2017's Curious Cases Programs at the Homestead Museum

Here is the promotional card for the Homestead Museum's slate of offerings for the third year of its "Curious Cases" program, dealing with crime and criminal justice from the 1850s to the 1870s.  Note the dates for the presentations and when reservations can begin.

The Big House VI: San Quentin State Prison and Los Angeles County Inmates

The April 1855 term of the Los Angeles County Court of Sessions [renamed in 1863 the County Court] included the cases of four men tried for felonies.  One of these José María Fuentes, up on the charge of assault with the intent to commit murder against Santiago Arostes in a shooting affray led , in his trial on the 14th, to a verdict of not guilty.  The other three men, though, were convicted in their in the trials and sent up to San Quentin state prison to serve out their terms.

One trial involved that of Edward J. Welsh, who was charged with committing a robbery against J.P. Owensby, a carpenter who, in 1864-1865 served as Los Angeles marshal.  Welsh was tried on 22 April, found guilty, and was given a three-year prison term.

The other two individuals were Juan Gonzales and Juan Flores, convicted on a grand larceny charge for the theft of three horses valued at $225 from teamster Garnett Hardy.  The trial of Flores and Gonzales was on 14 April and they were convicted and sentenced to three-year terms.

The trio were taken by steamer north to prison and were registered at San Quentin on the 27th, with Welsh as prisoner 612, Flores as 613 and Gonzales as 614.  Welsh, whose occupation was given as a clerk (perhaps Owensby was his employer?) was 32, stood 5'9 1/4" and had a light complexion gray eyes and light (blond?) hair.  He was balding with a scar on his forehead and a number of tattoos, including one of a woman and a star on his right arm, a "savior and cross" on his left, along with "American arm below on left arm."

Gonzales was 27 years old, listed as a laborer, and was 5'7 3/4 " tall.  He had a dark complexion, hazel eyes and dark hair.  He had scars on both hands and a crescent-shaped on one his forehead, as well as a pair of moles on one cheek.  As for Flores, who was just 19 years old and also shown as a laborer, he was 5'9 3/4" tall and had the same skin, hair and eye color as his compatriot, Gonzales.  Flores had scars on his right eye brow and forehead.

Welsh did not serve his full term at San Quentin.  Governor J. Neely Johnson, elected as a candidate of the American Party, or Know-Nothings, who rode a brief wave of populism focused significantly on anti-foreign sentiment, pardoned the convict on 13 February 1857, 22 months into Welsh's term.  No details have been located about the reasons for the release, but typically the governor reviewed petitions offered from persons in the county where the crime and trial occurred.  Usually, friends, family, community leaders and even legal officials, such as a district attorney, presented reasons for the pardon, often based on prior conduct, extenuating circumstances with the case, undue excitement in the community that might lead to pressure for convictions, and the conduct of the prisoner at San Quentin.

The San Quentin state prison register listings for prisoners 612-614, being Edward J. Welsh, Juan Gonzales, and Juan Flores, 27 April 1855.  Welsh was pardoned by Governor J. Neely Johnson less than two years later, while Flores and  Gonzales escaped in October 1856.  Flores formed a gang that committed the heinous murders of several people, including Los Angeles County Sheriff James R. Barton and a small posse, in early 1857.  Flores was then lynched after being captured trying to flee the area.  Gonzales, whose whereabouts after escaping are not known, was recaptured and returned to San Quentin in July 1857, as noted on the register.  Click on the image to see it in an expanded view in a separate window.

As for Flores and Gonzales, they, too, had an early release--just not an official one.  San Quentin was operated by private contract and its lessee in 1856 was J.M. Estell, whose management of the prison was, at best, questionable.  One frequent use of prisoners was a very liberal application of the "trusty" system, in which convicts were allowed off site to do work for the prison or for locals who made arrangements with Estell and his staff for convict labor.

When the legislature in early 1857 convened hearings into Estell's (mis)management of San Quentin, they heard testimony from guard captain George W. Wells about frequent escapes, involving dozens of prisoners.  In one instance, Wells testified that

Francisco Abano, Jose Somerano [Zamorano], Ramon Miramontez [Miramontes], Juan Gonzalis [Gonzales] and Juan Flores escaped by overpowering and disarming the guard on a scow going for red wood to burn kiln [for prison purposes].  Fred. W. Russell was the only guard on the scow; the scow was near the mouth of a creek; they landed and escaped.  Baldwin, one of the guards, had previously landed.  They were lock-up prisoners.

This was 8 October 1856.  Within a short time, Flores made his way down to Los Angeles and joined forces with Francisco "Pancho" Daniel, Andres Fontes (an "Andrew Fontes" escaped in 1856 with Wells stating "[I] think he stowed away in an unburnt kiln" near the prison) and others.

Known as the Flores-Daniel Gang, the group committed robberies and the murder of a San Juan Capistrano merchant before slaughtering Los Angeles County sheriff James R. Barton and an undermanned posse in present-day Irvine.  The vengeful aftermath has been recounted here in significant detail and a new article by this blogger on the topic has just been published in Orange Countiana, the annual publication of the Orange County Historical Society.

For more on the article, the publication and the Society, click here.

Gonzales, apparently, went his own way after breaking out of confinement with Flores, as he did not show up in a list of gang members published in the Los Angeles Star on 7 February 1857.  Notably, when Flores was captured by a posse watching Simi Pass northwest of Los Angeles, he gave the name "Juan Gonzales Sánchez" to his captors, though the ruse was quickly seen through.

Whatever Gonzales did with himself in the months following his escape, he was captured and returned, with the San Quentin register entry reading "brot [sic] back July 24/57."  It is not known whether he served his original three-year sentence and was released or given additional time because of his escape.

The rash of prison breaks under Estell's tenure led to an interesting statement by Alexander Bell, a member of the San Quentin Board of Directors.  In a statement forwarded to the legislature during its hearings, Bell wrote

You, gentlemen, no doubt recollect the geographical position of the southern counties, particularly San Diego, Los Angeles and San Bernardino.  Exposed as they have been, not only to the ravages of a horde of robbers, thieves and murderers, who have been headed by escaped convicts, but the peculiar locality has invited all renegades; and to add to this is the misfortune of having had no rain for nearly twelve months past, Los Angeles and San Diego counties have been made the receptacle of two thirds of the villains who had left the Northern portion of the State, and as my home has been in the lower country [italics added], I desire in the discharge of my duties to particularly direct your attention to this matter.

Bell's mention of having lived in southern California is interesting because he might be the Alexander Bell, who came to Los Angeles in 1836 and was a prominent merchant for many years and whose nephew, Horace, has been covered extensively in this blog.  In any case, Bell's statement is notable for its reference to a common complaint uttered by "settled" Angelenos--that a great deal of the crime committed in Los Angeles was by "outsiders" such as the Flores-Daniel Gang that he clearly references.

Estell's contract was soon terminated and management of San Quentin handled directly by the state, as it has been ever since.  Convict escapes definitely lessened, although conditions in the prison, which were notorious may have improved only somewhat.

Check back here soon for more stories involving Los Angeles County convicts at San Quentin!

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 Big House V: San Quentin State Prison and Los Angeles County Inmates

In the late January through mid-February 1855 term of the Los Angeles County Court of Sessions, three men were convicted of serious felonies warranting incarceration at San Quentin State Prison.

Clark Judson, a 21 year old native of Indiana, was sent up for grand larceny in the thirf of two steers from John R. Evertsen (who may be best known as the enumerator for the grossly undercounted 1850 federal census, actually taken in early 1851 and which was significantly improved upon by the state's only census taken in mid-1852).

Judson's trial was completed on 13 February and he was given five years. The following day Manuel Bojorquez and Enrique Cayetano had their day in court.  Bojorquez, who was 25 and a naive of Mexico, was up for a robbery charge, accused of stealing a pistol worth $40 from Jesus Soto.  Cayetano, a native of California who was just 17 years of age, was in the dock because of an assault with the intent to kill an Indian named Benigno by stabbing.  Bojorquez was given a five-year term, while Cayetano was sent up for three.

The trio were escorted up to San Quentin from Los Angeles by ship and were registered at the prison on 24 February.  Judson became prisoner 566 and was listed at 5'7 1/2" with a fair complexion, gray eyes and light (presumably, blond) hair.  He had scars on his forehead and the back of one hand as well as on a finger.  Bojorquez, prisoner 567, was 5'8" with a dark complextion and black hair and eyes.  He had a scar between his eyebrows and a mole on the corner of his right eye.  Cayetano was just under 5'4" and also was dark complexioned with black hair and eyes. He had scars on his right eyebrow, the bridge of his nose and between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and a mole on his left cheek.

The register at San Quentin State Prison recorded the arrival on 24 February 1855 of convicts 566-568, being Clark Judson, Manuel Bojorquez and Enrique Cayetano.

Their fates could not have been more different.  Judson, even though he was within seven months or so of his release, escaped from custody on 3 July 1859 while he was boarding a newly built schooner called the "William Hicks" presumably to do some work "off campus" as a "trusty" [someone who was allowed more freedom, ostensibly because of good behavior.]

This break involving several prisoners was just about a week after a massive escape attempt involving over 40 convicts took place--one of them being the notorious bandit Tiburcio Vásquez. In fact, escapes were all-too-frequent in the early years of San Quentin. Judson's taste of freedom lasted a couple of months, but he was tracked down, captured and returned to prison on 14 September.  Notably, no time was added to Judson's sentence and he was released on schedule on 15 February 1860.

Bojorquez, however, was only at San Quentin about seven months when he died on the last day of September 1855.  Nothing has been located about the cause of death, though conditions at the prison were such that death from an illness is a strong possibility.  As for Cayetano, he quietly served out his term and was discharged as scheduled on 14 February 1858.

Speaking of escapes, the next entry in "The Big House" series will focus on three convicts sent up from Los Angeles County in April 1855, two of which escaped and one of these led a criminal gang that, in early 1857, killed Los Angeles County Sheriff James R. Barton and three members of a posse he formed to hunt the gang.

This Picture's Thousand Words: The Los Angeles City and County Jail, ca. 1870s

A stereoscopic photograph taken by Henry T. Payne in the first part of the 1870s from a hill takes in a panoramic view of a growing Los Angeles.  The town was in the midst of its first significant boom, with the population rising from about 6,000 in the 1870 census to approximately 15,000 within five years.  The first railroads came to town during that period, as did streetcars, banks, the first high school, a public library and a host of other additions and innovations.

What had not changed was the condition of the city and county jail, which has been often discussed on this blog.  In 1853, the city and county purchased the Rocha Adobe, the former townhouse of the family that once owned the Rancho La Brea west of town, from pioneer merchant Jonathan Temple.  The house, a long, narrow structure fronting the west side of Spring Street south of Temple and north of First, became an all-purpose municipal building, housing city and county offices and the courthouse.

In 1854, in the expansive courtyard behind the adobe, a two-story jail was constructed.  The first floor was adobe and used as the city lockup, while the second story was constructed of brick and housed county prisoners.  Grand jury reports and newspaper articles in succeeding years generally alternated between noting unclean, unsanitary and unhealthful conditions in the facility and stating that the jail was in decent repair, working order and cleanliness.  It is possible that much of this was dependent on the good offices of the jailer.

The county courthouse moved in the early 1860s just a bit north on Spring Street to Jonathan Temple's Market House, a two-story brick structure topped by a cupola with a clock on it and which failed, during a poor economy, as a commercial building with leased market stalls.

This detail of a stereoscopic photograph taken by Henry T. Payne in the first half of the 1870s shows the Market House at the top left, which served as the county courthouse and city hall from 1861 to  the late 1880s.  At the lower right is the Rocha Adobe, the courthouse from 1853 to 1861 and in its courtyard, closer to where Payne took the image on a hill to the west, is the two-story city and county jail, used until the mid-1880s.  The street at the lower right was known as Court Street and Jail Street, until the name Franklin was bestowed on it--this was used by Payne in his titling.  Spring Street runs just above the Rocha Adobe and Main just past the Market House/Courthouse.

The jail, however, remained in its location in the courtyard of the Rocha Adobe, which became a police station house.  In 1863, a mass lynching of five men (three American/European and two Latino) took place on the front veranda of the adobe.  Eight years later, during the horrors of the Chinese Massacre of 24 October 1871, several Chinese men were being led towards the jail, or were alleged to have been, when they were diverted to a local corral, used for the lynching of Michel Lachenais the previous December, and hung there.

The structure remained as the city jail even as Los Angeles experienced its first significant period of growth during the late 1860s to mid 1870s.  Then, after almost a decade of stagnation from 1876-1886, a renewed boom, usually denoted as the Boom of the Eighties, ensued after the completion of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe transcontinental railroad link directly to the city in 1885.

With the Rocha Adobe jail over thirty years old and woefully inadequate even in some of its earlier years, it was time for a change.  A new jail was constructed nearby and opened in late 1886.  The adobe remained for a time, serving as a commercial structure and a well-known image of the building shows a real estate and insurance business and a railroad ticket office in the adobe.

As for the photo, it was taken from that hillside location looking east.  At the far left is the Market House, which remained the county courthouse and city hall until new facilities were built in the late 1880s, during the great boom of that era.  Main Street runs left to right behind that building and Spring Street in front of it.  The clock read 11:45 a.m., probably a good time to get a photo while the sun was off to the right or south!

The Rocha Adobe is the long, low structure at the lower right with what, in the 1870s was known as Franklin Street coming down from Payne's vantage point to meet Spring Street just to the right of the adobe.  In the courtyard behind the adobe and closer to Payne, is the two-story jail.  A variety of smaller structures and lean-tos are in the yard, as well, which looks to be in a generally well-kept a condition.

This photo was taken at a time, as mentioned above, when Los Angeles was in transition from a relatively isolated frontier town to a small, but growing city.  The image reflects that, as newer brick structures and some wooden ones, as well, are in the mix along with adobe buildings.  There were few distinctions between residential and commercial areas at the time, though clearly the latter were becoming more predominant in this part of town.  This was because the area south of Temple Street, along Main and Spring, was becoming the commercial district of the city.

Payne, an Illinois native who came to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara in the late 1860s, bought the photo studio and inventory of William M. Godfrey and reissued many of Godfrey's photos under his name, as well as took a great many images through the 1870s.  He was a partner with Thomas Stanton for a period in the 1880s and later worked as a journalist in San Francisco, before returning to the Los Angeles area, dying in Glendale in the early 1930s in his eighties.

"American Homicide" by Randolph Roth

Another interesting book on violence in the United States mentioned in John Mack Faragher's excellent Eternity Street, published earlier this year and detailing Los Angeles violence in the 19th century, is Randolph Roth's American Homicide.

This hefty 2009 book from Ohio State University Press, clocking in at 475 pages of text and almost 200 additional pages dealing with methods, sources, notes, references, acknowledgments and the index, is an exhaustive chronicing of homicide throughout American history.  In fact, sometimes the individual instances of heinous murders committed can be overwhelming.

What makes Roth's book significant is that he advocates the position that, when there is a basic mistrust in government; when government is ineffective and weak; when citizens do not feel connected to one another, generally patriotically; when people's ideas about violence are set and pased on; and when young men are involved, violence is likely to rise, sometimes dramatically.  He also points to the lack of empathy people feel about others as being contributory to the conditions that lead to endemic violence.

There could be lots of discussion about whether this thesis is as well-founded as Roth presents it, but it does seem true that, in frontier Los Angeles from the 1850s to the 1870s, some of these conditions were most definitely present, though he discussed this region sparsely in this section.  How we can know by the evidence, rather than by the circumstances, that this is true is another matter, especially if there may be particular factors in locality, demographics and time that might not reflect the general terms of the thesis.

In any case, Roth core discussion of the region and time in his book is about twenty pages, under the sub-heading "Homicide in the Southwest."  Obviously, the Southwest is an enormously large region with a great deal of differentiation in its component parts, from Texas to New Mexico to California, and the latter with its large area having differences between, say, the gold fields relative to San Francisco, Los Angeles or the far northern part of the state.

So, almost by the nature of Roth's decisions to look at the Southwest very broadly, a great deal of generalizations will be employed, but there is still much of interest and value in his summary.  This includes the staggering violence being reflective of the chaotic conditions of the Mexican-American War followed immediately by the Gold Rush.

Roth also identified the proclivity for violence among men coming from such areas as the American South, New York, southeastern China and central Mexico, places known for their violence.  Clearly, migrants coming to places that were on the frontier with gambling, drinking, consorting with prostitutes and so forth meant that homicide would be a major problem.

There is not a great deal about Los Angeles in this book, but American Homicide provides interesting and useful context for violence in the City of Angels on national and sectional levels.

Many incidents were spontaneous, stemming from fights in bars, brothels and gambling halls, but others "stemmed from political, ethnic, racial, or religious conflict, from vigilante and predatory violence, or from personal quarrels or property disputes."  Copious amounts of alcohol and prodigious levels of testoterone, amplified among those who valued honor and self-defense as cardinal virtues were even more dangerous with the improvement in the technology of guns, such as the Colt revolver.

Roth wrote that, for most of the Southwest, "it was obvious that there was no stable, legitimate government or reliable legal system." Moreover, "there was a marked shortage of empathy, especially among people of different ethnic backgrounds, and earning status and respect was a struggle."  Economic inequality compounded by prejudice and discrimination towards ethnic minorities made matters worse and this, Roth posed, led to greater violence within ethnic groups as frustrations led to internal battles.  When people are at "the bottom of the social hierarchy," there are likely to lash out at people of their own ethnic group.

He also observed that the Mexican-American War "left the region in a state of near anarchy," then followed later with a discussion of the sudden shock that the Gold Rush brought to California with its massive migration, ethnic diversity, preponderance of young, single men, access to alcohol and guns, and so on.

Political divisions were strong in the postwar era with Latinos and Indians bitter about the American conquest and Anglos fighting over such issues as ethnicity, immigration "and the distribution of the spoils of conquest."  Here, Roth claimed that these probpems made it difficult for "any government to represent the values and interests of the majority of citizens or to win their trust" and "the rapid oinflux of so many alien cultures did little to help foster harmony."

This blogger has found that, in Los Angeles, there were certainly many instances of racial discord and battles over political positions and issues, but there were also many concerns about the ineffectiveness of government and the legal system to mitigate crime and adjudicate cases to convict those committing crime.

With a general lack of interethnic crime, at least compared to intraethnic violence, trust and harmony may have had less to do with the eruption of violence than personal matters like pride and status or the uncertainty of what young men might do when raging with testosterone and plied with copious alcohol.  Moreover, what Roth calls "kinship" that brought a more settled environment to the region might also be called "dominance" by one ethnic group (Anglos) over the others in the political and economic speheres.

Roth's analysis of the brutality of the Mexican-American War, which was largely, in his view, "to carry slavery, Protestantism, and white supremacy into the Mexican borderlands" is mostly written with an eye on Texas and the specific conditions there.  While California certainly had its share of slavery-sympathizing southerners, Protestants and white supremacists, conditions were different than those of Texas, even in "southern" California.  This is not to suggest that the situation was the opposite of Texas, but there were examples of relationships forged, more on social and economic class, between wealthier Californios and Anglos, at least until the latter had a significant majority in population and power after the 1870s.

The statement that Los Angeles had some 200 homicides per 100,000 adults through the mid-1860s can be questioned, based on sources, definitions of homicide and how homicides occurred, but there is no question it had a high rate compared to most places in America and that there was a significant drop by the 1870s as government was more stable, law enforcement improved, and the population included more women and children, to give some examples.

There is also discussion in the book about the ruthlessness of "Mexican guerrillas" and bandits, though, again, his focus is further east in New Mexico and northern Mexico or in northern California, which also experienced the brutality of the Bear Flag revolt of 1846 and the extraordinary violence of the gold mines in northern California in following years.

Roth does devote a small amount of space to the horrific Chinese Massacre of October 1871 in Los Angeles, correctly noting that Anglos and Latinos both pursued victims mostly indiscriminately.  This is followed by a statement about the perceived Chinese threat to Anglo labor through examples in Chico in the north of the state.  Yet, in Los Angeles, while labor might possibly have played some role, fundamental racism and hatred, including by Latinos who saw their historic neighborhood of the Calle de los Negros occupied by the Chinese, are almost certainly the major motivations.

As for Indians, Los Angeles is briefly mentioned with regard to alleged inter-Indian slaughter after a game of peon (mentioned previously in this blog), after which it was claimed 50 Indians were killed.  The systematic rooting out of Indians in the north was pervasive, but in Los Angeles there are little examples of Anglos or Latinos killing Indians, though the treatment by both of native peoples in terms of labor exploitation, targeted sales of liquor and other issues was, in in its own way, brutal by other standards.

Roth also analyzed Latino violence, stating that "it is likely that immigrants from Spain, Mexico, Chile, and Peru brought violent habits with them and contributed to the homicide problem" and that "murders across national lines was probably common."  He claimed that "murders among unrelated Hispanics were usually caused by spontaneous disputes" including fights in taverns, whorehouses and dances, though this was also, as Roth noted, true among Anglos, as well, particular among the working class.

Roth is certainly correct in stating that murder declined "as law enforcement improveed, the pace of immigration slowed, and more families and family-oriented businesses appeared" by the mid-1860s.  Still, rates afterward were generally much higher than elsewhere in the United States as frontier life continued to hold sway in much of the Southwest.  Yet, as he observed, California "remained one of the most homicidal places in the United States—and one of the most homicidal in all of American history." California's divisiveness, in Roth's opinion, mirrored that of the South after the Civil War and he linked the two regions together historically by claiming "that is why homicide rates among Anglos in California, like homicide rates among whites in the South, remain elevated to this day."

This latter statement is very interesting and is one that could be debated in terms of trying to link conditions of 150 years ago with those of modern life, even if the statistics seem to bear the statement out.  Weren't the conditions of the Gold Rush very specific to that place and time?  Aren't the conditions of early 21st century life, even if linked very broadly by some elements (economic dislocation, racial tension, acting out of frustration because of inequality, spontaneous violence), so different that they have their own interpretive storylines?

In all, for those interested in America's peculiar homicidal history, Roth's book should be read and considered as essential.  The anecdotal catalog of violence can be mind-numbing and some of his conclusions might be reasonably debated, but he makes many good points about rising violence in times of poor government and criminal justice administration, as well as racial and ethnic tension.  Los Angeles is rarely discussed and in generalized terms, but there is still a lot of context to absorb and appreciate in this very interesting study.