Summer is the time for binge reading, and when I read history, I read all of the footnotes. I’m interested in the sources, the marginalia, the parentheticals. (I think in parentheses.) You never know what you might find just outside the book’s main focus. Call it peripheral reading.
My peripheral reading of American Sherlock by Kate Winkler Dawson, a book that documents the first CSI in America, led me down a rabbit hole I hope you enjoy as much as I did. This particular rabbit trail ended up at the infamous San Quentin prison in California, now optimistically called the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. At 3,600 occupants, the complex is housing an estimated 106% of its capacity. (It’s crowded.)
A footnote to this story is a reference to a furniture factory in the early 1900s that operated inside this darkest of dark places. Going back to the daily newspapers of that period, I discovered a story of crime, corruption and intrigue. Googling the prison’s furniture factory, I discovered that there is a plan in California right now to spend $360 million of taxpayer money to tear down this erstwhile furniture manufacturing facility and replace it with what would resemble a college campus. The proposed prison campus, for which Gov. Gavin Newsom has issued a December 2025 deadline, would even sport a coffee shop and a reading room. Hey, don’t do the crime if you can’t . . . see yourself sucking down mocha lattes in between classes.
Newsom’s prison-cum-college plan has raised quite a stink. According to the Associated Press, lawmakers gave the governor the green light “with little input or oversight,” and the 21-member advisory council that Newsom personally selected to help shape the facility’s design won’t be required to abide by California’s open meetings laws. Oh, did I mention that California faces a nearly $32 billion budget deficit?
“California is at the forefront of innovation and groundbreaking transformation as we reimagine San Quentin to better serve our state — and improve public safety,” Newsom said in a statement released a year ago. “San Quentin is becoming a national model to show positive rehabilitation can improve the lives of those who live and work at prisons and make all communities — inside and out of our institutions — safer.”
Dovetailing
Sitting on a peninsula with a view of the northern part of San Francisco Bay 18 miles south of San Francisco, San Quentin has a number of innovative programs designed to prepare inmates for life outside, including accredited college classes, a coding academy and an award-winning newsroom. As recently as the 1970s, San Quentin also operated a furniture factory, a clothing factory and a mattress renovation plant.

Photo from the Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley
This was no ordinary furniture factory.
The Los Angeles Times reported in August 1902 on an elaborate scheme developed by then California Gov. Henry Gage to deploy the factory to make “hundreds of pounds” of furniture for his private residence and for those of many of his closest associates, friends and family members. The headline: “Furniture factory worked for Gage: Crates and boxes sent to his home.” As evidence for a claim of libel, witness testimony told of a steady flow of furniture going to Gage’s Downey ranch, the “governor’s sunny southern home.”
Using steamships and trains, at least 55 crates and parcels of “assorted furniture and other articles” were sent to Downey over a period of two years, according to testimony, waybills and bookkeeping statements. These crates included about every furniture piece you could think of, as well as “glassware, plants, bird cages, [and] bike stands.” Destined for Downey were “carloads of assorted furniture.”
In 1902, Downey was a rural community about 40 miles from Los Angeles inhabited by “well-to-do farming folk,” according to the Times’ account, a village reachable by the Southern Pacific Railroad. Today, located equidistant between downtown Los Angeles and the center of Anaheim, Downey is home to more than 100,000.
Inconvenient for Gage and then-warden Martin Aguirre, who the newspaper believed to be related to Gage by marriage, California law stated that “at San Quentin no articles shall be manufactured for sale except jute fabrics.” (Jute fabric is burlap.) The newspaper surmised that were the furniture and other items “gifts,” Gage might be off the hook.
In another echo of contemporary politics and union wars, a California labor union had the furniture factory shut down, objecting to “competition of prison-made furniture” because of the unfair trade advantage of essentially free labor. (These prisoner-furniture manufacturers couldn’t strike, either.) The factory had been in operation at least as early as 1884, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, when it employed 22 incarcerated furniture makers.
‘G’ for ‘Gage’
Testimony in the 1902 case from San Quentin’s head carpenter describes the manufacture of beds, chairs, tables (both inlaid and extension), dining chairs, center tables, desks, chiffoniers, dressers, settees and sofas, or, as the Times put it, “every variety of furniture.” Two of the beds were made for Joseph Aquirre, the warden’s brother AND cashier of the prison! The carpenter also made one for himself, testifying that he bought the mahogany for the bed with his own money, at 20 to 25 cents per foot. Another article described furniture made in mahogany, ebony, oak, ash, cedar, walnut and rosewood.
For one of the beds, Gage asked that the letter “G” be carved into the headboard.
The carpenter’s testimony was devastating for Gage and Aguirre. He provided a detailed catalog of the fine hardwood furniture crafted for “FOG,” or friends of Gage, the 20th governor of the state.
Gage and Aguirre might have successfully claimed the “gift” loophole, but unfortunately for both, the San Francisco Call newspaper uncovered a sophisticated crime ring within the prison dedicated to cooking the books, forging receipts and documentation, and obfuscating from the public’s view the felonious misappropriation of taxpayer money. It makes sense; within San Quentin’s prison population were plenty of accomplished forgers.
It’s unclear, at least to me, when San Quentin’s furniture factory was resurrected, but a feature story in the New York Times in 1971 mentions it as a going concern. It’s also unclear when the factory was again shut down. I could find no mention of it after 1971. We do know that San Quentin wasn’t alone in dabbling in the furniture industry. Among the 478 factories operating in U.S. prisons in 1957, the most common were those making furniture, license plates and signage, and mattresses.

Digital copy of the newspaper from the Library of Congress
As for the libel case brought by Gage against two men, one the managing editor of the San Francisco Call newspaper, not surprisingly it was dismissed. Gage used California’s criminal libel law to retaliate against the editor for the accounts of fraud. Fortunately for democracy, criminal libel laws were all but voided throughout the country by the landmark Supreme Court decision in Times v. Sullivan in 1964.
One can only wonder where all that San Quentin-made furniture ended up. But, if you find yourself watching the Antiques Roadshow on PBS and you spot a headboard with a “G” on it, you will be one of the few people in the country with a good idea about where and even for whom it was made.