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Whisky the Bear at Frank McManus’s Union Hotel
The Examiner’s illustrated 1893 story of the shorn bear of the Potrero.
People in this article
Among the newspaper stories surrounding Frank McManus is an unusual account of a bear named Whisky. On 8 January 1893, The San Francisco Examiner published “Shaved but Not Cowed,” an illustrated story about the animal at the Union Hotel in the Potrero.
A bear at the Union Hotel
The article places Whisky at the Union Hotel near the Union Iron Works and identifies Frank McManus, the “King of the Potrero,” as his proprietor. It describes a rough saloon setting where the bear mingled with customers and dogs.
According to the paper, patrons gave Whisky beer and other alcoholic drinks. The writer connects the bear’s nickname to those habits, then turns the story into a comic account of declining spirits and lost dignity. These are the newspaper’s descriptions, not independently verified observations of the animal’s behaviour or health.
Why the bear was shorn
The article says two friends shaved a strip of fur around Whisky’s body, leaving the head, legs and other areas hairy. It portrays the bear as humiliated, supposedly losing both his appetite and his standing among the neighbourhood dogs. Attempts to cheer him with drinks provide much of the story’s humour.
The illustration expands that theme in five scenes: the bear on a card table, confrontations with dogs, and drinking from a bucket and a bottle. Its printed caption says it was sketched from life by an Examiner staff artist. That is the newspaper’s claim; the drawing is not a photograph or proof of every episode in the text.
Frank and the Keeley references
The paper also claims that Frank had undergone a “Keeley cure” and that he was willing to send Whisky to Los Gatos for similar treatment. Those remarks belong to the article’s comic treatment of drinking and temperance. They should not be used on their own to establish a medical history for Frank or to validate the treatment.
The article’s value for this family history is its contemporary association of Frank, the Union Hotel and the bear, and the glimpse it offers of how the newspaper portrayed his social world. Its anthropomorphic storytelling needs to remain distinguishable from documented biographical facts.
Another episode in the Potrero story
Read about Frank, King of the Potrero, the Union Hotel, and the Blue Mud Wars. The From Murhaun to Potrero overview connects these stories to the wider family narrative.
Original clipping and citation
The San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, 8 January 1893, page 17, “Shaved but Not Cowed.” View the clipping on Newspapers.com. Citation and images supplied by Kevin McManus. The online clipping was inaccessible during this review; the summary uses the supplied image.