Month: March 2006

White Wife of Celestial Deports Self

March 27, 1907
Los Angeles 

After visiting her Chinese husband in the County Jail, Mrs. Yee Lung (also called Mrs. Frank Chew) spoke of her intention to join her beloved as he was deported, and to travel with him in the train car packed with forty other Chinese deportees for the trip up to San Francisco.

Special permission has been granted by the U.S. Marshall for her to ride with her husband. They will immediately board a boat to Hong Kong, and the woman may never again see her white friends relatives in this country.

Mrs. Lung’s friends have pleaded with her to reconsider, but she insists "I trust my husband implicitly… he wouldn’t go without me, and I wouldn’t be so cruel as to ask him to."

Degeneracy Down In Europe

Spring 1907

In France, the temperence society Le Croix Bleue works gathering nearly half a million signatures on its petition proclaiming that "Absinthe makes you crazy and criminal, provokes epilepsy and tuberculosis, and has killed thousands of French people. It makes a ferocious beast of man, a martyr of woman, and a degenerate of the infant, it disorganizes and ruins the family and menaces the future of the country."

Fashion Week

Clarence Westfall, 22 years old, was taken into custody at San Pedro yesterday afternoon when a boat from San Diego docked. He was arrested for having masqueraded in female attire and was taken to the Central Police Station, where he told a story that nearly resulted in his being liberated. When the police received the report from the station at San Pedro, however, that Westfall, in posing as a woman, had endeavored to be assigned to a woman

Trolley vs Ruminant

March 22, 1907
Pasadena 

A special correspondent follows up on the distressing report of a cow gravely injured when struck by an electric car near Lamanda Park. Bossy was found happily chewing her cud with no sign of injury. As near as can be figured, the trolley ran over the cow’s tether, pulling it taut and forcing the reluctant acrobat to turn a dramatic aerial flip. She seems to have landed safely and forgotten all about her wild adventure, until the cries of do-gooders to the Humane Society roused an interest in her case.

Virtue Stolen, Innocence Lost

March 20, 1907
Los Angeles 

Revealed today, with the arrest of M.M. Martinez, proprietor of the Esmeralda Club at Amelia and Ducommon Streets, is a terrible tale of innocence stolen. Several young girls are willing to testify that their virtue was taken from them by Martinez and club regulars following the introduction of drugged champagne into their tender mouths.

Inside the walls of this vile palace of sin unfolded the debauchery of Miss Nellie McCarthy, 668 Date Street, and Miss Julia Wood, 812 South Wall Street. Both girls are just 17 years old, and are telling their stories to Proscecuting Attorney Adcock, and are willing to repeat these horrors for a jury. The girls are being "sent to Whittier" because their parents do not know what to do with them.

Martinez’ arrest came about at the insistence of the mothers of the broken blossoms, who declared their children were pure and lovely in character before they began attending social events at the noisome venue.  

 

Editrix’ note: "sent to Whittier" is a euphemism that was apparently familiar enough to the readers of the 1907 newspapers to require no further elaboration. By reading numerous c. 1900 stories that included the phrase, most dealing with delinquent and sexually promiscuous youths, I discovered that Whittier was the location of the State Reformatory (above), opened in 1891; it operated as the Fred C. Nelles School through 2004, and is currently being redeveloped as a residential/commercial project. Henceforth I will threaten Nathan that he will be "sent to Whittier" should he misbehave.

St. James Raises a Church

The Methodist Episcopal congregation, formed from a merger of the Centennial and Central churches, planned a wonderful new building at 22nd Street and Union. Although the congregation studied the idea of a new location, the members finally decided there was no better place than the one they had.

The church was designed by A. Dudley using an old English half-timbered style with a Gothic tower. The vaulted ceiling was highlighted with gold and the pews were arranged in concentric circles around a corner pulpit.

The Times noted: