Jack Damon (died 1878) was an Irish-American former police officer of the San Francisco Police Department and rogue agent who once served in the Pinkerton Agency then later as an enforcer for the Fung Hai Tong during the 1870s.
Biography[]
Jack Damon was born in Ireland, and he emigrated to the United States with his family. His father died penniless after a life of drunkenness, and Damon became a policeman in San Francisco, befriending Bill O'Hara. However, he left the San Francisco Police Department to move to Chicago and work with the Pinkertons as an agent before going rogue then returning to San Francisco.
O'Hara standing over Damon's body
Damon, not intending to share in the widespread unemployment of San Francisco's Irish community amid the Long Depression, became an enforcer for the Fung Hai Tong, and, in 1878, he beat his old friend O'Hara for falling into debt with the Fung Hai, even after Damon had warned him to take his winnings and go home rather than continue to gamble them away. Damon then told his friend of Fung Hai's claimed Mongol heritage, their construction of a mountain of bones, and how the Chinese called it the "White Mountain"; he warned O'Hara that he would see that mountain if he continued to get into gambling trouble. He continued to hound O'Hara for his debt money, but his work for the Chinese got him into trouble with the nativist Workingmen leader and prize fighter Dylan Leary, who challenged him to a fight at the Bansheep ub to regain his honor as an Irishman. Leary beat Damon mercilessly, nearly killing him, and he tossed Damon's cane to O'Hara - who had invited Damon to meet him at the pub - to finish him off. Fearful that Damon might retaliate against him, O'Hara bashed Damon's head in with his own cane.