Month: May 2006

Of Human Bondage

May 5, 1907
Los AngelesMary Hawn is by all accounts an attractive twentysomething, average enough perhaps, save that she has a Superior Court case today. And she was bound and gagged in her bed by an intruder last night.”Being very much exhausted and having retired rather late, I fell into a sound sleep. When I can next remember I seemed to feel someone’s breath above my head. My mouth hurt me and someone was cramming it full. I opened my eyes and tried to move. Then I was frozen with horror. A masked man was leaning over me and was finishing the work of gagging me.

“Oh, it seemed for such a long time he bent foreward, gazing into my face. Then I tried to move and found my hands and feet bound together. After what seemed to me a long time, the man raised up and walked to the bureau. He searched it and then returned, he whispered that he would kill me if he did not find my papers before long. After making other threats at my life, he left.”

This occurred in her room at the Golden West Hotel, 412 South Main Street. Which Miss Hawn owns; she purchased the hotel from a Covina man in May of 1906. Little is known about their relationship, except that a) the hotelman died a short time later, and b) he left his life insurance to Miss Hawn, some one thousand dollars.

And the Superior Court case? The mysterious man’s widow is suing Miss Hawn for the insurance money. It is papers relating to this case that Miss Hawn alleges her visitor was after.

The Autoist: Our Modern Scofflaw

May 4, 1907
Los Angeles

Ten autoists were hauled into Police Court this morning for breaking speed ordinances, and another two were in attendance for having failed to place rear lights on their machines. All were fined fifteen dollars apiece.

The police assure more arrests of these auto men will follow.

In a Lonely Place

May 4, 1907
Riverside

Jesus Chavez was traveling from his home in El Monte to Colton, where he intended to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. During the trip Chavez was under the intoxicating influence of liquor continuously, and for reasons unknown shot and killed one Veranze Mansibai on a lonely road near West Riverside.

Chavez went into hiding, but Sheriff Wilson and Under Sheriff Evans eventually encountered his spring wagon. A little further on they found the white and bay horses he was driving. And a little after that, the tiny cabin in which Chavez was tightly holed up, continuing his alcoholiday.

There is little hope Chavez will be able to answer to the charges before the effects of his spree wear off.

Our Struggling Authors

In grappling with a novel about life in prison, writer Ernest Filer of Chicago decided that he should experience imprisonment for himself , thus he hatched the idea of breaking a window so he would be sent to jail.

He selected a small pane of glass at a cigar store and heaved a rock through it, assuming that he would be let off with a reprimand, a day or so in jail and an order to pay the cost of replacement.

The Cook County judge, however, took a dim view of his literary endeavors and

Mayor Harper Likes to Watch Young Girls — Hurdle Tombstones!

May 3, 1907
Los Angeles

The old cemetery adjacent to Los Angeles High School was a lonely and forlorn place, until a throng of young ladies from the HS girls’ track team made it their training quarters. The fair hurdlers and sprinters had important dates upcoming, and the disused graveyard was the only place they could practice–until the grizzled old caretaker descended on the girls as they footed it in and out among the memorials. He was responsible to the Mayor for the condition of the place, he told them, and if he let girls practice there, then boys would come ’round, and if boys came ’round, then the peace of the place would forever be destroyed. So the girls would have to go, he insisted.

Naturally, wind of this got to Mayor Harper, who disclaimed all complicity with the cruel edict, and went on to state that he likes to see girls leap over monuments and generally make the place lively. “Why, it’s good for them. Let the girls hop over tombstones if they want to. I like to have them,” said Mayor Harper. “If the girls are anything like they used to be they’re welcome to all the room they want.” Harper even went so far as to flourish the official pen and scribble out a permit allowing the girls to roam at will in the old Los Angeles cemetery adjoining the High School building, provided they did not desecrate any graves.

And that, children, is how young girls in the bloom of youth, their airy flights and frolics so delightful to the eye, got their graveyard privileges restored.

Eye of a Needle

May 2, 1907
Los Angeles

Wealthy real estate mogul Russel C. Carter, 939 Denver Avenue, was at 74 in the winter of his years, though comfortably retired. Despite his vast holdings he brooded over ailments real and imagined and obsessed over the idea he would become helpless, an issue he confided only to his son, Spring Street haberdasher Norman Carter.

So, when his wife left the house to-day to go about her day’s business, R. C. barricaded himself in the barn, secured a rope to both a beam and his neck, and leaped off a stairway. When Mrs. Carter returned at 6:30, the patriarch nowhere to be found, neighbors were enlisted to break down the barn door, where she found her husband still swinging.

She was prostrated with grief and is now under the care of physicians at son Norman’s home at 3616 Flower Street.

While there is much to say about the moneyed class and their admirable relationship to self-determination, this writer merely wishes to send his condolences to the family of an Angeleno with vision.

Train Electro-Charged!

May 2, 1907
Los Angeles

Area men Peter Matlock, Morris Ross, and D. J. Berry were waiting for the Pacific Electric car at the Pine Avenue station with the usual mob making the usual Thursday afternoon rush, and had the good fortune to be at the forefront of the throng.

Though when the trolley approached and they grasped the metal guard rails to pull themselves on board, the crowd leapt back as the three men began convulsing in bizarre contortionist fits. With super-human strength they tore themselves from the train, falling heavily to the pavement, dazed and shocked beyond measure, their blistered hands a testament to the defective wiring and improper grounding–that most base, yet heady, of electrical cocktails–that had caused 500 volts to course through the car.

With stern reserve and newfound respect for Mr. Edison, they still caught the next car home.