Nathan Marsak

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.

P.E.O. Sisters Boosted on Budlong

May 1, 1907
Los AngelesThe Sisters of the P.E.O. are a mysterious bunch. So much so that no-one knows what the initials P.E.O. stand for. What began as an Iowa sorority has morphed into a powerhouse of sisterhood, its guarded secrets forever hidden from the world of men.More mysterious, however, was the daylight robbery at the P.E.O. meeting held in the home of Sister Frederika Friend, 2302 Budlong Avenue. Sister Friend had made elaborate arrangements for a delightful afternoon, and as the Sisters talked business, and the cateress and coffee-colored assistants prepared the luncheon, Mrs. W. H. Faust of 2869 West Eighth Street strode upstairs to the dressing-room on the second floor where the ladies had left their wraps and pocketbooks. Mrs. Faust opened her clutch to get money with which to pay her dues, and found twenty dollars missing. She appeared white-faced at the top of the stairs, and in trembling tones exclaimed “Sisters! We have been robbed!”

The sisters rushed upstairs and drove their hands into their pocketbooks and indeed, most every sister had lost some of their cash contents. Police were summoned but they could find no evidence of a “second-story man,” and further determined that no-one could have gained ingress through the rear door without detection. At this information, Sister Friend reportedly broke down and cried. She was joined by others. A search was made of the house (and of the aforementioned cateress and “coffee-colored assistants,” we assume) to no avail. With this, the patrolmen departed, and the sisters sat down and cried some more, after which ice cream was served.

Of course, no suspicion attaches to any member of the Sisterhood.

And there the mystery rests.

New Heroine, Old Story

May 1, 1907
Los Angeles

“I love him, judge, and I just can’t keep away from him,” said winsome Grace Evans as tears coursed down her cheek. But she promised Justice Austin never to go near him again.

She was a simple country girl, caught in the swirl of gay city life, when she was led into a career of sin by one Alfred Medina. He taught her innocent twenty year-old mouth the ways of wrapping around an opium pipe. She stole twenty-three dollars to feed her habit, was popped for grand larceny, and spent a week in jail before being hauled before Austin. It was the contention of Deputy District Attorney Pearson that she had been more sinned against that had sinned, urging that she should escape sentence if she returned to the country to begin life anew.

And so it came to be that she promised never to see Medina again. But a young girl in the throes of having her innocence destroyed can scarcely be believed, though in time perhaps she may be redeemed.

In other Court news, Jesus “Bar Wielder” Suega was convicted of disturbing the peace and sentenced to twenty-five days in the City Jail. Suega had run amok in the Llewellyn Iron Works earlier in the week, attacking the workmen with a heavy piece of iron and driving all employees en masse from the establishment.

Edward M. Robbins — Man of Mystery, Suicide of Curiosity

Los Angeles

April 30, 1907

Sixtysomething Edward M. Robbins was a Civil War vet and long-time resident of his little house at 2728 Council Street. No one ever entered the threshold of his hermit home; he never spoke to his neighbors nor made sign of recognition when he passed them on the street. He was a quiet and at all times inoffensive man, save for those occasional spells when he would go on a colossal drunk. Then he would be seen through the uncurtained windows strumming an old guitar for a time, until he broke into mad fits of rage, pacing and singing at the top of his voice.

Given his hermit-like ways, it was no wonder that Robbins’s ten-day disappearance went unnoticed. But then passersby observed the multitude of flies on the windows…

Police broke in to find Robbins on a bed he’d covered in wrapping paper. Bowie knife, razor and pair of scissors were all nearby, all besmeared with blood, as Robbins had used them all on his wrists and ankles. But what led to his self-destruction was a “queerly fashioned double barreled pistol of ancient make” that Robbins still gripped tight in his decomposing hand, one barrel having been discharged to form a gaping hole in his neck.

Perhaps Robbins suffered from the mania associated with the “flashing back” of memory common to veterans of the War of Northern Agression.

If It Isn’t One Poison, It’s Another

April 29, 1907

Hollywood

Hollywood has been rife with excited talk over the recent death of area man T. C. Hoagland. Hoagland, of Olive Street, raised the interest of locals when his formerly attending physicians, unsure of the cause of this life’s cessation, refused to sign a death certificate after Hoagland’s demise. Hoagland’s cadaver was handed over to a Dr. G. W. Campbell, who therefore performed an autopsy. The rumors afloat among Hoagland’s Hollywood neighbors were lessened somewhat when it was revealed that there had been no foul play; rather, Hoagland had simply died of alcoholism. This should have come as a surprise to no-one, given Hoagland’s reputation for heavy drinking, but the rumors remain unquelled. An inquest has been ordered and the Coroner shall further investigate Hoagland’s death.

A Little Miss Understanding

April 27, 1907

Los Angeles

To Carl Tabbert, it seemed a mere triviality that when eloping with his intended to Santa Ana, that the wife-to-be swear she was eighteen years of age in order to secure a marriage license. Today, Tabbert is in Los Angeles Superior Court, charged with rape. In actuality, blushing bride Virginia Spencer was all of thirteen.

Tabbert pleaded guilty, having been persuaded that he broke the law, of which he admitted some ignorance. While vaguely aware he had committed some offense, he had not believed it was in any way serious. While he awaits further hearings—wherein witnesses are expected to testify to his good character—his child-bride has been placed in the Truelove Home.

Do Not Mess with a Woodman

April 26, 1907
Los Angeles

Thomas Cash, State Deputy Treasurer of the Woodmen of the World, was sleeping in his room at 852 Stephenson Avenue early this morning when awakened by a rustling in his adjoining office. Cash armed himself with what was nearest—a sturdy shoe—and advanced on the burglar, who fled, but Cash gave chase. Cornering the housebreaker at the end of the hall, Cash dealt a fearsome blow to the intruder’s face with his shoe. From there they grappled and struggled and rolled onto the rear porch, where the burglar made a wild leap sixteen feet into the back yard and, after having to clamber over a barbed-wire topped fence, disappeared. As a relic of the desperate battle, Cash has the collar and shirt front of the burglar. Other than that, Cash came away without so much as a scratch.

The Big Pickup

April 25, 1907

Los Angeles

Fiesta is coming! And men of low standing are being swept from the streets—today one M. Lawrence was arrested on the charge of peddling worthless jewelry. The police are making a special effort to remove from our midst swindlers of all stripes before Fiesta. Sometimes they have help: a Mr. Johnson was admitted to Receiving Hospital with cuts and lacerations to the face; he was recognized as being C. W. Draper, the recently paroled forger. While attempting to sell goods to a woman at 115 North Olive Street, an unknown man leaped upon him and beat him severely.