted how she was sent suddenly to the Ramona Convent of the Holy Name, her anguish, her letters which asked her adopter: ''Please tell me who I am, why I am not like other girls. . . . What can I tell my husband?"

A sensational witness was Mrs. Maude Lee Flood. Sobbing on the broad shoulder of her son James L. Flood Jr. (Yale 1932), she testified that her husband never mentioned any relationship to the child.

As the trial was drawing to a close spectators tried to guess what the jury of eight women and four men would decide. Public opinion seemed to be that Mrs. Gavin, real daughter or adopted, deserved some share of the Flood fortune. They recalled too that California's late Senator James Duval Phelan, another rich, lusty Irishman, but a wiser one, had provided against just such suits by a clever clause in his will- Suddenly there was a wild wave of excitement. Spectators rose in their chairs and booed angrily when old Judge Buck halted the case in midtrial, ordered the jury to return a prompt verdict against Mrs. Gavin.

Jurywoman Mrs. Aileen Maguire, life-long friend of the Judge, cried out, "I refuse to sign any such libel! What's the use of impanelling a jury if it has no discretion?" Later she said that the jury had stood ten to two in favor of Mrs. Gavin.

Unmoved by the outburst, Judge Buck said, "Aileen, you had better sit down."

-Said the Phelan will: "I declare on my honor that I have never been married, and never have been a parent of a child in or out of matrimony, but in case anyone claiming or pretending to be my wife or child or grandchild should establish such claims in any court of competent jurisdiction, to each such person I give and bequeath the sum of $50."

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