March 19, 1907
Los Angeles
For the past two years, Mrs. C.M. Gray, elderly owner of the Hotel Gray at Third and Main Streets, has received a $15 monthly rental from a tamale vendor who sold his wares on her front walk. This illegal commerce has been stopped, and Mrs. Gray convicted and fined $50. Just the cost of doing business…
March 16, 1907
Los Angeles
Sometimes, exhausted after a day pulling clay out of the earth to make into bricks, the workers of the Los Angeles Brick Company would stop by Slovenian laborer George Laubro’s room at 735 Buena Vista Street and say, "Hey George, can we see that thing you found?" And George would open his trunk, unwrap the long, heavy object, and pass it around to his friends. "Have you ever seen the like?" Teeth as big as apples! Fused together in a row!
Word of the workman’s two-year-old discovery recently reached the ears of Jerome Craite, a mining man with an interest in obsolete fauna, who requested that Laubro exhibit his find. Astonished at the fine quality of the specimen, Craite inquired further and learned that the Brick Company pit, on Mission Road just south of the County Hospital, had often offered up the remnants of strange beasts, including a tusk that the son of A.A. Hubbard, former head of the brick concern, has taken home.
Professor A.B. Ulrey, head of the biology department of the University of Southern California, examined the teeth and determined that they were the right lower molars of some large herbivore, possible a mammoth or mastadon.
Laubro was mildly amused at all the interest in his oddity, but remarked that he would much rather have a full larder than some old creature’s teeth in his trunk.
March 14, 1907
Los Angeles
Tongues were wagging on every floor of the Alexandria Hotel this morning, following the delicious faux pas of conservative businessman Walter Dinmore, a resident of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Roused by his "Jap" valet to take an important long distance telephone call from Santa Barbara in the lobby, the tousled Dinmore hurried from his room, only to encounter barely supressed merriment at every turn.
First a crew of Catholic girls fresh from their worships chortled, then an elderly lady he waved into the elevator seemed about to perish from the giggles. A bell hop dropped a pitcher of water, so great was his glee upon seeing Mr. Dinmore.
Finally, the gentleman was alone in the telephone booth, where he had a moment to reflect upon the curious afflictions of his fellow guests… and gaze down his own legs, to see vast billows of pink silk pajama material covering his shoes. Mortified, he dashed for the elevators, but found them engaged. In rising horror, he grabbed a porter and demanded aid. The porter led the humiliated Dinmore into a secret nook below stairs where he could divest himself of his shameful sartorial sin, then slink upward, his errand quite forgotten.
Below, a place where pink pajamas are not welcome.
March 14, 1907
Los Angeles
Pity Miss Jane Beamer of Long Beach, who for most of her 20 years has yearned to meet her father, from whom her mother separated when she was tiny, back in Beamerville, IL.
She has discovered to her great grief that the fruit and confectionary vendor killed Tuesday night near his shop at 708 East Fifth Street was this same Frank O. Beamer, who has been living in this community for a number of years. Many times had Jane Beamer, her mother and her step-father R.E. Blair passed Beamer’s stand, and even gazed into his face, without recognize the ladies’ kinsman, who was also Blair’s schoolyard chum.
Today, Miss Beamer grieves at the Bresee Brothers’ mortuary on South Figueroa Street, lending comfort to Beamer’s widow, who did not know until today of her husband’s previous marriage or child.
The accident occured when Beamer stepped off an East-bound Brooklyn Avenue streetcar at the intersection of Fifth and Ruth Avenue. As he alit, his path was crossed by an automobile driven by W.P. Young, carrying three ladies and R.H. Ingram, general superintendent of the Southern Pacific Railroad, en route to catch the San Francisco Owl train at the Arcade Depot.
Beamer, who was very nearsighted, was apparently startled to see the machine so near him, and moved first one way, then another, before dashing headlong into the path of the oncoming auto. Although Young killed his engine and attempted to swerve, Beamer was struck and killed where he stood.
The inquest found Young without fault after Beamer died in the Emergency Hospital without regaining consciousness.
Illustration below from the 1909 city map compiled by Worthington Gates, Western Litho Co, showing Bresee Bros in the heart of Mortuary Row, on Figueroa just south of Eight Street.
March 13, 1947 Los Angeles Detectives questioned James Joseph Tiernan Jr., 30, tonight about his movements Monday night, both before and after the time he claimed that Evelyn Winters, 42, left his hotel room at 912 W. Sixth Street. Winters turned up dead just after midnight Tuesday in the railyard at Ducommun Street, her clothes in disarray, with a blood alcohol level of .28, a nearly fatal proportion. According to Dr. Frederick Newbarr of the Coroner’s Office, cause of death was blows to the head, exacerbated by the extent of her drunkenness. Tiernan was arrested the next day at the bowling alley at 924 S. Olive Street where he was formerly employed.
Captain Jack Donahoe is following up on Tiernan’s story. Tiernan admits to knowing Winters–a former movie industry legal secretary fallen on hard times–for about two years. He says he met her on Sunday at the public library, then took her to his hotel room. They both liked reading, and alcohol. On Monday night, they were drinking together in the Sixth Street room. Winters left alone between 7:30 and 8 pm. Tiernan stayed in, and that was the last time he saw his
friend Evelyn.
Nathan’s take on the case is here.
Confidential to 1947project readers: 1947 has been an incredible year, and we hope to see you over at our new digs real soon, where the subject is 1907.
Note: Kim’s take on this case is here.
1947: a lot of women-killing, a lot of booze. It’s enough to turn one into a teetotaling sub. Almost. And here, a woman killing herself. With booze. Nowadays, her family would call up A&E and she�d be on Intervention. Perfect fodder for the show–someone: somewhere once, nowhere now. Our identified family member has hit bottom. Get them into treatment. God, give me the strength to blame those who did this to me, to accuse those who didn’t, and the wisdom to know the difference…a lifetime of coffee, cigarettes and forced clapping after each and every utterance. Evelyn Winters was described as “brilliant” by those who knew her, a legal eagle for the studio system since she was 23, til her alcholism caught up with her and she was shitcanned from the film colony at 37. Was there sensitivity training in the workplace for those who still suffer? This is 1947. The only place you’ll be happy, joyous and free is in the afterlife. For more information about alcohol, ask a parent or teacher! Or go here. The elephant in the copy room went to the elephant graveyard: skid row. Where does a homeless 800-lb. gorilla sleep? Anywhere it can. And so forth. Evelyn’s last known address–September, 1946–was here, at 2822 Rowena: 
But in the months prior to her assault and murder she had been living in the beer parlors on Hill and Figueroa, keeping what was left of her belongings in a liquor store. 
She was out carousing, divorced, jobless, though with, I’d wager, a mind still keen and ticking, before she was found nearly nude, beaten, and dragged for some way, near the Ducommun Street railroad right-of-way, here: 
Evelyn, homeless, now has a homeless encampment on her site. So, then there’s this Tiernan character. 
He’s twelve years Evelyn’s junior. A former employee of the Angelus Bowling and Billiard Recreation Center, 
which is now a parking lot: 
(for more on prewar bowling alleys, go here) — he takes Evelyn to the Albany Hotel at 912 W. Sixth. He drinks with her there for a day and change and, if he is to be believed, she departs between 7:30 and 8pm. She is found at 12:10am. The Albany, where she may have had her last drink, or did not, is gone: 
(Sanwa Bank Plaza, AC Martin, 1990) Never did find a vintage image of the Albany; some flavor of the wiped-out neighborhood–one block west: 
And one block east: 
But why the hotel room? We don’t know. Tiernan didn’t live at the Albany. He lived at the Armondale, at 728 South Flower. 
Its site today: 
First off, what, already, is up with the Armondale Hotel? It has that “built on Indian burial ground” cachet that money can’t buy. Perhaps it was simply built over one of those giant magnets. The kind that attract ne’er-do-wells. The place had trouble attached from the get-go. Dale Carleton, developer and proprietor of the spanking-new 1914 Armondale, is sued by wifey Marie for a sizable share of his $250,000 net worth. Mrs. Carleton names a Ms. Helen Williams–Armondale telephone girl whose duties apparently went above and beyond the working of switchboard–as correspondent. 1919. Wilbert Garrison, 28, son of a wealthy publisher in New York, drove across country with a buddy and they holed up in the Armondale. A week later Wilbert left in his room his money, valuables, and a note indicating that he did not want to be a burden on others, and as such was ending his life. Despite the best efforts of the Nick Harris detective agency (who calls the cops in 1919), Wilbert is never found. 1930. Mrs. Louis Valenzuella, 40, ex-wife of Deputy Sheriff Valenzuella, is found dead in the Armondale of a suspected drug overdose. 1939. Washed-up boxer Louis Menney, 22, Armondale resident, is tackled by a priest after he sexually assaulted a 62 year-old woman in a church at 9th (now James M. Woods) and Green. Turns out he’d–moletsed? raped?–the papers will only mention “morals offenses”–a nine year-old in the church as well. Moreover, he’d done his business with a six year-old girl on the corner of 11th (now Chick Hearn) and Georgia, and also kidnapped and robbed an Agnes M—– and sexually assaulted a Margaret L—– in a church on West Adams; since the kidnapping charge is death penalty territory, we can only hope the Armondale’s most famous resident ended up in the proper hands. 
1948. Francis Sylvester, of the Armondale, works across the street at the Western Union at 741 South Flower. Sylvester wires untold sums in care of himself to small outlying towns, where there are no Western Union offices, and destroys the records of the transactions. And 1965. Percy Hatch, 65, who had been in the hotel since 1957, started talking crazy-talk. As in, a loggorhea of obscenities for two straight weeks. Behind the Armondale registration desk was manager Nancy Furlow, 62, who, finally fed up with her repeated warnings, reached for the phone, and was shot dead by Hatch with one bullet. Hatch therewith turned the gun on himself. Shortly thereafter the Armondale was felled and a rather ill-advised Broadway was built on the site. Now a Macy’s, it resembles a Dawn mall on a slow day. For more on this exercise in brown, please go here. Tiernan had been reading with Evelyn at Central Library for a couple years. They would read, or shack up and drink, and maybe he’d talk bowling and maybe she’d talk law, but probably not. Neither he nor anyone else was ever charged. And so goes the final post of 1947. Soon there will be another liquor-infused ladykilling, and another, and Evelyn will be forgotten by all but her mother and best barfly pals and her killer, and God willing, she will become part of us.
