The Price of a Daughter

Posted on December 5, 2006 by lmharnisch


Dec. 5, 1907
St. Louis

A Los Angeles couple have a novel way of making money: Antonio Thompson and his wife sell their daughter Marie to the Gypsies, then go to court to get her back. According to statements taken in St. Louis, Marie has been sold off several times as a Gypsy princess.

The girl’s father obtained a writ of habeas corpus to get custody of Marie, 16, who was living with “King” Peter Adams, 17, in a local Gypsy encampment, The Times said. Thompson claimed that a Gypsy named Leon Lehan eloped with Marie when she was 12 and sold her to man named Elihi. The father says that as soon as Marie eloped, he and his wife set out after her and have traveled thousands of miles trying to get her back.

Adams, however, accused the Thompsons of running a scheme in which they sold off their daughter repeatedly, most recently for $800 ($16,418.86 USD 2005). “Pete Adams asserts that his wife has been sold four times by her father within the last year for sums aggregating $2,700,” The Times says. “He declares that Thompson now intends to get the girl back for the purpose of selling her again.”

The next day, the Thompsons were awarded custody of Marie, but were immediately arrested on charges of selling her into slavery.

Antonio Thompson refused to deny the accusation, shrugging his shoulders and saying: “Does a man sell his own daughter?”

Unfortunately, The Times never pursued this story, so we don’t know what became of the Thompsons or Peter Adams.

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Ambush in Arcadia

Posted on December 4, 2006 by lmharnisch


Dec. 4, 1907
Arcadia

Charley Chew, the water superintendent on the Lucky Baldwin ranch, had fired two Mexican workers several months ago and one dark night near the Unruh residence, they ambushed him, shooting him in the back. Chew drew his pistol and shot Francisco Ramirez and Miguel Palamoratz in the stomach, then fled.

Badly wounded, Ramirez and Palamoratz struggled to walk about a mile to a friend’s house in a small settlement near the Baldwin store in Santa Anita, leaving a trail of blood along the railway tracks through Baldwin’s vineyard.

Arcadia Marshal O.C. “ Jack” Berdie, upon learning that Chew had been shot, visited him, dressed his wounds and questioned him about the attack. Chew said it was so dark when he was ambushed that he couldn’t see how badly he had wounded Ramirez and Palamoratz.

“The Mexican and Chinese laborers on the Baldwin ranch are always looking for trouble with each other, and the Mexicans bitterly resented Chew’s action,” The Times said. “Knowing of the bad blood between the Chinese and Mexicans, all of the houses of either side were searched by the marshal and his assistant, Charles Davis, without avail.”

Bertie finally found the men and took them to the county hospital, where Ramirez died and Palamoratz was in critical condition.

The Times never published any further stories about the incident, leaving us to wonder about ethnic feuds on Baldwin’s ranch. By 1914, Berdie had given up his post as Arcadia marshal and was working as a bailiff in downtown Los Angeles. It is difficult to believe that “Palamoratz” is a correct spelling, but California death records are completely unhelpful in locating that spelling or anything more typical, like Palomares.

And in the continuing story of the Mexican revolutionaries, authorities are taking extreme precautions to prevent an escape attempt aided by the crowds surrounding the men during the daily walks to and from court.

Due to fears of an attempted rescue, officials now require people entering the courthouse to state their purpose and sympathizers of the revolutionaries are barred from the corridor outside the courtroom, The Times says.

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In the Line of Duty

Posted on December 3, 2006 by lmharnisch

Dec. 3, 1907
Los Angeles

Officer Patrick Lyons had been on the force for four months when he was shot in the head while trying to arrest two robbers a little after 11 p.m. at Central Avenue and 14th Street.

There’s no picture of him in The Times, and news stories say nothing about his past or his family. His superiors at University Station said the 30-year-old officer, who lived at 720 E. 5th St., had previously worked as a special patrolman and was “a most promising young policeman.” We know far more about the killer, Daniel Meskil, and his companion, Rolla Robe. They had barely met before they began the holdups that would climax in Lyons’ death.

Meskil arrived from Chicago a month earlier and had just rented a room at 933 S. Broadway when he shot himself in the left hand trying to catch a heavy revolver he knocked off a table. At the Receiving Hospital, doctors amputated portions of his index finger and thumb.

Investigation showed that Meskil had been the terror of the Nebraska town where he had grown up, inflicting violence on his family. He was frequently in trouble with the law and had served time in reform school. Meskil said he once killed a man by knocking the victim down a cliff, simply because he felt like it. A few days before the slaying, Officer Roller had searched Meskil because he looked suspicious. “For that I made up my mind to kill you just as soon as I got an easy chance,” Meskil said during his trial.

Robe, a union plasterer, said he met Meskil on Nov. 30 at the Arizona poolroom on Main, which served as the union hall. Meskil asked him to have a drink “and we went out and had several drinks, eight or 10, and Meskil paid for them because I was broke,” Robe said.

“Meskil seemed to have plenty of money and said he got it by holding people up, and that the Los Angeles police were easy, and he asked me to join him in getting a place that night and said I need not be seen. I told him I was not in that business but at last I said I would join him as I was broke.”

More drinks followed, and Meskil went into Hoegee’s hardware store, where he bought an old Colt Bisley .45 with an outdated box of black powder cartridges. Then they went to hold up Gerleman’s market at 813 S. Central Ave., where Robe used to work, only to be run off when the owner’s daughter yelled “Here come two policemen!”

The men fled in the market’s horse-drawn wagon, which they crashed trying to avoid a streetcar, then went to a winery at 14th and Central. In scooping money from the cash drawer, Robe scattered dimes all over the floor and Meskil forced him to pick up the money, saying: “Damn you; if you do a job like that again I’ll kill you.”

Lyons was standing across the street and saw the men. Winery owner Arthur Grosser said he heard Lyons order: “Throw up your hands. Give me that gun or I’ll kill you.” As Lyons searched Robe, Meskil drew the Colt .45 and shot the officer. Grosser said he saw Lyons “lying on the sidewalk with a gaping wound in his forehead, one eye shot out and the blood was running in a thin stream to the gutter.” The men fled, although Robe was quickly captured.

During the autopsy, investigators recovered fragments of the bullet, which shattered when it hit Lyons’ skull. By weight, police determined that it was too heavy to have been from Robe’s .38, but had been fired from a .45. Because of the old, caked grease on the bullet fragments, investigators determined that it was an obsolete military cartridge and soon located receipts from the sale at Hoegee’s store, the only place in town where such ammunition was sold. A search was begun for a man missing a left index finger and thumb.

Walking his beat the next day, Officer Anthony Connelly noticed a suspicious stranger watching a game of checkers in a poolroom at 7th Street and Central. Making sure he had his pistol ready, Connelly asked to see the man’s left hand, which was in a pocket. “What the hell business is it of yours?” the man asked.

As soon as Connelly pulled out the man’s left hand, Miskel drew a pistol and the men fought, but Connelly was able to jam his hand against the hammer of the gun so that it wouldn’t fire. “Billiard cues were scattered about the room and everything breakable had been broken,” The Times said. Meskil’s fight for his life ended when Connelly yelled at one of the men to help and someone cracked Meskil on the head with a pool cue.

The men were convicted of Lyons’ murder. Robe was sentenced to life in prison and Meskil was sent to the gallows. It was sometimes thought that Meskil would undergo a jailhouse conversion as he was frequently visited by gospel singers and ministers. “One day a preacher asked Meskil to pray with him in the jail office,” The Times said. “They both got down on their knees and the murderer arose with tears streaming down his face.”

“I never heard about that before,” Meskil said. “And that is as near conversion as he ever got,” The Times said.

At San Quentin, Meskil became known as one of the hardest and toughest men, often attacking his cellmates. There were the usual appeals and for a time it looked like Meskil would not be executed. But then a final date was set.

Before he could be hanged, Meskil tried to commit suicide by escaping from his cell and jumping from the roof. He spent the last months of his life dying by inches in constant pain with “tuberculosis of the spine” as a result of breaking his back.

“He shrieks in agony until given opiates,” The Times says.

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A Vintage Development

Posted on December 2, 2006 by lmharnisch

Dec. 2, 1907
Los Angeles

The Times real estate section features an apartment building at 2nd Street and Figueroa—no point in even going to look for it. But there’s also a large ad for the Erkenbrecher Syndicate’s Glendale Valley View Tract.

An unknown development today, the Glendale Valley View Tract is located west of Central Avenue in Glendale and north of Riverdale on what was once Judge Andrew Glassell’s vineyards. Part of it is apparently occupied by the Glendale Galleria, but some homes remain south of what is now Colorado Boulevard and was then 6th Street.

“Planted by Judge Glassell to vineyards some 30 years ago,” The Times said in 1907, “and kept by him in the highest possible state of cultivation, the Glassell vineyard of 146 acres was looked upon and pointed out as the ‘show place’ of the Glendale Valley.”



The homes are modest and the streets are narrow, probably not what Henry Huntington and L.C. Brand had in mind when they tried to acquire the property, “looking upon it as the choicest of subdivision property in that entire section,” The Times said.

The development offered five miles of oiled streets, curbs and sidewalks. The ads noted that the neighborhood was closer by streetcar than the West Adams District.

Here’s what the neighborhood looked like then:


And here are some homes today:







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Just Say No

Posted on December 1, 2006 by lmharnisch
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Our Local Authors

Posted on December 1, 2006 by lmharnisch

Our Local Authors

Dec.1, 1907
Los Angeles

The Times runs a small blurb on writer Willis George Emerson, noting that the National Magazine has begun serializing a new story, “The Smoky God.”

The Times notes: “The story has to do with the discovery of the North Pole, and inhabitants of the interior of the Earth. It is the supposed story of Olaf Jansen, a Swedish sailor, and is told by Mr. Emerson as selections from papers left by the adventurer.”

How lucky we are to live in the Google Age, for a quick search in Twikipedia (my custom search engine that excludes all the nonsense in Wikipedia and its commercial mirror sites) reveals the entire text online.  Apparently The Times correspondent didn’t review a copy of the manuscript or he would have discovered that the explorer was Norwegian and that Emerson framed the story by saying he had been given the documents by Olaf Jansen himself.

Another Twikipedia search reveals–oh, good Lord, don’t tell me people are taking this “hollow Earth” book seriously. It appears to be prototypical science fiction. An Amazon.com review calls it “A Classic in Hollow Earth Literature,” presumably a rather sparse genre.

Emerson was a prominent land developer, involved in the cities of Brawley and Calexico. His books include “Winning Winds,” “Fall of Jason,” “My Partner and I,” “The Builders,” “The Flock Master,” “American Valor” and “The Man Who Discovered Himself.”

His “Life’s Journey” was frequently quoted:

“To me, life is a highway, leading to a strange country where no milepost is passed a second time. It is bordered with green fields and countless flowers and leads from an unknown point of departure to an unknown point of arrival.”

“The important and timely moment of every life is ‘the now,’ and our deeds should make humanity conscious of our passing.”

Emerson died in December 1918 at his home, 2964 W. 7th St. He was 62.

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In the Days Before Polonium

Posted on November 30, 2006 by lmharnisch

In the Days Before Polonium

Nov. 30, 1907
Los Angeles

A secret witness in the trial of the Mexican revolutionaries—kept under close guard because his life has been threatened—went into convulsions shortly after eating a meal that apparently contained strychnine.  

Trinidad Vasquez, identified by The Times as a member of the Mexican Secret Service, has been accompanied everywhere by Detective Thomas Furlong. But after a stormy court session, Vasquez complained of being hungry and was allowed to go to a cafe on 5th Street near Olive, where he had a ham and cheese sandwich with a cup of coffee.  

“Just in front of the police station, Vasquez suddenly clapped his hand over his heart and fell forward to the sidewalk. The quick action of Furlong prevented the man striking his head against the curb,” The Times said.

Vasquez was taken to the Receiving Hospital, where his stomach was pumped by Dr. Tanner.

“The watch on the man will be redoubled and an officer will be with him day and night until the case against the Mexican revolutionists is completed,” The Times says.

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Nathan and I

Posted on November 30, 2006 by lmharnisch

Nov. 30, 2006
Los Angeles

I don’t think anyone who knows both of us will ever confuse me with Nathan Marask; certainly not when it comes to architectural photography. In fact, I don’t really do architectural photography. I take snapshots of buildings—and lousy ones at that. Nor do I have Nathan’s charm in wangling my way into historic structures (see the 1947 Project entry on the “Cafeteria of Doom!” for example)

But I do have a couple of pictures to share.



Here’s the former Calvary Presbyterian Church in South Pasadena, now the Grace Brethren church.



And here is the home of early 20th century developer Daniel T. Althouse, 2125 S. 4th Avenue. Click on the photo to enlarge it. Aren’t these window frames cool?



Here’s where I really blew it. I got to the Rupp home in Monrovia late in the day and since the building faces east, the sun was behind the house, burying it in deep shadows. Obviously I flunked architectural photography 101. That, plus the lavish landscaping, make it difficult to see much of the house. Trust me, it’s cool.



On the other hand, I did find myself behind this incredible car getting off the Ventura Freeway on my way to Fry’s in Burbank. It looked like a stainless steel torpedo. And who’s that driving it? Why it’s Jay Leno, who gave me a big smile and a “V”-sign as we cruised Hollywood Way. This is his “tank car.” Note the serious tailpipes. They are loud.

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Matzo Brawl!

Posted on November 29, 2006 by lmharnisch

Nov. 29, 1907
Los Angeles

Oh Those Shriners: Recall, if you will, the grisly train wreck that killed a large number of Shriners returning from their convention in Los Angeles. It seems that one of them, George F. Hageman, inadvertently touched off a legal dispute between two belles of Reading.

Sarah Reber and Maude Weber went before the court insisting that each of them was the rightful heir of the bachelor, who was “tall and handsome and very popular with the fair sex,” The Times says. Both women claim that Hageman “spent his last evening in Reading with them” before he left for the Shrine convention and made promises of $12,000 in stock.

The court awarded the stock to Reber.



The City Beautiful: By the way, this postcard of Broadway and 7th reflects one of Charles Mulford Robinson’s complaints in drafting a design for downtown Los Angeles: all the low awnings along the streets. (Note the Orpheum Theatre).

“We are very ‘country’ with our low awnings,” The Times says, quoting Robinson. “A man cannot walk a block without having to duck his head more than once. An ordinance would fix things”

Currant Affairs: And finally, an artistic baker in the Russian quarter has provoked a riot over his preparation of matzo bread, sending five people to jail.

About a month ago, an enterprising baker at Turner Street and Vignes announced that he was going to prepare matzo bread with spice, raisins and currants.

“This was met with some dismay,” The Times says, “and the authorities on Orthodox were sent for. They agreed that this would be a digression from the rules laid down by the Jews.”

Nonetheless, Joe Wasserman liked the baker’s wares and decided he would have them for Thanksgiving dinner, regardless of any ruling. Thus began an argument between Wasserman and his brother Sam, with whom he and his wife had been living rent-free for four months. Sam said that if Joe insisted on eating the matzos, he would tell the grocer that Joe planned to take a trip to San Bernardino despite owing the market $20.

“Yesterday morning, the decorated matzos arrived at the Wasserman home and a family row resulted,” The Times said. “The Jewish [illegible] lined the streets until the Russian grocer, hearing the noise, hurried over, whereupon Yiddish, German, Russian and Odessa were all spoken at once and Turner Street sounded like a Tower of Babel. The decorated matzos were thrown out in the street.”

“Someone picked up the discarded be-decorated matzo and threw it at [Joe] Wasserman and the entire crowd began to fight.”

“The matzo was to have been used as evidence, but a trusty in the jail thoughtlessly ate it yesterday afternoon,” The Times says.

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Random Shots From Our 12-Bore

Posted on November 28, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 28, 1907
Los Angeles

  • Ocean Park banned serving alcohol to soldiers in uniform because drunk Civil War veterans from the soldiers home in Sawtelle “were seen reeling about the saloons.”

  • A racing team preparing for the upcoming hill climb on the Box Springs Grade hit a horse and buggy at 45 mph. The Times says the horse veered into the path of the auto, which struck the animal broadside, carrying it 40 feet and throwing it into a ditch. The badly injured animal was shot. Neither the buggy driver nor the men in the car were seriously hurt.

  • Dick Malone, a handicapped man from Sioux City, Iowa, befriended by the Rev. T. Tracy of Church of the Sacred Heart, was arrested at 3rd and Los Angeles on charges of passing forged checks drawn on Tracy’s account.
  • A noisy rooster on Olive Street has provoked a dispute between two neighbors. Former Indianapolis Police Chief David Powell, 80, complained that a rooster owned by a man named Murphy begins crowing at 3 a.m. Murphy moved his chickens back from the neighbor’s residence, and in revenge has constructed a “spite fence” out of quilts and old clothes that blocks all sunlight going into Powell’s room.
  • Miss Godberg, a housekeeper at the home of W.G. Cochran, 1559 W. 2nd St., heard a noise at the front door and upon opening it discovered a man with a handkerchief over his face. She struggled to close the door, but the man forced his way in, so she ripped off his handkerchief and threw him to the floor. The man drew a gun, freed himself from Godberg and fled into the night, The Times says.

  • George Spence, a solicitor for Collier’s Weekly, was taken to the Receiving Hospital after falling into a hole in the street at 2nd and San Pedro, cutting his head and shoulders and bruising his back.

  • Workers digging a deep trench at Avalon on Santa Catalina Island discovered prehistoric Indian remains. “Visitors eagerly awaited to snatch every available opportunity and oftentimes even urged the Mexican workers into quicker action so that they could triumphantly carry off as curiosities pieces of the dead and sacred remains of an extinct race,” The Times says.

  • Walter P. Temple has sued L.F. Lewis over desecration of the family cemetery on the old Workman homestead. The lawsuit says the Workmans, who owned Rancho La Puente, dedicated a portion of the property as a family cemetery, but that Lewis tore down a brick wall, allowing cattle to roam on his ancestors’ graves. Temple’s suit asks that Lewis be barred from any more damage and from plowing over or removing the remains.

An undercover vice investigation went badly wrong when “lady barber” Mary Fisher fled her shop at 451½ S. Main St. clutching a fistful of hair. Police Officer Cook, investigating whether Fisher was offering haircuts and massages as a front for illegal activities, arranged for the full treatment: shave, massage, shoe shine and anything else.

According to The Times, Fisher put steamed towels on Cook’s face, had given him a facial massage and started shaving him when she straightened his hair, only to have his toupee come off in her hand.

“The woman gave one look at the handful of hair sticking to her hand and another at the bald head of her customer and, with a shriek, she dashed for the stairs,” The Times says.

“Hey,” yelled Cook, “give me that hair. I need it!”

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Who Are Those Guys?

Posted on November 27, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 27, 1907
Los Angeles

A shadowy, global conspiracy of anarchists is being described in the trial of revolutionaries Ricardo Flores Magon, Antonio Villareal and Librado Rivera in federal court. The fourth defendant, L. Gutierrez De Lara, was charged separately with committing larceny in Sonora, Mexico.

“The first positive evidence of a gigantic conspiracy to overthrow a friendly government was legally introduced,” The Times said. “Although there has been intimation of the danger[ous] character of the three men under arrest, and a partial expose of their cowardly plans to [overthrow] the presidents of this country and of Mexico, the far-reaching character of the junta has hardly been realized, even by government officials.”

Investigators seized letters by the men showing that the “anarchists of this country and of Europe are hand in glove with the leaders of the Mexican junta and that extreme socialists and rabid labor [officials?] have lent their aid to a greater or lesser degree.”

“Arms, bombs and poison were the weapons to be used in invading Mexico…. The wily leaders expected to inflame their ignorant followers to acts of rapine and violence such as characterized the French revolution. For the furtherance of this infamous plot, thousands of dollars has been raised and expended by the leaders,” The Times said.

Shown above, the Arizona lawmen who helped capture the revolutionaries: from left, Capt. F.H. Rynning, Undersheriff A.A. Hopkins, Lt. Billy Old and U.S. Inspector C.T. Connell.

One of the key witnesses in the trial will be A.T. Samuels of the Furlong Secret Service Bureau, who worked undercover selling ads for the revolutionists’ newspaper in St. Louis.

The Times notes that the defense attorneys staged another fundraiser at Simpson Auditorium, collecting $75 “from the socialists, anarchists and poor peons.” The event was “a poor repetition of the mass meeting of a few days ago. The same dreary anarchistic sentiments were uttered; the same Mexican hymns dolefully butchered by the cholo band and the identical [sentiments?] regarding tyranny were enunciated.”

After several speeches, defense attorney A.R. Holston “devoted most of his harangue to an attack upon The Times. He was very much surprised, he said, that this paper had called the former meeting [anarchistic] in character when it had been praised by the Citizen (Labor-Union), by the Common Sense (Socialist) and by the Express.

Bonus facts: Job Harriman was one of the defense attorneys for the McNamaras in the 1910 bombing of The Times and in 1914 founded a Socialist colony named Llano del Rio in the Antelope Valley, just beyond Pearblossom on the road between Palmdale and Victorville. He died in that hotbed of radicalism, Sierra Madre, in 1925 and was buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale.

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How to Drive on Streetcar Tracks

Posted on November 26, 2006 by lmharnisch
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Roving to Monrovia

Posted on November 25, 2006 by lmharnisch

Nov. 24, 1907
Monrovia

The Times real estate section takes a look at what was then the distant suburb of Monrovia, 22 miles from downtown Los Angeles. The writer notes the increasing use of concrete and stone, explaining that the cost of lumber is forcing builders to use other materials. The writer also notes the broad, shaded verandas of three featured homes as well as the outlines of their roofs.

The story highlights the home of B.R. Davisson on East Orange Avenue, H.M. Slemmons (or Slemon) on North Myrtle Avenue and the home of John C. Rupp at Ivy and Greystone, built for $6,500 ($133,403.21 USD 2005).

Without exact addresses, it would be difficult for me to locate the Davisson and Slemmons homes, but I took a pleasant drive out to Monrovia recently to look for the Rupp house and was happy to find
that it is still standing and in beautiful condition. In fact, it was nice to discover that the neighborhood has quite a few well-maintained historic homes; a contrast to the condition of the houses I located in Pico Heights.

I had a brief chat with the homeowner who gave me a tour of the grounds. He said that Rupp, a financier, built the home for his wife, but that she decided it was too far from Los Angeles and wouldn’t live there. That’s apparently true, because Rupp put the home on the market in 1911.

Note that the ad for the home mentions a solar heater. I have no idea what this was and the homeowner didn’t know anything about it. Obviously a subject for further research.

The homeowner also mentioned the Monrovia Old House Preservation Group, which has a website and offers a self-guided tour. I cannot vouch for these folks, but it does sound interesting and the area has some lovely old homes.

To get to the Rupp house, take the Foothill Freeway and get off at Santa Anita in Arcadia. Turn north and go to Foothill Boulevard and then turn right (east) and then left on Ivy. The home is at 269 N. Ivy. While you’re there, look at the large stone house on the northeast corner, built in 1894. I’ll post some pictures when I get the film developed (we’re old school around here).

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Slaughter of the Innocent

Posted on November 23, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 23, 1907
South Pasadena

Warning: This is a grotesque, tragic story with graphic details.

Pasadena Detective Wallace H. Copping is investigating the murder of a young baby boy, whose half-eaten body was found in a pigpen on the Berry ranch in South Pasadena.

Authorities say the boy, weighing about 14 pounds and less than 10 days old (yes, quite a large baby by today’s standards), was discovered by Mrs. J.H. Anderson, whose husband leases the ranch. Apparently Mr. Anderson picked up the baby’s body as he made the rounds of about 20 homes gathering garbage to feed his pigs.

After the garbage was dumped into the pigpen, Mrs. Anderson “was surprised at the uproar among the swine and investigated.”

“To her horror, she saw the nude body of a baby, with the legs eaten away above the knees and the right arm torn away.” The Times said: “Mrs. Anderson risked her life to rush in and rescue the body of the infant.” Further investigation showed that the baby boy had been struck in the head with a hatchet.

Police dug through the debris, gathering anything that would identify the source of the garbage, and accompanied Anderson as he retraced his route, making inquiries at each home. The body was put on display at a local mortuary, with police taking the names of the hundreds of people who came in an unsuccessful attempt to identify the boy.

Police theorized that the mother had entrusted the baby to the father, who killed the boy rather than find it a loving home. Given the sensational publicity, they hoped that she would recognize the baby’s description and contact authorities. But unfortunately, The Times has nothing further about this case.

Bonus fact: Wallace H. Copping, a Spanish War veteran, died in 1949, at the age of 75.

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A Love That Would Not Die

Posted on November 22, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 22, 1907
Los Angeles

Weeping and heavily bandaged from where her drunk, enraged husband had shot her in the head, Ellen Larkin, 38, rose from her hospital bed, staggered to a nearby room and threw herself into the arms of her injured spouse. She covered him with kisses, vowing that she still loved him, and promised that he could come home as soon as he recovered from shooting himself and being nearly beaten to death with a baseball bat by their oldest son.

According to The Times, Jefferson B. Larkin, 45, a sometime teamster, horse player and “remittance man,” had returned to Los Angeles after spending four months in San Francisco while John, 16, the oldest of the Larkins’ four children, supported the family. As Larkin got thoroughly drunk, someone told him that his wife had been unfaithful, so he went to a pawnshop and bought a cheap revolver.

Larkin went in the backdoor of the home at 417 S. Colyton and found his wife in the kitchen with their four children: John, Isabelle, 10; Effie, 6; and Helen, 14 months. “He accused his wife of every vile thing he could lay his tongue to,” The Times said.

Larkin fired and missed, then shot his wife in the head as she leaped to grab the gun, with the bullet entering her scalp above the left ear and coming out the skin at the back of her head. Before he could fire again, John returned from taking his younger siblings to safety and struck his father in the head with a baseball bat with all his strength, then continued hitting him on the shoulders and in the chest.

Staggering to the door, Larkin walked to 7th Street, where he shot himself twice, then wandered to a rooming house, rented a room for $1 and called a doctor. He was expected to survive.

“I am not sorry that I hit him,” John said. “He intended to shoot mother again, but I hit him just in time to daze him. I hardly knew what I had done until after it was all over. I hope he don’t die now that mamma is not hurt.”

At the hospital, Larkin said: “I heard that she intended to get a divorce from me and I came to Los Angeles yesterday to settle matters. I decided to kill her and myself, too. I knew if I did this my mother and father who are in New York would take care of the children.”

Ellen left her husband’s hospital room after they vowed eternal love and affection, The Times said. Meanwhile, John went to the police station to swear out a complaint against his father. “I want to know when he leaves the hospital so that he won’t have a chance to get away from me,” he said. “I’ll put him where he belongs.”

There’s no further record of this case. However, The Times reported next year that a penniless youth named John Larkin had made the trip from Los Angeles to Patterson, N.J., to visit his grandparents. He started out riding on top of a passenger train, but was thrown off in San Bernardino, then snuck a ride on a train to Salt Lake City, where he earned dinner by washing dishes in a restaurant.

Arrested in Ogden, Utah, he served a 10-day sentence as water boy for the chain gang, caught an express train to Cheyenne, Wyo., worked his way to Chicago and then Cleveland. He finally snuck a ride on a train to New York, begged a ticket on the ferry and rode to Patterson on the trucks of the Erie Railroad’s dining car. He was 13.

Mark Twain defines “remittance man” in “Following the Equator.”

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The Murderous Mother

Posted on November 21, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 21, 1907
Los Angeles

The woman who threw her baby from an inbound train was arrested at her mother’s home at 12th Street and San Pedro after the girl’s nurse contacted authorities, saying that she read about the incident in the newspaper and suspected the woman because she took the baby on a trip while leaving all the infant’s clothes at home.

Louise [or Louisa] Williams, who is in custody in San Bernardino, says the baby’s father “is a worthless mulatto, sometimes employed as a porter on the Salt Lake Overland trains,” according to The Times.

Despite initial reports that a passenger saw the infant thrown from the train and leaped off to rescue her, The Times says that the baby girl was found by a tramp who contacted Mr. Mattock, a nearby rancher. Mattock was afraid to move the injured baby without official permission, so left her there until he could contact police.

Mattock took the baby to his home, but she died of her injuries shortly after a doctor arrived.

On Feb. 19, 1908, Louise Williams pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Cramer B. Morris, her attorney, noted that Williams was only 17 and said she threw the baby off the train because “she was suddenly overwhelmed with the shame of meeting her mother and sisters at Los Angeles, who had not learned of her ruin.”

On March 2, 1908, Williams was sentenced to five years in San Quentin, despite testimony that she was mentally unstable. “After sentence was pronounced, women in the courtroom broke into heartbroken cries, but the girl smiled, apparently unaffected, The Times said.

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Highwaymen Captured

Posted on November 20, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 20, 1907
Los Angeles

Police battling the current crime wave say they have arrested two men who staged daring holdups on the Ascot Park and Eastlake streetcars, robbing the motormen and conductors as the cars reached the ends of their routes. These holdups had so infuriated local officials that Chief Kern armed bicycle officers with shotguns and ordered mounted policemen to resume patrolling the city.

In each case, robbers waited at the end of a streetcar route, when the trolley was empty except for the motorman and conductor, overpowered the men and robbed them. The bandits only took money or guns.

Officials say that S.A. Kursting and Frank O’Keefe immediately confessed to petty crimes and said they believed the men were trying to avoid more serious charges. Police say a copycat holdup of the Bimini Baths car was staged by the men’s friends to divert suspicion.

Despite the arrests, further holdups continued in San Bernardino and officials of the Los Angeles Railway are considering whether to formally issue firearms to conductors and motormen, some of whom are already carrying guns. A special squad is sweeping through the Los Angeles River bed and railroad yards, arresting hobos and vagrants.

In the meantime, city officials are wondering what to do with men who have been arrested since the jail is full. One suggestion is to build a stockade in the riverbed. The Times notes that many of the men are being herded together and sent out of town. I wonder if this is an instance of the old practice of “floating,” in which police dropped off criminals or other undesirables at the county line.

After reporting the initial arrests, The Times has no further word about Kursting or O’Keefe.

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Crime Wave Sweeps L.A.

Posted on November 19, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 19, 1907
Los Angeles

An influx of crooks, petty hoodlums and vagrants drawn by good weather and horse racing at Santa Anita are blamed for a siege of crime throughout the city. The jail is so crowded—300 being held in a building designed for 125—that 95 men arrested for intoxication between Saturday night and Monday morning were released because there was no room for them. Drunks who posed no danger were merely put on a streetcar for a ride home, The Times says.

Carl Chrisensen [Christensen?], who had just served two months for vagrancy, was among 35 men sentenced to the chain gang for being homeless. Officers said Christensen begged at the back doors of homes and wore fraternal pins of the Masons and Eagles to gain housewives’ sympathy. When arrested, he was found to be carrying burglary tools, and he was sentenced to six months’ hard labor.

Two black LAPD officers, Glenn and Stevens, said they arrested a pair of robbers while looking for hobos in the Southern Pacific railroad yards near 4th Street. The officers said that one man begged for money while the other man tried to get behind them. Officer Glenn whirled around and stuck his service pistol in the man’s stomach. When arrested, the man was found to be gripping a heavy revolver in his pocket.

Officers Glenn and Stevens also reported raiding a gambling operation at 1st Street and San Pedro, arresting “twenty-two bad Negroes, men and women,” according to The Times.

In other crime news, a woman is being sought after throwing her infant from the inbound California Limited around Rancho Cucamonga. A man on the train saw the baby land in mud and leaped off to rescue it.

Robbers broke into the Dake’s Lunch Room in the basement at 414½ S. Broadway, slid the safe into “a big ice chest” and blew it open with nitroglycerin, taking about $75 ($1,539.27 USD 2005) but ignoring several checks.

“The lunchroom is located on one of the busiest streets of the city and supposed to be protected by the police and by two or three agency officers who patrol the stores, yet the robbers worked with safety and had plenty of time,” The Times says.

Finally, Police Surgeon Joseph B. Tanner is recuperating after a brawl at the Receiving Hospital with Frank Scholtz, who was arrested for being insane. Because the mental ward is overcrowded, patients have to be placed with the general population of the hospital, The Times says.

As Tanner was hurrying to attend to an emergency, Scholtz grabbed him by the coat and began hitting him, smashing Tanner’s eyeglasses so that the broken shards cut his face. Tanner wrestled Scholtz to the floor and the men rolled over and over until Tanner got on top and beat and choked Scholtz into submission, The Times said. Police Surgeon Quint rushed to Tanner’s aid and handcuffed Scholtz, then treated Tanner’s wounds.

The Times is curiously silent on what treatment, if any, was administered to Scholtz.

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Religious Recycling

Posted on November 18, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 18, 1907
South Pasadena

Calvary Presbyterian Church at Center (now El Centro) and Fremont was dedicated in a service featuring prominent local religious leaders, including Dr. John Willis Baer, president of Occidental College.

The Times notes that the original church building was located on Columbia Street, but the location was inconvenient, so the church bought the Nazarene Chapel on Center.

The church, which cost $10,000 ($205,235.70 USD 2005) incorporates much of the old First Presbyterian Church of Pasadena, which was at Worcester Avenue and Colorado Street, The Times says.

Fortunately, this church is still standing and I’ll post some shots once I get the film developed.


In other news, Police Chief Kern talks frankly with The Times about the crime wave that is gripping the city.

Destruction from last year’s San Francisco earthquake has deprived career criminals and hobos of their usual winter quarters, so they are heading to Los Angeles, Kern says. In addition, layoffs across the Southwest have sent waves of the unemployed to Southern California.

“From the railroad detectives and mining men of large interests I have learned that nearly all of the railroads are discharging men from all their departments. Men are also being thrown out of work at the mines in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada,” Kern says.”

“It enormously complicates the police problem and makes life in Los Angeles more dangerous,” the chief says. “To a very large extent they are men who are not in the habit of saving money and they arrive here broke and out of work. The next step is crime.

“I learn from the County Jail that many of the vagrants coming there to serve time are mechanics and workmen who have never been arrested before.”

Kern advocates the creation of a state police department charged, among other duties, with searching all trains entering California to clear them of hobos and vagrants.

Now pay attention:

“OWING TO THE ENORMOUS TERRITORY COVERED BY THIS CITY OUR MEN CAN’T BEGIN TO PATROL IT. WE OUGHT TO HAVE MORE POLICEMEN. I KNOW THAT SEEMS TO BE A CONSTANT CRY, BUT THERE ARE ACTUALLY DISTRICTS OF THIS CITY WHERE A POLICEMAN WOULD BE A CURIOSITY.”


I swear, this should be carved over the doors of the new LAPD headquarters.

Read about the history of Pasadena Presbyterian Church here.

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What Happens in the Monkey House?

Posted on November 17, 2006 by lmharnisch


Nov. 17, 1907
New York by direct wire to The Times

Something curious seems to be going on with opera tenors in the monkey house at New York’s Central Park; perhaps there’s an atmosphere that lends itself to “annoying” people, for the problem of mashers at the monkey house has even inspired a 1907 movie by Biograph.

Luckily, Detective J.J. Cain is on the lookout for malefactors who make lewd advances, having arrested Enrico Caruso the year before.

Cain’s latest arrests are Leon Cazauran, “a slender young man with pale face and large brown eyes” brought to New York to sing in “Thais” at Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Operahouse, and his companion, Claude Modjeska, “a copper-colored young man,” The Times says.

“The charge against both was that of attempting to corrupt the morals of little boys,” The Times says. Cain said he was suspicious of the men because they had visited the monkey house several times before “in the company of small boys.”

Despite the language handicap (Cazauran didn’t speak English and while Modjeska only knew a bit of English, he was able to act as a translator) the men protested their innocence. Modjeska was fined $10 and the men vanished.

Caruso had not been so fortunate the previous year. Although his alleged victim at first refused to testify, Cain pressed the complaint and gave the following account:

The tenor had followed two girls, one of them about 12, and annoyed them. He then turned his attention to three women, one of whom was black, Cain said.

Cain said he saw Caruso move close to Mrs. Hannah Graham of the Bronx, N.Y. “He said he saw Caruso move up close to Mrs. Graham and then saw one of Caruso’s hands glide stealthily through a slit in his overcoat and then saw Caruso pinch the woman. Mrs. Graham turned swiftly and struck Caruso in the chest, crying aloud: ‘You brute! You beast!’ ”

The detective said he intervened after Graham hit Caruso in the chest. Cain added that he had seen Caruso commit other offenses, but “wanted to get him good.”

The spectacular trial ended with Caruso being fined $10. Hmmmm. According to news accounts, Caruso later “attempted to take certain liberties” with a woman in an automobile and in 1913 got in trouble in London, when he pointed at a young woman in the crowded lobby of the Savoy Hotel and said: “You! You!”

When reproved by an American who said: “You shouldn’t do that,” the singer replied: “I am Caruso and I do as I please.”

Bonus fact: Caruso was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake.

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