drunk driving – 1947 Project

Demon Liquor

January 23, 1927

Pasadena, CA

W.H. Latour, a 71-year-old night watchman at the Lamanda Park Citrus Packing Plant in Pasadena, was propped up with a bottle of white lightning when he caught Tom Clark working on his car on the plant grounds. When Latour told him to leave, Clark nodded, and prepared to set off on his way.

But then, Latour became convinced that the car was trying to attack him, and pulled a gun on it. After firing two shots at Clark’s car, Latour raised his arm to wave off the terrifying apparition and fired again — directly into his own hand.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles today, another man paid a less gory price for intemperance.

sober Earlier this month, police were called to Mt. Washington Dr. following reports of a dead body slumped in a car along the side of the road. But James Proffit wasn’t dead — only dead drunk, and "there were several dead soldiers around him in the form of empty bottles from which the spirits had fled."

Today in court, Proffit had some interesting things to say for himself. "It’s the holidays and festivities that get me in trouble," Proffit told Municipal Judge Turney. "I was in jail at Thanksgiving for being drunk, and it was the same thing at Christmas and New Year’s. I wouldn’t be here now, but my brother got married, and of course, I was there as a guest."

Turns out, Proffit had forgotten his duty to drive the newlyweds home from the reception. When he swerved off the road and got them all stuck in the mud, the bride and groom decided to walk the rest of the way home, leaving Proffit to fend for himself. Proffit was fined $200.

Mysteries of the Road

accidents
January 19, 1927
Santa Monica, Venice

A drained, shamefaced whisky bottle and wrecked car were all officers found tonight at Colorado Blvd and Twenty-Third Street.

A thorough check of the hospitals and morgues revealed nothing further.

In nearby Venice, at Washington and Brooks, an ambulance was summoned when excited folk in the vicinity witnessed an auto turn turtle. In true 1920s fashion, the two young male occupants righted the thing and drove off, presumably in a crazy zigzag with zany piano accompaniment.

When Dry Agents Go Wet

April 7, 1927
Los Angeles dryagentsgowethed

A Coroner’s inquest commenced today in an effort to determine just what happened when two inebriates—Frank Farley and George H. Hudson—pixilatedly plowed their car head-on into the auto driven by Union Oil bigwig E. Percy Ingmire & wife near Wilmington. Two things are certain: Ingmire is dead, and the two sots being held for murder are Prohibition Agents, drunkenly driving a government car on government business.

Seems our Boys of the Eighteenth, Farley and Hudson, were out carousing (with liquor in the car on the wrong side of the road and with excessive speed) in the company of three seamen from the steamer Pomona and a Mrs. Margaret “Bessie” McCallister (at whose home they’d earlier had a drinking party) when the accident occurred. ingmire Normally, drunken vehicular homicides under the auspices of Volstead-Feds get swept under the rug, but unfortunately Ingmire was former president of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, Past Master of the San Pedro Masonic Lodge, Past Exalted Ruler of San Pedro Elks’ Lodge, President of the San Pedro Industrial Association, ad infinitum. As such, all and sundry jumped into the fray: the DA appeared for the State, the Dep US Atty for the Feds, the prohibition administrators for themselves—the last of which entering into a fray with folks from the Customs Dept, who are fond of hampering prohibition enforcement in California. (The Department of Justice and the Intelligence Section of the Treasury Department are on deck.)

Dry Agent Farley, driver of the killer flivver, is a real catch. He had been arrested for a street holdup in 1923, was caught sneaking onto the Dutch steamer Eemdyk looking for booze (outside the official capacity of his employment, that is) and, according to Customs officials, was often insolent and acted beyond his authority. Of course, those Wet Agents from Customs would say that.

bailhead

On September 20, a US District Judge gave Farley one to ten in San Quentin. Of course, the Federal Comptroller refused to pay Farley’s railroad fare to Q, on the grounds that Farley was a State Prisoner. The State controller stated that Farley is a Federal prisoner and if anyone was going to pay his fare, it was the Feds. So Farley stayed a spell in County, where he made pals with one Maj. Donald McRae, on trial for robbing government liquor warehouses. Inside County they got liquor all the time, until Farley went up north and subsequently testified about his involvement in McRae’s phony alibis, whereafter McRae threatened his life. And so go our drunken, fallen Feds.