Bummer and Lazarus

Two San Francisco strays who lived outside a Montgomery Street saloon full of reporters, so their rat-killing and squabbles filled the city's papers in the early 1860s. When a dog catcher seized Lazarus in June 1862, a crowd forced his release and the supervisors exempted the pair from the stray ordinance. The popular story that they belonged to Emperor Norton grew from Edward Jump's cartoons; no contemporary record names him as their owner. Lazarus was poisoned in 1863, and Bummer's death in 1865 drew a tart obituary from a young Mark Twain.