Wanted Poster for Neran Singh.
Sheriff ’s Office. San Jose, Santa Clara County, California. June 2, 1923.
Flier, 11.25” x 8”.CONDITION: Good, old folds, some diagonal creasing, 2” tear along upper margin.
A poster seeking the immediate arrest of a Punjabi bail-jumper who had run a brothel in southern California.
This flier was issued to inform residents of Santa Clara County that “Neran Singh, a Hindu,” who “talks broken English,” was running from the law. Singh was forty-five years of age, measured “5 feet 4½ inches,” weighed “177 pounds,” had “black hair” with a receding hairline, a “peculiar walk” which featured “a very noticeable limp,” and he looked “bowlegged.” A “$500.00 Reward” was offered for his arrest, after he jumped a $5000.00 bail. Our consultation of the newspaper record reveals that Singh had originally been charged for “operating a disorderly resort” in SanJose,in March of 1923.He immediately fled the scene, and arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, where, by the summer, he was apprehended by the Canadian police “as a result of a circular sent out by Sheriff George W. Lyle,” which was likely a copy of the one offered here. Reports indicate that by 1924, the Canadian courts had determined that Singh “could not be extradited for the offense,” but his lawyer traveled to the United States on Singh’s behalf. For reasons unclear, Singh tried to return to the United States (apparently to surrender himself), but he was initially denied entry – likely due in part to the passage of Asiatic Barred Zone Act – and not helped by the fact that he was then an undesirable alien. Singh was not imprisoned in Santa Clara County jail until November 1924, when he was found “in a Hindu camp near Sacramento,” suggesting that he had re-entered the country illegally. It seems that Singh was not held behind bars for long, as only four years later reports show him caught in the crosshairs of a police raid on a house with two “Hindus seated in the kitchen…with glasses of some sort of beverage in their hands. The glasses were quickly emptied and a white woman in the place promptly emptied a larger container.” In 1938, a report shows Singh, then a “74-year-old…was struck by one car and run over by another as he walked near the center of the Monterey road one mile southwest of Salinas.”
Sheriff ’s Office. San Jose, Santa Clara County, California. June 2, 1923.
Flier, 11.25” x 8”.CONDITION: Good, old folds, some diagonal creasing, 2” tear along upper margin.
A poster seeking the immediate arrest of a Punjabi bail-jumper who had run a brothel in southern California.
This flier was issued to inform residents of Santa Clara County that “Neran Singh, a Hindu,” who “talks broken English,” was running from the law. Singh was forty-five years of age, measured “5 feet 4½ inches,” weighed “177 pounds,” had “black hair” with a receding hairline, a “peculiar walk” which featured “a very noticeable limp,” and he looked “bowlegged.” A “$500.00 Reward” was offered for his arrest, after he jumped a $5000.00 bail. Our consultation of the newspaper record reveals that Singh had originally been charged for “operating a disorderly resort” in SanJose,in March of 1923.He immediately fled the scene, and arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia, where, by the summer, he was apprehended by the Canadian police “as a result of a circular sent out by Sheriff George W. Lyle,” which was likely a copy of the one offered here. Reports indicate that by 1924, the Canadian courts had determined that Singh “could not be extradited for the offense,” but his lawyer traveled to the United States on Singh’s behalf. For reasons unclear, Singh tried to return to the United States (apparently to surrender himself), but he was initially denied entry – likely due in part to the passage of Asiatic Barred Zone Act – and not helped by the fact that he was then an undesirable alien. Singh was not imprisoned in Santa Clara County jail until November 1924, when he was found “in a Hindu camp near Sacramento,” suggesting that he had re-entered the country illegally. It seems that Singh was not held behind bars for long, as only four years later reports show him caught in the crosshairs of a police raid on a house with two “Hindus seated in the kitchen…with glasses of some sort of beverage in their hands. The glasses were quickly emptied and a white woman in the place promptly emptied a larger container.” In 1938, a report shows Singh, then a “74-year-old…was struck by one car and run over by another as he walked near the center of the Monterey road one mile southwest of Salinas.”