The Los Angeles Herald recounted that despite his name, Yankee Jim (his grave is pictured) was a French Canadian. He had come to San Diego to try his luck as a miner, and quickly earned a bad reputation around town. The Herald noted that he was a big fellow: six-foot-three- or four.
In 1852, Yankee Jim and two other men stole a rowboat in the San Diego Harbor. They were arrested, and Jim was tried for grand larceny. The punishment, fixed by the jury (which included the two men who owned the boat), was death. That night, Jim laughed at the verdict. He believed it was a prank, a trick to scare him straight. Who on Earth would hang someone over a rowboat? Two Catholic priests pleaded with him to consider his immortal soul, but Jim brushed them off. He wouldn’t actually hang, he said.
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The next morning, when he was lead to the gallows in El Campo Santo, it slowly dawned on Yankee Jim that this was no joke. The police let him give a speech to the bystanders, claiming that he’d “given piles of gold to help poor men.” Then they stood him up on a mule cart with the noose about his neck. He struggled to stay on his feet as the mules drove off, but fell. On account of his height, the fall didn’t break his neck, and he slowly choked to death, with his boots grazing the sand. Adding insult to injury? He was too tall to fit into the standard coffins, so his legs were broken to accommodate him (per Explore San Diego).
