Oral history has it that on one occasion a mob set out to attack Chinese residents when Emperor Norton was nearby. On that day Emperor Norton proved not only to be Protector of Mexico, but Guardian of Chinatown. It is said he placed himself between the Official dr. Crane I’m Listening Shirt But I will love this mob and the ethnic community and stared the louts down. Some say He recited the Lord’s Prayer to diffuse the riot and he said “we are all God’s children.” The mob dispersed without causing any violence. It was a heroic act however He did it. In 1867, a policeman named Armand Barbier arrested Norton to commit him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. The arrest outraged the population of San Francisco and sparked scathing editorials in the newspapers. Police Chief Patrick Crowley ordered Norton released and issued a formal apology on behalf of the police force. Crowley wrote “that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line.”
Norton magnanimously granted an Imperial Pardon to the Official dr. Crane I’m Listening Shirt But I will love this errant policeman. All police officers of San Francisco thereafter saluted Norton as he passed in the street. He was buried on Sunday, The 10th of January 1880. Ten thousand people filed past his body as it lay in state, and his funeral cortege was over two miles long. His burial was marked by the total eclipse of the sun. The other thing is that he appeared in an issue of the Sandman and is one of my favourite stories in the whole run it based on the story of Nortonwho was on the verge of ruin and despair. For the purposes of the story, his delusion that he was, in fact, Emperor of the United States was instilled by Dream in a wager against his sister Despair. Dream did not do this as an act of alturism but to prove a point that without dreams there could not be despair. So Despair looses the bet when he died and when Death came for him and escorted him to the afterlife, she remarked that out of all the emperors, queens and kings of the world she had taken, she liked him best. (Checked out from my Sandman graphic novel)
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