London's mother, Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist who claimed to channel the spirit of an Indian chief, became pregnant, presumably from her union with William Chaney, an astrologer she . .   Expand    Wikipedia

London's mother, Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist who claimed to channel the spirit of an Indian chief, became pregnant, presumably from her union with William Chaney, an astrologer she lived with in San Francisco. According to Flora Wellman's account as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4, 1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion, and when she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After she gave birth, Flora turned the baby over to ex-slave Virginia Prentiss, who would remain a major maternal figure throughout London's life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, and baby John, later known as Jack, came to live with the newly married couple. The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed grade school. In 1897, when he was 21 and a student at the University of California, Berkeley, London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago. Chaney responded that he could not be London's father because he was impotent; he casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men and averred that she had slandered him when she said he insisted on an abortion. In fact, he concluded, he was more to be pitied than London. London was devastated. In the months following his discovery of his origins, he quit school at Berkeley and went to the Klondike.

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