Pete McDonough

Peter P. McDonough (1872 – July, 1947) was a wealthy and influential Irish-Catholic San Francisco bail bondsman. According to the "San Francisco News" and the "SF Chronicle", Pete and his brother Tom founded the first modern Bail Bonds business in the United States, the system by which a person pays a percentage to a professional bondsman who puts up the cash as a guarantee that the person will appear in court, in 1898.

Pete was a product of the post-earthquake Abe Ruef days of civic corruption. During his years as the preeminent bondsmen in San Francisco, Peter McDonough was accused of bribery, perjury, suborning witnesses, tampering with judges, bootlegging, corrupting officials and controlling and paying off police. Labelled the "fountainhead of corruption" by Edwin Atherton in the 1937 Atherton Report on San Francisco police corruption, Pete was considered the overlord of San Francisco vice, gambling and prostitution. At the offices known as "the corner", located at Clay and Kearney Streets, Pete, his brother Tom and nephew Harry Rice controlled the San Francisco Bail bonds business and were friendly with numerous police, public officials, judges and the DA.

During prohibition, Pete spent eight months in the Alameda County Jail for bootlegging and eventually sought a pardon from Calvin Coolidge. He was jailed Unicode|again in 1938 for refusing to discuss police corruption before the Police Graft grand jury headed by Marshall Dill.

Over the years, McDonough developed a network of wireless communications with outlying police stations. Within minutes of an arrest, McDonough's nephew was hailing a taxi to find a judge to sign an OR (order of release) form, and the client was soon free on bail.

ources

*Obituary S.F. Chronicle 7.10.1947