The Los Angeles Jail and the 1870 Census

In 1870, as Los Angeles was undergoing its first major development boom and was beginning to move from a frontier town to a small city, the federal census was conducted in the summer.

The official count of population in the city was just under 6,000, while the county tally was about 15,000 persons.  This was, as all censuses tend to be, an undercount, but it reflected a major change from the previous census in 1860 and, more importantly, reflected the growth that had ensued from the post-Civil War years.

As the last post discussed the 1860 census and the city and county jail, it is interesting to note that, not only was the jail in the same two-story (adobe first floor and brick second floor) structure behind the Rocha Adobe at Spring Street between Temple and First, but that the jailer was, once again, Francis J. Carpenter, who had the distinction of being the longest serving person in that position in early Los Angeles.

Here is the 1870 federal census listing for Los Angeles city and county jail keeper Francis J. Carpenter, who was in the position a decade prior, as well as the inmates in the facility.

Carpenter, as noted earlier, came to Los Angeles following his older brother, Lemuel, who owned the Rancho Santa Gertrudes in southeastern Los Angeles County until financial problems from debts owed to John G. Downey (California's governor in the early 1860s) led to his suicide.  Francis served as jailer for several years in the late 1850s and early 1860s and then returned to the position in time for the census.

He resided on the jail site with his second wife Ann, his son from a prior marriage, Alexander, and three daughters from his second marriage.  Reflecting a recent demographic change in Los Angeles, Carpenter had a Chinese cook, 41-year old Ku Ah.  The Chinese community in town had grown to over 200 persons in recent years from just 11 in the 1860 census.

As to the inmates at the jail, they totaled 22, compared to the dozen that occupied the facility ten years prior.  Unlike the 1860 census, when the enumerator noted the charges that the prisoners either faced or by which they were convicted, census taker Jonathan D. Dunlap, when he made his rounds on 18 August, did not list the charges.

Instead Dunlap recorded names ages, occupation and place of birth along with sex and race.  On that latter point, other major demographic shifts are in evidence.  Firstly, only 2 of the 22 men were Latino, both from Mexico, and the Spanish-speaking population of Los Angeles was, on a percentage basis overall, declining. .  Then, there were two black prisoners, which is also reflective of a small, but growing, community of African Americans in town, of whom there were about 110 enumerated in the census.

There was a disproportionate number of French and Irish-born prisoners in jail, four of the former and six of the latter, relative to their numbers in town.  One other European, a German, meant that fully half of the inmates were from outside the United States.  Of the nine Americans, four were from southern and the other five were from northern states.

As to ages, they ranged from 17 to 63 with the average age being pretty typical for prison and jail populations, at 27 1/2 years.  Occupationally, prisoners were overwhelmingly common laborers, comprising 16 of the 22, or about 73%.  There were three cooks, a sheep herder, a school teacher and a bookkeeper among the rest.  

Another interesting detail was that one of the prisoners actually had self-declared property values.  John Rogers, a 45-year old Tennessee-born laborer, gave his personal property value at $1,600 and his personal property value as $700.  None of the other prisoners had this distinction.

Court cases involving most of these men survive in existing files, with only a half-dozen of the prisoners unaccounted for.  John Baker, a 32-year old French-born cook, was tried on an arson charge on and found guilty.  There is, however, a record that a new trial in his case was ordered, though it is not known if one took place.  Patrick Carmody, a 22-year old Irish cook, was on trial just a week prior to the census, on the 11th, and pled guilty to second degree murder, which carried a 10-year term at San Quentin.  He was in the county lockup for just a short time until he was transferred to "the big house."

George M. Cox, a 30-year old bookkeeper from Maine, was tried on an embezzlement rap and was found guilty, but the state supreme court reversed the judgment and remanded his case back to Los Angeles for a new trial.  There is no record of one, however.

The oldest prisoner, 63-year old Mathew Wall, a native of Ireland, was in jail for an attempted rape charge and his trial was just nine days prior to the census taking, but there is no known disposition in the matter.  Henry Ryan, a 19-year old Irish native, was up for a grand larceny rap and had a 12 July trial but his case file only included indictments and an arrest warrant--there was no known disposition.

21-year old French native Martin Giraud was in jail on a charge of obtaining money under flase pretences and his case file from the same date as Ryan only contained an indictment.  A.B. Boyd, a 28-year old laborer hailing from Illinois, was found guilty of grand larceny on 18 July in stealing a horse.  Charles Wright, 23 and from France, and Charles Smith, 20, and from Germany, were tried together for grand larceny and breaking and entering and both found guilty.

The last three men on the enumerated list: John Davis, F.G. Peters and John Downey, all were rried for grand larceny and burglary, but were found not guilty.  Ismael Romero, the youngest of the prisoners at 17 and a native of Mexico, was tried on a grand larceny charge, but this was reduced to petty larceny in the theft of a horse and some personal property and he was found guilty.

John Kelly, a 22-year old Illinois native and a laborer, went to trial on 16 September on a grand larceny charge and was found guilty.  His crime was stealing a box used in the popular gambling game of faro!  Trinidad Castro, a 28-year old laborer from Mexico, was likely in jail the longest, as his trial on grand larceny for stealing over two dozen horses in Anaheim was held 25 January and he was found guilty.  Frank Hail, a 25-year old Georgia-born laborer, went to trial on 9 September for grand larceny and pled guilty, for which he received a 15-month sentence.

As to jailer Carpenter, he later joined the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department, being appointed in the late 1870s as a policeman.  The accompanying photo is of Carpenter in his uniform with badge and can be dated to about 1879 because the photography studio of Tuttle and Parker only existed in Los Angeles for a very short period around that time.  Carpenter is also enumerated in the 1880 federal census as a policeman, as shown in the image above.  More interestingly, this photo, recently acquired by the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, appears to be one of the earliest, if not the oldest, surviving photos of a LAPD officer in uniform.

The Los Angeles Jail and the 1860 Census

There have been many posts on this blog that have referred to the Los Angeles city and county jail and the next two posts will examine the censuses of 1860 and 1870 and the enumeration of the jailer and the residents of the calaboose at the time the census taker made the rounds.

As for the first federal census taken in Los Angeles during the American era, the 1850 enumeration was actually carried out in January and February 1851, because of the late admission of California as the thirty-first state in the Union the previous September.

Census taker John R. Evertsen, however, did not enumerate the jailer or its convicts--though it should be said, again, that Evertsen's count as a whole was grossly inexact (a claim made upon the whole state count, as a matter of fact.)  Evertsen's count of 1,610 residents in Los Angeles and 3,530 in the county was so low that, when the state conducted its own census about a year and a half later, in summer 1852, the county total was nearly 8,000--one of the problems was that Evertsen only counted a couple hundred Indians, whereas the state tallied almost 4,000.

In any case, the first census to include the jail in the enumeration was in 1860.  On 16 June, census taker James C. Pennie made the rounds and, after counting city marshal John J. Trafford and his deputy (future marshal and shooting victim of one of his constables a decade later) William C. Warren, he made his way to attorney Samuel Reynolds and publisher of the little known newspaper, The Southern Vineyard, J.J. Warner.  This was followed by a printer, probably for Warner, Joseph M. Peru, and then merchant Louis Jaszynsky.

Pennie then visited Francis J. Carpenter, listed as "county jailor."  Carpenter, aged 40 and a native of Kentucky, was the brother of Rancho Santa Gertrudes owner Lemuel Carpenter (who had recently committed suicide over debts he had incurred to soon-to-be California governor John G. Downey and a partner, which caused the loss of the ranch.)  Carpenter self-declared his property value at $3,750 and had a separate listing on an agricultural census for 630 acres of land valued at $700, on which were 33 horses valued at $750.  Carpenter did buy part of the Rancho Centinela in the modern Inglewood area and, presumably, this is where his agricultural census property was located.  In his household was his 27-year old wife Ann, a native of Missouri, his 19-year old son by an earlier marriage, John, also born in Missouri and his two children with Ann, 7-year old Alexander and 5-year old Josephine.

Also on the jail property was an Indian family, comprised of Domingo Tarrata, age 30 and working as the cook, his wife Polonia, age 24, and listed as servant, and their two daughters, 7-year old Rita and 5-year old Angel.

A dozen inmates were counted that day in the jail.  6 were Latinos from California or Mexico, 1 was an American, another a European, and 3 were Indians.  The last was a mixed race individual, Jose J. Chapman, whose father, Joseph, was the first Anglo to live in Los Angeles.

Here is the section of the 1860 federal census of Los Angeles, showing jailer Francis J. Carpenter and his family, the jail's cook and servant Domingo and Polonia Tarrata, and the twelve inhabitants of the combined county and city lockup.

Of interest is that, in the far right column, were the charges by which the men were either accused or convicted.  Two men were in for "assault to kill," including 47-year old vaquero (sublisted as "herdsman") José [Serbulo] Varela (shown as "Barelas") and Chapman, age 34 and also a vaquero.  Samuel Goldstein, a 23-year old peddler orignally from Prussia, was in for "assault with the intent to commit murder," which sounds similar to the "assault to kill," but was akin to a charge of first or second degree murder instead of manslaughter; that is, the intent was preplanned for Goldstein and more spur of the moment for Varela and Chapman.

Three prisoners were in for "grand larceny," including 19-year old vaquero Juan Carbajal, 24-year old laborer George Watson, and 19-year old laborer Jesús López.  Two others were in for "petty larceny," including 53-year old shoemaker, Agustín "Montion" and 21-year old vaquero Francisco Tapia.  Trinidad German, a 35-year old laborer was jailed on an assault rap.

All of the above were technically in the county jail on serious charges and this left the three Indians who probably comprised the inhabitants of the city facility on the first floor of the two-story jail erected in 1854 in the courtyard of the Rocha Adobe, which served as city and county offices and the courthouse.  A photo of the site was recently posted on this blog.

The Indians were 18-year old José, 20-year old Juan, and 26-year old Tomás Feliz.  June 16 was a Saturday, so it is possible the trio were arrested on a Friday night and held over for the weekend, but this is not established with certainty.

Chapman was charged with assaulting Francisco López, but his court file in the Court of Sessions lists the crime as "assault to murder."  on 30 August 1859 he was convicted and sentenced to a year, so was a few months shy of his release.

Varela was a veteran of the Mexican-American War fighting for the Californios against the Americans.  He was highly respected by the latter, however, for his defense of protecting Americans captured at the headquarters of the Chino ranch (today's Boys Republic troubled youth facility in Chino Hills) against Californios who wanted to execute the captured Americans in the heat of the fighting during the war.

It will be recalled in an earlier post here about Los Angeles County prisoners at San Quentin that Varela was sent up to "the big house" for a year on petty larceny and perjury convictions in 1854-55.

Here again is the Henry T. Payne photo from the mid-1870s of the two-story jail, lower right of center, in the courtyard of the Rocha Adobe, which was the courthouse until 1861, when the facility, along with city and county offices, were relocated to the Market House at the upper left.

In this matter, Varela was charged with "assault to murder" according to his case file for an attack on Marcos Vera and on 14 March 1860 pled guilty to assault and battery.  His sentence was a $200 fine or 100 days in jail.  Presumably he was locked up in lieu of the fine and should have been released imminently at the time the census was taken.

Yet, his freedom after leaving jail was short-lived.  In September 1860, Varela's body was found in the zanja madre (mother ditch supplying water for Los Angeles), having been stabbed to death in a crime that went unsolved.

Juan Carbajal went to trial on 14 July for grand larceny in stealing 2 horses from José Garcia, though there was complaint at the end of 1859 for the same charge in a crime committed against Fernando Sepulveda.  In the Garcia matter, Carbajal was found guilty and sentenced to four years at San Quentin--more about him in "The Big House" series of posts later.

As for George Watson, there was a case against him for grand larceny in the stealing of a horse from the livery stable of Taft and Edwards, but that was on 23 March and the district attorney filed a "nolle prosequi", or a decline to prosecute.  Perhaps, however, Watson was reindicted and retried, though there is no case file for this.

A case against José de la Cruz López for perjury in a horse theft case went to trial on 26 November 1860, but also ended with a "nolle prosequi" filing by the D.A.

Francisco Tapia was tried for grand larceny, not petty larceny as the census listing shows, in some kind of theft of property of Ira Thompson, a hotel keeper in El Monte, and was convicted on 16 March.  His sentence was the same as Varela, a $200 fine or 100 days in jail, and he, too, must've not had the funds to pay up, so served his time and was due to be released very soon after the census was taken.

There were no case files found for German, "Montion" or Goldstein and mayor's court cases against the Indians do not appear to have survived.

The next post will take up the 1870 census of the jail, so check back for that!

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and Criminal Justice, 1856

The year 1856 marked the fourth full year of the existence of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.  One of the newer elements of the minutes that started around this time was lists of jurors called for the several courts.

For example, the meeting of 9 February provided names of jurors who served in the lates term of both the Court of Sessions (renamed the County Court in 1864) and the District Court.  As noted here before, the Sessions court heard most criminal matters, excepting the most serious, such as murder, rape and, sometimes, arson, which were heard at the higher-level District Court.

At this meeting there were two dozen men attending each court and a breakdown of general ethnic categories, stated for this blog as "Spanish-language surnamed" and "American and European", showed that 9 of the 24 at the Court of Sessions and 4 of the 24 at the District Court had Spanish-language surnames.

The 4 June meeting provides lists of 55 jurors for the Sessions court and a dozen for the District Court.  In this case, while 10 of the Sessions jurors had Spanish-language surnames, 9 of the 12 at District Court did.  On 6 August, all dozen list jurors for the Sessions court were American or European.

With the unusual proportion of Spanish-language jurors at the District Court, as reported in early June, the total representation of 127 listed jurors for the year showed 32 had Spanish-language surnames, or about 1/4 of the total.

While Spanish-speakers were a solid majority of the population of the county then, it should be remembered that jurors were taken from the rolls of taxpayers in the county.  However, state law also provided that jurors were to be selected at random from those rolls according to specific instructions, though whether statute was complied with is another matter.

It has been stated by some historians, notably Richard Griswold del Castillo in his 1979 work Los Angeles Barrio that the low proportion of Spanish-surnamed jurors meant that defendants of the same classification could not get justice in Los Angeles' courts.  Del Castillo's analysis of jury composition largely squares with what this blogger has found.  The problem is that jury composition is only part of the equation--the better portion is to look at those cases that contain dispositions and then see what the conviction and acquittal rates show.

In hundreds of cases analyzed by this blogger, it was found that conviction rate differences between Spanish-language surnamed and American and European defendants actually narrowed over time, even as jury composition became even more skewed towards Americans and Europeans.  This runs counter to del Castillo's assertions, though it has to be said that there were many cases without disposition, some missing, and, besides, the dynamics of what drove any individual jury set to decide a case cannot be easily squared with statistics, either way.

As noted in the last several entries, financial matters also are a crucial part of what is found in these minutes, especially because criminal justice administration took up the lion's share of the county's expenditures and because, all too often, revenues were just not enough to keep pace.

Much of the expense had to do with maintenace of the jail, but sometimes revenue shortfalls came into place.  So, at the 11 February meeting, Francis J. Carpenter, the jailor had over $1600 in bills, but for the lion's share of that, he was expended 60 cents to the dollar "equivalent to cash," which sounds like scrip (or, basically, an IOU).  Yet, the next day, the board agreed to raise Carpenter's daily rate of compensation to $5.33.

On 3 June, he issued a claim to the board for another $1444.16.  Two days later, the board voted to issue more scrip to Carpenter for his bills.  In November, after another round of submitted bills by the jailor, the board voted to give him just 40 cents to the dollar in scrip.

Another financial matter had to do with the Rocha Adobe, which was purchased by the county from merchant Jonathan Temple in 1853 and which housed the courts and city and county offices.  In the courtyard behind the adobe which faced Spring Street, the two-story city and county jail was located.  In 1855, there had been an issue with a clear title and it appears that unresolved matters continued into 1856, because at the 12 February meeting, Luis Jordan presented a claim based on an assignment of an interest in the lot given to him by Antonio F. Rocha before the sale.  After discussion, the board agreed to give Rocha a receipt for $500 for a joint warrant on the property to settle Jordan's claim.

For unknown reasons, there are gaps in the record from 12 February to 5 May and then again to 2 June.  An interesting problem that confronted the supervisors in early June was a sudden spate of vacancies in the most of the justice of the peace offices in most of the county's townships, either because of resignations or failure of qualifications discovered quite a bit late after the September 1855 county election.

This map from about the 1890s, shows downtown Los Angeles from Temple Street, top (north) to above First Street, bottom (south) and from Main, right (east) , to Broadway, left (west.)  The court house and jail in the Rocha Adobe, bought from Jonathan Temple, from 1854 on were located at the corner of Spring Street and what was called Jail or Court and then later Franklin Street at the lower center, where the Phillips Block No. 1, built by Pomona-area rancher Louis Phillips, is shown.  Note that the 1889 Court House was moved just slightly northwest of the Rocha Adobe site and due west of where the courthouse was located in Temple's Market House, on which site the Bullard Block was built about 1890, between Market and Court streets at the right center.  The Bullard Block and Temple Block, to its north, sites are now where city hall is located and Main and Spring have been straightened.

In any case, the board quickly appointed replacements for the remaining couple of months before the upcoming election.  One for the sparsely populated northern reaches of the county in the Tejon Township, where Fort Tejon had recently been founded, was Samuel A. Bishop.  Bishop, a native of Virginia, was a Gold Rush '49er who became involved in Indian wars and the transfer of natives to a new reservation in the Tejon Sinks.  He acquired to Rancho Castac [Castaic] and also briefly had a ranch in the upper Owens Valley during the early 1860s, for which a new town, Bishop, was named in his honor.  He lived in San Jose until his death in 1893.

At El Monte, Elijah Bettis, who came from Missouri to the "American town" settled a few years earlier, became the justice of the peace.  He left the office later to become deputy sheriff to James Barton, who lost his reelection campaign to the board of supervisors, but won election returning him as sheriff.  When Barton gathered a small posse just a few weeks into his term to hunt bandits at San Juan Capistrano, he left Bettis in Los Angeles and then was massacred with his compatriots.   Bettis became sheriff and served until the term was up and was later water overseer for Los Angeles.

Russell Sackett, the appointee for Los Angeles township, outside the town limits, was from New York and was an attorney there before he came to California in the Gold Rush and wound up in Los Angeles.  He practiced law, was superintendent of public instruction, postmaster and a one-term member of the state assembly, in addition to being a JP.  He died in Los Angeles in 1875.

San Pedro township's appointed justice was Thomas Workman, whose family arrived in 1854 from Missouri to join Thomas' uncle, William, co-owner of Rancho La Puente in the eastern San Gabriel Valley.  Although only 24 years old Workman demonstrated administrative ability and was a valued employee, as chief clerk, of Phineas Banning and his growing mercantile empire at the harbor area.  Workman, who lost a run for county clerk in the early 1860s, died in the April 1863 explosion of the steamer Ada Hancock, owned by Banning.

At San Juan Capistrano, Irish-born Thomas J. Scully, accounted as the first teacher in what later became Orange County and who married into the prominent Yorba family, was appointed JP, while he was engaged in his teaching duties.  He later lived in Corona in what became Riverside County and died there in 1895.

Yet another justice of the peace vacancy opened up in late October, when Los Angeles township JP Alexander Gibson died and Thomas F. Swim was appointed in his stead.

In the 3 June minutes, there was mention made in the minutes to 21-year old William W. Jenkins as a deputy constable--meaning that, unlike constables, who were elected, Jenkins was appointed by the local justice of the peace.  Jenkins, whose mother and step-father Elizabeth and George Dalton (the latter's brother was Henry Dalton, owner of several San Gabriel Valley ranches), came to town earlier in the decade and joined, at age 18, the Los Angeles Rangers, when the organization was formed in 1853.

A little over a month later, Jenkins was given a writ of attachment for a $50 debt in a civil matter before justice of the peace Gibson to serve on Antonio Ruiz.  When Jenkins tried to seize a guitar to satisfy the write, a struggle broke out with Ruiz and his common-law wife, and Jenkins shot and killed Ruiz who grabbed the deputy constable from behind during the altercation.

In the aftermath, a group of Latinos and French residents of Los Angeles gathered on a hill above the jail where Jenkins was confirned, after initially being freed on his own recognizance without bail, and tensions rose to a point where a riot was feared.

Eventually, after Marshal William Getman was grazed by a bullet in a foray to determine the position of those on the hill, the situation calmed.  Jenkins was acquitted on a manslaughter charge as was alleged ringleader of the hilltop gathering, Fernando Carriaga, tried for intent to incite a riot.

Notably, the board suspended meetings for a time, almost certainly because of the state of emergency that gripped community leaders during the Jenkins-Ruiz incident.  Moreover, Sheriff David W. Alexander resigned, though whether it was because of the incident is not known--Alexander did relocate to a ranch at the base of the San Joaquin Valley where he remained for some years.  Charles Hale, a Los Angeles constable, was appointed to fill Alexander's position and Charles K. Baker became constable in Hale's place.  When Sheriff Barton decisively defeated Hale in the early November county election by a vote of 821 to 346, and was killed two months later, Baker and newly elected constable William H. Little were among the posse members gunned down along with him.  Notably, William W. Jenkins ran for constable in that election, but finished last among the six candidates.  If he had won, he surely would have been killed in the Barton massacre.

Another interesting result of the election took place in the mission town of San Gabriel.  Dr. William B. Osburn, whose name has been mentioned here several times, had moved there from Los Angeles and was elected a justice of the peace.  In the aftermath of the Barton killing, Osburn was accused of brutalizing the corpse of Miguel Soto, said to have been in the gang that murdered the sheriff, which was a double accusation, given that Osburn was a judge and a doctor.  One of the losing candidates for constable was Roy Bean, the younger brother of a militia general and saloon keeper, Joshua Bean, whose late 1852 murder led to the lynching of an innocent man.  Roy Bean later became the famed judge in Texas known as "the law west of the Pecos."

It appears that there was either no meeting of the board after 11 November or the minutes have vanished, but this takes us to 1857 and the Barton massacre.