On Jan. 21, 1894, Mrs. Henrietta Sechrist and her husband Jay headed out to the California Midwinter International Exposition in San Francisco. It was still a week before the fair’s official opening, but there was plenty to see. Henrietta had fallen behind her husband near the scenic railway when she felt something brush her arm and then movement in her jacket pocket. “I just turned and grabbed the hand that was coming out of the pocket with my purse,” she later told a San Francisco Examiner journalist. “And while I hung on to the robber with one hand, I slapped him good with the other.”

Henrietta, described as a charming young woman with sparkling black eyes and dimples in her rosy cheeks, was initially mortified by her own behavior. “To think how I had stood there and struck at that poor man,” she said. “I asked my husband to let him go, but he would not do it.” Jay Sechrist held on to the failed pickpocket until officers arrived, only to learn that the man’s suspicious behavior had already caught their attention. While the police had lost sight of him earlier that day, Henrietta did better and stopped James Rogers, a notorious thief from out of state. A San Francisco Examiner reporter noted that the young woman was the only one who had caught a pickpocket that day, but officials had been trying to do the same for weeks. 

A view of the the Midwinter Exposition fairgrounds in San Francisco, 1894.

Rogers’ presence in San Francisco wasn’t a surprise to local authorities. In early January 1894, Chicago public safety officers warned their San Francisco counterparts that con artists, pickpockets and others who traveled the country working the crowds were likely headed to their city’s exposition. Michael H. de Young, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, had spearheaded the event hoping to show off San Francisco’s mild winter climate and counter an economic slump sparked by the national depression. Though the Stockton Evening Mail newspaper mocked the exposition as a “midwinter fake” and “weak and puerile imitation” of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair, the Bay Area event would feature exhibits from more than 30 countries and was expected to draw millions of people over its nearly six-month run. Chicago’s officials had tried, but often failed, to protect their exposition visitors from crime. San Francisco officials were determined to do better. 

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In the weeks leading up to the fair, newspapers up and down the West Coast noted an influx of Eastern crooks. San Francisco’s police chief, Patrick Crowley, dismissed his city’s early arrivals as mostly petty criminals with a “penchant for overcoats, canes, umbrellas.” Officials began charging suspected thieves with vagrancy and threatened a six-month jail sentence if they didn’t leave San Francisco immediately. By Jan. 7, over 100 suspected criminals had been arrested and photographed before they boarded the eastbound train with a promise never to return. 

A bird’s-eye view of the California Midwinter International Exposition, 1894.

Crowley hoped his aggressive approach would deter at least some of the country’s big-time crooks — and that experienced Chicago detectives who’d offered their services would help him catch those who came anyway. And they were coming. Police departments sent word when “known........

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