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Autograph Document Signed. 3 pp. + blank leaf at end (as rear cover).

To The San Francisco Board of Police Commissioners, with 2 documents supporting Morcal's application for the position of Chinese language interpreter for the San Francisco Police Court "with all the power of a Police Officer," attesting that he was a US citizen, a San Francisco resident and registered voter “of good repute for honesty and sobriety” with linguistic competence for the job, an important position during the Gold Rush era, when most Chinese in the city could not speak English. 

Morcal was apparently born in Portugal and may have learned Chinese while working as a trader in the Far East. Among the 12 prominent citizens who signed the document supporting his application were wealthy merchant Jacob Mayer, who formed the first B'nai B'rith lodge on the Pacific Coast, Tobacconist and Masonic Lodge Grand Master George Hobe, and D.L. Lanszweert, the Gold Rush city's most respected analytical Chemist and Metallurgist, who occasionally performed forensic autopsies for the authorities. Despite these endorsements, Morcal did not get the job which went, instead, to Charles Carvalho, a young man from the West Indies, who may also have been of Portugese descent.