the still expanding economic boom caused by the mining of silver from the Comstock Lode. San Francisco's population had boomed to 149,473, and housing was in short supply. Apartment buildings were crowded and large homes were converted into rooming houses. Money flowed from Nevada through San Francisco, and for a while the Marcus family prospered. Later that year, Josephine's half-sister Rebecca Levy married Aaron Wiener, an insurance salesman born in Prussia, as her parents were. Living conditions As an adult, Josephine claimed her father was German and ran a prosperous mercantile business. Henry Marcus initially made enough money to send Josephine and her sister Hattie to music and dance classes at McCarty's Dancing Academy, a family-owned business on Eddy St. that taught both children and adults. In I Married Wyatt Earp, author Glen Boyer states that Josephine took dance lessons and had a maid. He wrote (in her voice), "Hattie and I attended the McCarthy Dancing Academy for children on Howard Street (Polk and Pacific). Eugenia and Lottie McCarthy taught us to dance the Highland Fling, the Sailor's Hornpipe, and ballroom dancing." During 1874, when Josephine was 13, production of gold and silver from the Comstock Lode had fed a feverish stock market, leading to a great deal of speculation. When the Comstock Lode production began to fade, San Francisco suffered. Her father Henry’s earnings as a baker fell. The family was forced to move in with Josephine's older sister Rebecca and her husband Aaron "south of the slot" (south of Market Street) at 138 Perry Street between 3rd and 2nd at Harrison in a tenement on the flatlands. It was a working-class, ethnically mixed neighborhood, where smoke from factory chimneys filled the air. The 1880 census places the family in the 9th Ward, between San Francisco Bay, Channel, Harrison and Seventh streets. In early 1880, Henry was living with his son-in-law Aaron, who was employed as a bookkeeper. Youth As a girl, Josephine loved going to the theater. "There was far too much excitement in the air to remain a child." She apparently resented treatment by her teachers in the San Francisco schools, describing them as "inconsistent of a tolerant and gay populous acting as merciless and self-righteous as a New England village in bringing up its children." She described the harsh discipline meted out, including the "sting of rattan" and "being slapped for tardiness". Josephine said that she