The central ghost story of the Whaley House centers on James Robinson, an itinerant drifter known in local lore as "Yankee Jim." In August 1852, a San Diego jury convicted Robinson of grand larceny for attempting to steal the schooner Plutus. The court handed down a death sentence.
Legend claims Thomas Whaley stood in the crowd, watched Robinson hang from a makeshift gallows, bought the property at a discount, and deliberately constructed his dining room over the execution site. Folklore insists Robinson's heavy boots have paced the floorboards ever since.
Primary court dockets provide a different picture. Robinson was indeed hanged on September 18, 1852. However, the county gallows stood on public land situated on the outskirts of the Old Town plaza. When Whaley bought the parcels from the city in 1855, he purchased lots adjacent to the execution grounds, not the exact drop site.
Whaley was an astute merchant from New York, not a morbid opportunist. He noted in personal correspondence that the land sat strategically at the intersection of incoming wagon trails. Robinson hung from a crossbeam set between two posts, but nineteenth-century land surveys place the gallows northeast of the actual foundations Whaley laid in 1856.
