WILLIAM DENMAN

San Francisco County

Biographies

WILLIAM DENMAN

DENMAN, WILLIAM, Attorney and Publicist, San Francisco, California, was born in San Francisco in 1872, the son of James Denman and Helen V. (Jordan) Denman. His father was principal of the first school in San Francisco under the State system and retired fifty-one years later as the president of the Board of Education. He is thoroughly American, his first American ancestor having arrived in 1631.

He was married in San Francisco, April 4, 1905 to Leslie Van Ness, daughter of the well-known lawyer Thomas C. Van Ness.

From 1881 to 1885 Mr. Denman attended the Clement Grammar School; from 1885 to 1886 the old Lincoln Grammar, and was graduated from Lowell High in 1889. Prior to entering the University of California in 1890, he punched cattle in Nevada for a year, an experience that stood him in good stead years later at the time of the great fire in San Francisco, when he impressed over a hundred teams, sometimes at the point of the pistol, and had food supplies moving from the transport dock through the cinders to the refugee camps while the city was yet burning.

After his graduation from the University, in 1894, he took one year in the Hastings College of the Law, then entered the Harvard Law School and was graduated therefrom in 1897 with the degree of LL.B. Although taking an active part in both athletic and military life at the University, he became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society. Returning to California, he was admitted to the State Bar in 1898, and immediately began active practice.

Mr. Denmanâ€™s professional experience has been of a widely diversified nature, both in the Federal and in the State courts, and marked by a number of important cases, especially in maritime law. The litigation growing out of the sinking of the Rio de Janeiro, the explosion of the Progreso, the collision of the Columbia and San Pedro, as well as other causes he argued in the Admiralty courts, aroused interest both in the profession and in the community at large. From 1902 to 1906 Mr. Denman was lecturer and assistant professor of law in the Hastings College and the University of California.

In 1911 he formed a partnership with George Stanley Arnold under the name of Denman & Arnold, the firm conducting a general practice, with offices in the merchantsâ€™ Exchange building in San Francisco. He became a member of the non-partisan party when yet in college. His faith in the ultimate removal of the national parties from municipal elections was justified nearly twenty years later by the acceptance by San Francisco of the charter amendment drafted by him prohibiting party nominations and party designations on the ballot.

In 1908 the Mayor appointed him chairman of a committee of public citizens to report on the causes of municipal corruption in San Francisco, and as chairman he drafted the report subsequently known by his name. Mr. Denman has also been very active in the work of the Bar Association and organized the State-wide movement for the non-partisan election of judges. He campaigned, however, in opposition to the recall of judges at popular elections, advocating simplified procedure before the Legislature. He defended the constitutionality of the eight-hour law for women, his opposition to the attempt by the American protective Association to inject religion into politics, his drafting of the majority election law now in force in San Francisco and his organization of the campaign for its passage.

He is a member of the University, the Pacific-Union, the Unitarian, the Commonwealth and the Sierra clubs, as well as the Bar Association.

Transcribed 11-29-06 Marilyn R. Pankey.

Source: Press Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 182, International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta. 1913.

California Biography Project

San Francisco County

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