Pete McDonough

Who was Pete McDonough?

Peter P. McDonough was a wealthy and influential Irish-Catholic San Francisco bail bondsman. According to the San Francisco News and the San Francisco Chronicle, McDonough 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.

McDonough was a product of the post-earthquake Abe Ruef days of civic corruption. During his years as the pre-eminent bondsmen in San Francisco, McDonough was accused of bribery, perjury, suborning witnesses, tampering with judges, bootlegging, corrupting officials and controlling and paying off police. A 1919 Grand Jury exonerated San Francisco District Attorney Charles Fickert from charges made by John B. Densmore, investigator from Washington, Director General of Employment, in the framing of Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings and for Fickert having conspired with McDonough in the freeing of wealthy defendants. Labelled the "fountainhead of corruption" by Edwin Atherton in the 1937 Atherton Report on San Francisco police corruption, McDonough was considered the overlord of San Francisco vice, gambling and prostitution. At the offices known as "the corner", located at Clay and Kearney Streets, McDonough, 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 District Attorney.