Early Los Angeles Jails, 1786-1853

As primitive as the courthouses were in Los Angeles prior to 1861 (covered here in recent posts,) the early jails were, naturally, far worse.

Anyone who saw Comedy Central's recent "Drunk History" episode (a clip of which was presented here last week) on early criminal justice in Los Angeles will remember the short bit about how the town's jail had a log in the center with staples nailed to it, to which prisoners were chained.

While the image in the show was not particularly accurate (the log was, actually, a somewhat finished piece of wood), it is still striking by our modern standards to conceive of these barbaric conditions.

James M. Guinn, in an 1896 article from the Annual Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California, wrote about the first jails in the town.

First, he noted that one dating from 1786, just five years after Los Angeles was established, was originally a cuartel, or guard house for soldiers stationed in the pueblo.  It was a square adobe structure with iron-barred windows and a tiled roof and stood at the southeasterly corner of the Plaza that then existed--the Plaza was moved a few times because of flooding from the Los Angeles River.  Guinn reckoned the location to have been near where Marchessault Street met Upper Main Street, which is about the northwest corner of today's Plaza.  At an unknown date, it was converted into a jail, though he stated that it was often used to house political prisoners during the pueblo's frequent forays into revolution and political strife.  Guinn, in particular, discussed its use during the 1831 ouster of Governor Victoria.

He then observed that, by the late 1830s, the structure "became too dilapidated for prison purposes" so prisoners were housed at the resident of the Plaza Church priest, or at Mission San Gabriel, or, on occasion, shipped to Santa Barbara for confinement.  Guinn noted that the ruins of this cuartel were still in evidence in 1846.

This circa 1872 photograph by Henry T. Payne, taken from an upper floor of the Pico House hotel, looks across the northwest corner of the Plaza toward Wine Street, later Olvera Street at the center, and an adobe building at the corner of Marchessault Street, which runs across the image from left to right and Upper Main Street, which is at the far left.  In this general location was the original jail, said by historian James M. Guinn in an 1896 article to have been constructed in 1786 and used through the 1830s.  In the distance is "Sonoratown" and, further off, the hills where Elysian Park is today.  The photo is courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.  Click on the image to see it in an enlarged view in a separate window.

In 1841, a new jail was built on the hill above Calle Primavera or Spring Street.  It was a single-story adobe structure and without any partitioned rooms or cells.  Guinn wrote that, because the adobe would not have prevented escape (though he didn't address this issue with the 1786 building), "a simply yet very effective device" was employed to keep prisoners in place.

This, of course, was the log mentioned above.  According to Guinn, "across the long room extending from wall to wall was placed a heavy pine log.  Into this at intervals of three or four feet were driven iron staples.  To each of these a short chain was attached.  The chains were fastened to the shackles on the prisoner's legs.  Thus each criminal was picketed out like a coopless chicken designed for the ax."  After going on to suggest that some prisoners "like the chicken sometimes got it in the neck, when some vigilance committee delegated to itself the authority to regulate the morals of the town," Guinn made an interesting, and flippant, observation:

Only the gente de razon (people of reason), Americans and Spanish—were allowed to occuy the "Loma Cuartel".  The pariahs of Los Angeles society, the Indians and Mexican half breeds, were chained to logs outside, where unprotected by roof or wall, they were, through sunshine and storm, left to enjoy the glorious climate of California.

This is a remarkable statement regarding the treatment of the people occupying the lower levels of a caste-based society at the end of the Mexican era and the beginning of the American period, although the fact that those better off were chained to a pine log and sat on a dirt floor is hardly indicative of reasonable treatment of prisoners by today's criteria.

The hillside jail remained in use for a dozen years, when a new building was built especially for the housing of city and county prisoners in 1853.  More on that in the next post.