Cameron House

California · United States · Church

Donaldina Cameron sealed the basement doors of this Chinatown house so police could not inspect the rooms where women rescued from trafficking were hidden.

Cameron House stands on Sacramento Street in Chinatown, San Francisco. It is named for Donaldina Cameron, and what she did there is documented history rather than legend.

The basement served as a refuge for Chinese immigrant women escaping forced prostitution and slavery, in a Chinatown shaped by open and violent discrimination. Cameron sealed the doors down there deliberately. If the doors could not be opened, the rooms could not be inspected by police, and the women inside could not be found, arrested or worse.

The people sheltering there came and went by a concealed passage.

That is the history the building carries, and it is the reason anything reported inside it has weight. Women were hidden in those rooms because being found would have cost them their lives.

Cameron House is still an active community organisation serving Chinatown. It is not a site to go looking for ghosts at. The basement doors are the part of the building worth knowing about, and they were sealed for the best reason a door was ever sealed.

FAQ

Where is Cameron House located?

Cameron House is in California, United States.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: mliu92 from San Mateo · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons