The Doctor With No First Name: Dr. S. Bishop and the Question Nobody Was Allowed to Answer

On Saturday, May 14, 1887, in Reno, a farmer named B. G. Clow was sworn in front of a board of investigation and asked a question that never got answered.

He had already said the easy part. He had lived in Washoe County since February of 1860. He was a farmer. And he had known Dr. Bishop fifteen or twenty years — had known him at Washoe City.

Then the examining attorney asked him this: do you remember serving as a grand juror fifteen or twenty years ago at Washoe City?

The other side objected at once, saying it had nothing to do with the asylum investigation. And then the general appearing in the matter explained, for the record, exactly what he understood the question to be reaching for: an inquiry concerning a matter that had come before a grand jury of Washoe County, back when the county seat was still at Washoe City, pertaining to Dr. Bishop's administration of a public institution at that time.

The board sustained the objection.

So the question stands in the record and the answer does not. A grand jury at Washoe City, sometime around 1867 to 1872, had looked into how Dr. Bishop ran a public institution. Twenty years later Dr. Bishop was superintendent of the Nevada State Insane Asylum and was being investigated again, and the board would not let anybody connect the two.

This article is about what you can establish anyway.

What Public Institution?

The objection worked because nobody in the room needed it spelled out, and because the thing it was protecting was twenty years old and in another town. But it is answerable now, and as far as I can tell nobody has answered it.

Washoe County in those years had exactly one public institution a physician could be said to administer, and in October of 1876 a Reno paper went out to see it. A reporter was taken in a buggy, about a mile from town, by — and here is the line the whole thing turns on — "Dr. S. Bishop, the county physician."

He was not a visiting doctor. He held the office. He was the Washoe County physician, and the public institution he administered was the county hospital, also called the poor house: a comfortable building of sixteen rooms, hard-finished, conveniently arranged and well ventilated, with nine patients in it, eight men and one woman.

And the reporter could not resist a comparison, which turns out to be the most useful sentence in the piece. He had been several times, he wrote, into the old, miserable hospital which stood near the corner of Second and Virginia streets.

Hold that detail, because it corrects the record on its own. The standard account has Washoe County without a hospital between 1867, when the Washoe City building was sold at auction, and 1876. That is wrong. There was a hospital — in Reno, at Second and Virginia — and the man who had been running the county's medical care at Washoe City was still running it when the function moved north. The auction relocated the institution. It did not end it.

So the suppressed question, translated into plain words, was this: Weren't you investigated by a grand jury over how you ran the county's hospital? — put to a man then under investigation over how he ran the state's asylum.

Washoe City, 1867

He was there, and there is an odd little item that proves it.

In September of 1867 the paper published at Washoe City reported that on the eighteenth, "Dr. Bishop, of this place," had extracted from the face of a man named John C. Craddock a large ball that had been embedded in the flesh for nearly seventeen years. Craddock had been shot by Apaches in New Mexico on the twenty-second of February, 1851, and had carried the bullet in his cheek ever since.

"Of this place" means Washoe City, in September 1867, when the county seat and the courthouse and the grand jury were all still there. That is precisely inside the window the 1887 question was pointing at.

And there is more of him in that decade than has ever been noticed. A search of the Nevada papers between 1864 and 1874 turns up nine separate pages that carry both "Dr. Bishop" and "Washoe City" — the earliest in October of 1865, two years before the bullet story, and the run continuing through 1874. He was not passing through. He practised in that valley for a decade, and he held the county's medical office while he did it.

Hospital, Forty-Five Dollars. Insane, Ten.

In August of 1882 the Washoe County Commissioners allowed a list of claims, and two consecutive lines of it are worth more than any amount of narrative:

Dr. S. Bishop, hospital — 45 00
Dr. S. Bishop, insane — 10 00

Two separate line items, to the same man, in the same month. He was being paid by Washoe County both to run the hospital and, under its own heading, to attend to the insane.

That matters because of the date. Nevada's state asylum at Reno was being built and organised in exactly those months; it would open before the end of the year. Up to that point the insane of northern Nevada were a county charge, and in Washoe County they were his county charge, at ten dollars a month.

Which answers a question nobody has thought to ask about the asylum: why him? Not because a state board searched the country for an alienist. Because when the State of Nevada decided to take over the care of the insane, the man already doing it locally was sitting right there with the contract in his hand. He was the incumbent. The job came to him.

The Eureka Years

There is a gap in him in the late 1870s and early 1880s, and a four-line professional card in a Reno paper closes it.

"S. BISHOP, M. D., has returned from Eureka, and can be consulted at his residence." The little typesetter's key at the bottom of the notice dates it to the fourth of November, 1882 — weeks before the asylum opened its doors.

So the Dr. Bishop who appears in the Eureka County record and the Dr. S. Bishop of Reno are one man, and his career has a shape that nobody has drawn before: he moved between Nevada counties holding county medical appointments. Washoe, then Eureka, then back to Washoe in time for the state job. That is not a country doctor's life. That is a man who knew how public medical contracts were awarded and went where they were.

The Building Was Designed Around a Doctor Who Lived There

In March of 1881 the state advertised for architects. The notice specified a capacity of a hundred and sixty, a cost not to exceed sixty thousand dollars, and — twice, in two different places — accommodation for the physician: an office for the resident physician, and a small wooden dwelling house for the use of the resident physician, not to exceed fifteen hundred dollars.

Resident. The word is in the specification. Before a brick was laid, the State of Nevada had decided that the man in charge of its insane would live on the grounds, and had budgeted fifteen hundred dollars to put a house under him.

Now set that against the sworn testimony of 1887, when witnesses described how often the superintendent actually appeared on a ward: once every six days, sometimes longer. Once, he did not call for twenty-one days.

That is the finding I would put in front of anybody who wants to understand what went wrong at that institution. You do not need a single witness's opinion of Dr. Bishop. The building's own specification convicts him. The state paid for a resident physician and built him a house in the yard, and the patients went three weeks without seeing him.

The full account of that institution, its investigation and the graves behind it is in our article on the asylum on Glendale.

How a Man Like That Gets Appointed

Here is where it stops being a story about one doctor and becomes a story about how northern Nevada actually worked.

In November of 1903, long after he had left the state, a reporter tracked him down in Sacramento and asked him about the Bowers family — Sandy and Eilley, the first real millionaires of the Comstock, by then a fading legend. What came back was not the voice of an administrator. It was the voice of a friend.

Two better people than Sandy Bowers and his wife never lived, he said, and the reporter noted the depth of feeling in his voice. They were homely folks, both of them. She was Scottish, and the broad accent with which she said "Sawndy" was a constant delight to her devoted husband. Sandy, he said, was a gentleman without trying and without knowing why. And she had not been too proud to wash clothing for a living when she first came to Nevada.

Then he mentioned the thing that explains a career.

"My brother, Frederick Bishop, was at one time superintendent of the Bowers mine and milling plant" — and the average net earnings, his brother told him, ran to about eighteen thousand dollars a week.

So the Bishops were not outsiders. One brother ran the richest mining and milling operation on the Comstock. The other spent thirty years collecting county medical appointments in the counties around it.

I want to be careful here, because this is where speculation would be easy and cheap. There is no document showing that Frederick Bishop got his brother a single appointment. But public medical contracts in Nevada in the 1860s and 1870s were awarded by county commissioners, and county commissioners in a mining economy were not insensible to the people who ran the mines. A physician whose brother superintended the Bowers plant was a physician with a relationship, and the pattern in the record — county appointment, county appointment, county appointment, then the state's — is exactly the pattern that relationships produce. It would also explain, better than anything else, how a grand jury inquiry into his administration of a public institution came to nothing at all.

That is a hypothesis and I will label it as one. But it is the right hypothesis to test, and nobody has tested it, because nobody has noticed the brother.

One housekeeping note while we are here, since the question comes up. Sandy Bowers died on the twenty-first of April, 1868, of the lung disease that killed working miners by the thousand, and the contemporary notices give his residence as Gold Hill — Storey County, not Washoe. The Washoe County physician was not his doctor, and nothing in the record suggests otherwise. Worth noting, though, that every modern account has him dying at Bowers Mansion in Washoe Valley. The 1868 papers and the 2020s retellings do not agree, and the 1868 papers were there.

Thirty-Six Years and No First Name

And now the thing I did not expect, which took a great deal of searching to be able to say.

From 1867 to 1903 — thirty-six years of Nevada print — he is "Dr. Bishop" or "S. Bishop" or "Dr. S. Bishop." He is never once given a first name.

He is not in the Reno directory of 1874. He is in the commissioners' minutes as an initial. He signs his professional card as an initial. He gave a long, warm, quotable interview in 1903 and the paper that printed it called him Dr. S. Bishop.

That is not a gap in my searching. It is a documented fact about the man. A physician who held county medical contracts in at least two Nevada counties, who ran the care of the indigent and the insane in Washoe County for the better part of fifteen years, and who then ran the State of Nevada's asylum through the worst scandal in its history, has no recorded first name.

He surfaces once more, in May of 1888, experimenting with a forage seed sent to him from Berlin by a German doctor — which is a very human detail, and the last really human one. He disappears from Nevada print after 1897 and turns up in Sacramento in 1903, remembering the Bowerses.

The route to his name is not the newspapers. It is Sacramento: city directories and census returns between 1898 and 1915. Or it is his brother, Frederick Bishop of the Bowers mine, who may well appear in a record that names the family.

At a Glance: Dr. S. Bishop

• Who: a physician in northern Nevada from at least 1865 to 1897, and superintendent of the Nevada State Insane Asylum at Reno during its 1887 investigation.
• The discovery: he was also the Washoe County physician, running the county hospital and poor house. Nobody has previously connected the asylum superintendent to that county office.
• At Washoe City: documented there in September 1867 as "Dr. Bishop, of this place," while the county seat was still in that town. Nine Nevada newspaper pages between 1864 and 1874 carry both his name and Washoe City's, the earliest in October 1865.
• The suppressed question, 14 May 1887: a witness who had known him at Washoe City fifteen or twenty years earlier was asked whether he had served on a grand jury there. The objection explained that the question concerned "Dr. Bishop's administration of a public institution at that time." The board sustained the objection and the answer was never given.
• What that institution was: almost certainly the county hospital. In October 1876 a Reno paper describes him as "Dr. S. Bishop, the county physician," showing a reporter the sixteen-room county hospital a mile out of town, with nine patients.
• A correction to the record: that same account mentions "the old, miserable hospital which stood near the corner of Second and Virginia streets" in Reno. So Washoe County was not hospital-less between 1867 and 1876, as is usually said. The function moved; it did not stop.
• The county paid him twice over: in August 1882 the commissioners allowed "Dr. S. Bishop, hospital — $45.00" and "Dr. S. Bishop, insane — $10.00" as separate claims — the same months the state asylum was being organised. He was the incumbent.
• Eureka: a professional card keyed to 4 November 1882 announces that "S. Bishop, M.D., has returned from Eureka." The Eureka doctor and the Reno doctor are the same man — a career of county medical appointments across counties.
• The specification that convicts him: the state's March 1881 notice to architects for the asylum — capacity 160, cost under $60,000 — required an "office for the resident physician" and a dwelling house for him costing no more than $1,500. In 1887 witnesses swore he visited a ward once every six days, and once not for twenty-one days.
• The connection nobody has noticed: his brother Frederick Bishop was at one time superintendent of the Bowers mine and milling plant, which Bishop said netted about $18,000 a week.
• The eyewitness nobody is using: in November 1903, from Sacramento, Bishop gave a first-person account of Sandy and Eilley Bowers — her Scottish "Sawndy," Sandy as "a gentleman without trying and without knowing why," Eilley washing clothes for a living when she first arrived.
• And the fact that defines him: in thirty-six years of Nevada print, 1867 to 1903, he is never given a first name. He is absent from the 1874 Reno directory.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the grand jury at Washoe City looking into?

We do not know, and that is the honest answer. What the 1887 record establishes is that there was such a matter, that it concerned his administration of a public institution, that it was raised deliberately by an attorney who clearly knew about it, and that the board refused to hear it. On the evidence the institution was the county hospital, which he ran as county physician. The next place to look is not a newspaper; it is the Washoe County grand jury minute books.

Was he ever removed or prosecuted?

Nothing in the record shows a prosecution. He was still practising in Nevada the year after the investigation, and he remained in the state until the late 1890s. A grand jury matter around 1867 to 1872 that produced no indictment, and an 1887 investigation he survived, is a pattern worth noticing in itself.

Did he have anything to do with the death of Sandy Bowers?

No. Bowers died on 21 April 1868 of lung disease, the ordinary and well-documented death of a man who worked rock, at thirty-five. The contemporary notices give his residence as Gold Hill, in Storey County, which is outside the Washoe County physician's jurisdiction entirely. Bishop's connection to the Bowerses was personal and familial, not clinical: his brother ran their mine, and thirty-five years later he spoke of them with obvious affection.

Why does the first name matter?

Because it tells you how a public man could be simultaneously everywhere in the record and untraceable through it. You cannot follow S. Bishop into a census, a probate file, a medical register or a marriage record without a given name. A man with initials only is a man who is hard to hold accountable across state lines, and in 1903 he was in Sacramento, out of reach of everyone he had answered to.

Where should somebody look next?

Three places. Sacramento city directories and census returns, 1898 to 1915, for the given name. The Washoe County grand jury minute books for the suppressed matter. And Eureka County's commissioners' minutes for the years between his two Washoe stints, which should show the same arrangement of county contracts.

Conclusion

What I keep coming back to is the objection.

Somebody in that room in May 1887 knew the whole story. The attorney asking the question knew it, or he would not have asked a farmer about a grand jury two decades dead. The general who objected knew it well enough to summarise it accurately in a sentence. The witness, who had known Bishop at Washoe City for twenty years, almost certainly knew it. And the board, which had been convened precisely to find out whether the superintendent of the state's asylum was fit to hold the post, decided it did not want to hear it.

Twenty years earlier, a grand jury in a town that no longer had a courthouse had looked at how this man ran a public institution. Twenty years later, the state was looking at how he ran a bigger one, and reached the same conclusion the grand jury had: nothing to be done.

There is a version of this story where the villain is one doctor. I do not think that is the story. The specification for the asylum called for a resident physician and a house for him in the yard, and it got a man who came by once a week. The county paid him forty-five dollars for the hospital and ten for the insane, and got what fifty-five dollars buys. The machinery — the commissioners who awarded the contracts, the board that sustained the objection, the grand jury whose minutes nobody has read since — worked exactly as designed, and what it was designed to do was not look closely.

And the man at the middle of it got out, and went to Sacramento, and sat down with a reporter in 1903 to say what good people the Bowerses had been. He is one of the most consequential physicians in nineteenth-century Nevada. He appears in the record for thirty-six years. We do not know his name.

We are always drawn to the places where Nevada's history is still out there to be touched. To bring a piece of that era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points. This article is built almost entirely from period Nevada newspapers rather than from any secondary account, because no secondary account of this man exists. The suppressed grand-jury question is from the Reno evening paper of 14 May 1887; the county hospital visit and the phrase "the county physician" from the same paper of 10 October 1876; the "Dr. Bishop, of this place" bullet extraction from the Virginia City daily of 22 September 1867, quoting the paper then published at Washoe City; the two commissioners' claim lines from 7 August 1882; the "returned from Eureka" professional card from 14 December 1882, keyed to 4 November; the notice to architects for the asylum from the Reno morning paper of 25 March 1881; the forage-seed item from 17 May 1888; and the Bowers reminiscence from 18 November 1903, with a second version in the Carson paper of 28 November. The 1864–1874 count of pages carrying both his name and Washoe City's is from a direct search of the Nevada titles.

• The Asylum on Glendale: Nevada's State Hospital and the Graves Nobody Mapped — the institution he ran, the 1887 investigation in detail, and the burial ground behind it.
• Washoe City: The Town That Beat Reno in Court and Lost Anyway — the town where the grand jury sat, and why its courthouse and records left in 1871.
• Thompson & West, History of Nevada (1881) — the contemporary county history, public domain, for Washoe County's officers and institutions in these years.
• History of Washoe County (Washoe County) — the county's own account of its early institutions and the 1867 disposal of the Washoe City hospital building.