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Jeanne A “Jennie” Bonnet

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Jeanne A “Jennie” Bonnet

Birth
Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Death
14 Sep 1876 (aged 22–23)
San Francisco, San Francisco County, California, USA
Burial
Colma, San Mateo County, California, USA Add to Map
Memorial ID
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BONNET, JENNIE A
Mysterious Murder – An Eccentric French Girl Assassinated Near San Francisco News was received by the Coroner and Police yesterday morning of the murder of a young French girl named Jennie Bonnet at McNamara's Inn at the Southern Pacific Railroad station of San Miguel, five miles out. The killing took place Thursday evening between 8 and 9 o'clock. The victim was about twenty-two years of age, the daughter of a French actor formerly engaged at a theatre in this city. Her life seems to have been prominently checkered with evil. Her mother died several years ago. The deceased went to San Miguel last Tuesday afternoon and met a woman named Blanche Beunon, with whom she took lodgings at McNamara's. There they remained until Thursday. In the interim, they had some difficulty with a livery stable-man from this city who went out to demand pay for the team; but this circumstance is not supposed to have any bearing on the homicide. Thursday evening, as the women were retiring, the room being on the ground floor and the deceased already in bed, a shot was fired through the window from the outside. The deceased exclaimed, "I am shot!" Her companion called the landlord, and the girl was found to be dead. The explosion was heard by all persons in the vicinity—there being several houses at the station. An autopsical examination of the body showed that there were eight wounds in all, two being exits, and that these wounds were produced by buckshot. The deceased was lying on her right side, and the shot was fired across her feet and diagonally to the bed. Six shots struck her; one in the left side, another fracturing the collarbone, and two entering the left arm, the lungs etc. The wound in the neck severed the large vein and alone would have proved fatal. The principal wound was produced by the ball that entered the left side between the sixth and seventh ribs. It severed the large intestine and pierced the stomach, diaphragm, and heart, and lodged in the upper lobe of the left lung. The Coroner's autopsy results in proof of six shots having been received; five bullets are in his possession and one remains in the body, not yet extracted. It is presumed that the killing of this unfortunate creature was a deliberate murder. Suspicion has been directed upon a Frenchman named Ernest Gerard, who, it appears, had a grudge or pretended grudge against deceased. He is accused of making threats against both the deceased and her female companion; but this charge seems to rest upon the assertion of the latter. The San Francisco Chronicle thus describes the murdered girl: She was of an eminently independent turn of mind and indulged in romantic views of life and society. After calmly surveying all the various spheres of human activity that offered a promising opening to a young woman with no special qualifications for teaching music or other desirable accomplishments, and with a strong distaste for domestic drudgery or running a sewing-machine, she concluded to engage in the exciting and lucrative business of frog-catching as the means of earning a livelihood. Having come to this conclusion, she adopted male attire from motives of convenience in the prosecution of her calling. Her career and fate furnish an illustration of the difficulties under which women labor when they undertake to disregard the conventional rules which are popularly regarded as constituting the law for their sex in the matter of dress. Jennie Bonnet insisted that she could not prosecute her business as a frog-catcher in the conventional costume prescribed for women, and claimed that she assumed masculine attire solely from motives of convenience. She regarded the law prohibiting the wearing of trousers by women as arbitrary and oppressive, and as she could not successfully and efficiently chase and capture frogs in trailing skirts, she persisted in continually wearing the costume donned for the work in which she was engaged.But the conventionalities cannot be abruptly violated with impunity even by persons of a much higher social status that that of poor Jennie Bonnet. While she found it convenient to hunt frogs in pantaloons, there were individuals of the superior sex who held that women who violated the established usages in the matter of dress had no rights which men were bound to respect, and accordingly Jennie was frequently exposed to annoyance and insult. But being "strong minded," she endured this kind of persecution, contenting herself with protests against the tyranny of public opinion and the laws prohibiting women from wearing masculine apparel. Jennie was young and fair. Possibly she was also frail; but there is nothing thus far disclosed which shows that she had been guilty of anything which could justly provoke assassination. She seems to have been an eccentric girl of an independent turn of mind, who was disposed to live her own life without regard to conventional laws. She thus made herself a social outlaw. But she was industrious and inoffensive when not subjected to brutal persecution.

Published September 16, 1876 in the San Francisco Alta.

Submitted by K. Marynik



Jenny Bonnet is a 27-year-old French-born woman who is regularly dragged into court for striding the streets in pants, vest and jacket. She catches frogs for the French and Chinese restaurants that provide the city's cuisine.

Jean Bonnet (1849 - 1876) frog catcher.
Jeanne Bonnet was born in Paris and raised in San Francisco, one of two daughters of French theater players. Their mother died, and soon after the sister, at age 16, was incarcerated in the State Insane Asylum where she also died. The father, who was disabled, left to find work in Oakland. Jeanne was in and out of the Industrial School (juvenile detention), and made a living catching frogs and selling them to French restaurants.

When in the Industrial School, Bonnet had gained entry into the boys' section and then attacked the largest boy, just to show that she could. Bonnet was often arrested for fighting, and for wearing male attire. He visited brothels as a customer, and had several run-ins with pimps after encouraging their women to leave them. In 1874, Bonnet was hospitalized after ingesting laudanum.

In 1875 Blanche Beunon arrived from France with Arthur Deneve and their child. Deneve was a friend of Ernest Gerard who shot Jean Bonnet early 1876 and then visited him in hospital. Beunon and Deneve broke up, and Deneve took the child and returned to France.

Beunon turned to Bonnet, and Gerard accosted them in the street, accusing Bonnet of luring Blanche from Arthur, assaulted both of them and then called a police officer to have Bonnet arrested for wearing male clothes.

After hearing that Gerard was threatening to throw acid in Blanche's face, Jean took her, first to stay with a Frenchman, Pierre Louis and his wife, and then to McNamara's Hotel at San Miguel Railway Station. On the night of September 1876, there was a shotgun blast through the window and Bonnet was dead.

Gerard was suspected but had a strong alibi. Then the police heard either that Deneve had offered $2,000 to Pierre Louis to kill Blanche as a example to the other girls, or that L'Amant d'Blanche, another jealous lover of Beunon, had paid Louis. In either case it was not intended that Bonnet be killed. However Louis and his wife had fled to Montréal, and later Louis hanged himself before he could be arrested.

L'Amant d'Blanche took Blanche back, but she died of throat cancer six months later.

Having died with no property, Jennie was buried courtesy of the charitable Order of Odd Fellows in the Odd Fellows Cemetery within Lone Mountain Cemetery. When it was closed in the 1920's, all the remains were moved to mass graves in the Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma.
BONNET, JENNIE A
Mysterious Murder – An Eccentric French Girl Assassinated Near San Francisco News was received by the Coroner and Police yesterday morning of the murder of a young French girl named Jennie Bonnet at McNamara's Inn at the Southern Pacific Railroad station of San Miguel, five miles out. The killing took place Thursday evening between 8 and 9 o'clock. The victim was about twenty-two years of age, the daughter of a French actor formerly engaged at a theatre in this city. Her life seems to have been prominently checkered with evil. Her mother died several years ago. The deceased went to San Miguel last Tuesday afternoon and met a woman named Blanche Beunon, with whom she took lodgings at McNamara's. There they remained until Thursday. In the interim, they had some difficulty with a livery stable-man from this city who went out to demand pay for the team; but this circumstance is not supposed to have any bearing on the homicide. Thursday evening, as the women were retiring, the room being on the ground floor and the deceased already in bed, a shot was fired through the window from the outside. The deceased exclaimed, "I am shot!" Her companion called the landlord, and the girl was found to be dead. The explosion was heard by all persons in the vicinity—there being several houses at the station. An autopsical examination of the body showed that there were eight wounds in all, two being exits, and that these wounds were produced by buckshot. The deceased was lying on her right side, and the shot was fired across her feet and diagonally to the bed. Six shots struck her; one in the left side, another fracturing the collarbone, and two entering the left arm, the lungs etc. The wound in the neck severed the large vein and alone would have proved fatal. The principal wound was produced by the ball that entered the left side between the sixth and seventh ribs. It severed the large intestine and pierced the stomach, diaphragm, and heart, and lodged in the upper lobe of the left lung. The Coroner's autopsy results in proof of six shots having been received; five bullets are in his possession and one remains in the body, not yet extracted. It is presumed that the killing of this unfortunate creature was a deliberate murder. Suspicion has been directed upon a Frenchman named Ernest Gerard, who, it appears, had a grudge or pretended grudge against deceased. He is accused of making threats against both the deceased and her female companion; but this charge seems to rest upon the assertion of the latter. The San Francisco Chronicle thus describes the murdered girl: She was of an eminently independent turn of mind and indulged in romantic views of life and society. After calmly surveying all the various spheres of human activity that offered a promising opening to a young woman with no special qualifications for teaching music or other desirable accomplishments, and with a strong distaste for domestic drudgery or running a sewing-machine, she concluded to engage in the exciting and lucrative business of frog-catching as the means of earning a livelihood. Having come to this conclusion, she adopted male attire from motives of convenience in the prosecution of her calling. Her career and fate furnish an illustration of the difficulties under which women labor when they undertake to disregard the conventional rules which are popularly regarded as constituting the law for their sex in the matter of dress. Jennie Bonnet insisted that she could not prosecute her business as a frog-catcher in the conventional costume prescribed for women, and claimed that she assumed masculine attire solely from motives of convenience. She regarded the law prohibiting the wearing of trousers by women as arbitrary and oppressive, and as she could not successfully and efficiently chase and capture frogs in trailing skirts, she persisted in continually wearing the costume donned for the work in which she was engaged.But the conventionalities cannot be abruptly violated with impunity even by persons of a much higher social status that that of poor Jennie Bonnet. While she found it convenient to hunt frogs in pantaloons, there were individuals of the superior sex who held that women who violated the established usages in the matter of dress had no rights which men were bound to respect, and accordingly Jennie was frequently exposed to annoyance and insult. But being "strong minded," she endured this kind of persecution, contenting herself with protests against the tyranny of public opinion and the laws prohibiting women from wearing masculine apparel. Jennie was young and fair. Possibly she was also frail; but there is nothing thus far disclosed which shows that she had been guilty of anything which could justly provoke assassination. She seems to have been an eccentric girl of an independent turn of mind, who was disposed to live her own life without regard to conventional laws. She thus made herself a social outlaw. But she was industrious and inoffensive when not subjected to brutal persecution.

Published September 16, 1876 in the San Francisco Alta.

Submitted by K. Marynik



Jenny Bonnet is a 27-year-old French-born woman who is regularly dragged into court for striding the streets in pants, vest and jacket. She catches frogs for the French and Chinese restaurants that provide the city's cuisine.

Jean Bonnet (1849 - 1876) frog catcher.
Jeanne Bonnet was born in Paris and raised in San Francisco, one of two daughters of French theater players. Their mother died, and soon after the sister, at age 16, was incarcerated in the State Insane Asylum where she also died. The father, who was disabled, left to find work in Oakland. Jeanne was in and out of the Industrial School (juvenile detention), and made a living catching frogs and selling them to French restaurants.

When in the Industrial School, Bonnet had gained entry into the boys' section and then attacked the largest boy, just to show that she could. Bonnet was often arrested for fighting, and for wearing male attire. He visited brothels as a customer, and had several run-ins with pimps after encouraging their women to leave them. In 1874, Bonnet was hospitalized after ingesting laudanum.

In 1875 Blanche Beunon arrived from France with Arthur Deneve and their child. Deneve was a friend of Ernest Gerard who shot Jean Bonnet early 1876 and then visited him in hospital. Beunon and Deneve broke up, and Deneve took the child and returned to France.

Beunon turned to Bonnet, and Gerard accosted them in the street, accusing Bonnet of luring Blanche from Arthur, assaulted both of them and then called a police officer to have Bonnet arrested for wearing male clothes.

After hearing that Gerard was threatening to throw acid in Blanche's face, Jean took her, first to stay with a Frenchman, Pierre Louis and his wife, and then to McNamara's Hotel at San Miguel Railway Station. On the night of September 1876, there was a shotgun blast through the window and Bonnet was dead.

Gerard was suspected but had a strong alibi. Then the police heard either that Deneve had offered $2,000 to Pierre Louis to kill Blanche as a example to the other girls, or that L'Amant d'Blanche, another jealous lover of Beunon, had paid Louis. In either case it was not intended that Bonnet be killed. However Louis and his wife had fled to Montréal, and later Louis hanged himself before he could be arrested.

L'Amant d'Blanche took Blanche back, but she died of throat cancer six months later.

Having died with no property, Jennie was buried courtesy of the charitable Order of Odd Fellows in the Odd Fellows Cemetery within Lone Mountain Cemetery. When it was closed in the 1920's, all the remains were moved to mass graves in the Greenlawn Memorial Park in Colma.

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  • Created by: supermama5
  • Added: Jul 19, 2014
  • Find a Grave Memorial ID:
  • Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/133023607/jeanne_a-bonnet: accessed ), memorial page for Jeanne A “Jennie” Bonnet (1853–14 Sep 1876), Find a Grave Memorial ID 133023607, citing Greenlawn Memorial Park, Colma, San Mateo County, California, USA; Maintained by supermama5 (contributor 47547058).