nathan marsak – Page 15

The Black Hand Smacked Down

August 1, 1907
Los Angeles sanmarco

July, 1907: It was decided by members of the La Mano Nera, the criminal vein that runs through LA’s Italian community, that seventeen year-old Josephine San Marco was to wed Samuel Laturco. But Josephine, thoroughly modern and resolute in matters of her own heart, would have none of it. She went on to entertain one Joseph Desparti in the parlor of her home.

Laturco, threatened with death by his own father should he not “clean out” the San Marco home, fired three rounds into the parlor. Neither Joseph nor Josephine were hit; one bullet did kill six year-old Marie San Marco. Laturco and his father, Francisco Laturco, were arrested.

And now, with the entire Italian community against her, and with threats of death piling up like unanswered mail, the dark-eyed teen has set out to avenge her tiny sister’s slaying. Under the withering, threatening gaze of the people she once loved, Josephine took the stand today to testify against the Laturci. Warned time and again that she need only wed Laturco the Younger and thereby save him from the gallows, she grits her teeth and stands in Los Angeles Superior Court alone, as all other witnesses refuse to testify.

She bears these men a hate and her sister a duty, whence comes an uncommon bravery:

“They have killed my sister, now let them look to it for their lives. I will never give up. They have abused me and threatened me and tried to compel me to marry Laturco, but they have failed. I do not fear their society. They have killed my sister and I’ll have the satisfaction for that life if I die for it. My mother fears they will murder as they say, that they will burn our home, and cause us trouble. She urged me to marry Laturco and settle the trouble. But I won’t. I have set my mind on this and I won’t back out. Let them burn and murder all they want, but the won’t head off that prosecution. I have started it and I will be there at the finish.”

Notes from the Hydrocarbon Front

July 19, 1907
Los Angeles

After Doheny hit oil near (what’s now) Dodger Stadium back in ’92, Los Angeles went brea-happy, depressing world oil prices with its outstanding production and eventually producing 3/4 of the world’s supply after the 20s hits in Wilmington, Dominquez Hills, Huntington and Long Beach, et al.

In 1907 everybody was getting into the act. Including the mayor. Mayor A. C. Harper has announced the formation of the Los Angeles-Utah Oil Company, the other directors of the corporation a coterie of mayoral cronies picked from the Police and Fire Commissions, and, interestingly, there’s a Councilman by the name of Clampitt. The Mayor has been spending much of his time not in City Hall, but in his new oil company offices at the Bank of Commerce, across from the Times building. (Though "Clampitt" should be a propitious name in the oil production game, Utah’s Virgin Valley field never really pans out–which taught the mayor not to go wildcatting outside of LA [or perhaps their failings were due to the misspelling of Clampett.])

Meanwhile, a grassroots movement has started in the Seventh Ward to throw oil refineries and storage tanks out of the city in and into the country. The Eighth Ward, also known for tanks with 500+ barrel capacity (21,000 gallons) has joined in to make noise about a tank’s ability to incinerate large swaths of the city should a refinery explode. (Of course, it was the location of these tanks that brought manufacturing and worker’s housing to southeastern Los Angeles in the first place.)

While everyone was worried about being blown up by oil storage tanks, today one Ernest Malcom, of the Los Angeles City Dye Works, was cleaning a suit of clothes in some distillate…when there was a tremendous flash and a roar. He was thrown thirty feet backward and into a door, which gave way and he tumbled into the street uharmed. A series of tremendous inflammable cleaning fluid explosions incinerated the rest of the building, although firefighters were able to save the surrounding houses.

Tong War Continues

tongwar

July 18, 1907

Anaheim

One more tong war post, and then I’ll return to our regularly scheduled horrors committed by, I don’t know, Dutch people.

Anaheim, California: best known for Disneyland and the Pond, or, at least, known for the winemaking prowess of Victorian Bavarians, and having been run by the Klan in 1924. And I’d like to remind you that on this day in 1907, Anaheim was the scene of a particularly grisly murder.

Mock Fat was an Anaheim vegetable salesman and a particularly card-carrying, dues-paying member of the Hop Sing. But Anaheim is largely Bing Goon territory, and as such, the aged Fat a prime target.

Classic tong style: shot twice in the back, he fell on his face. A knife was stabbed repeatedly into his back and left there. Of course, a hatchet was used to cut up his head.

As usual, the police have been dispatched to the train stations. While imported highbinders are escaping detection by hiding out in downtown Japanese rooming houses, cops have nevertheless managed to nap Visalians Tai Choy and Lin Poon, implicated in the killing.

A Peace Disturbed

tongwarrenewed July 13, 1907
Los Angeles

And you thought the tong war was all wrapped up (cf. our post of 6 July). That uneasy easy peace you felt must sadly be disturbed once more.

Chan Mon is one of the wealthiest and most influential Celestials in Los Angeles. He resides in Chinatown at 212 Ferguson Alley, and runs from 804 Juan Street his empire of vegetable wholesalers.

But at a banquet (at 421 Apablasa) last night—you’ll remember that the last tong war resulted from a banquet, where some ladies of a particular social standing were omitted—Chan Mon, a fellow traveler of the Hop Sing, was shot once in the shoulder and twice in the groin by members of the Row Wing and Bow On.

Police were dispatched to the train stations to prevent escape of the assassins, and over one hundred officers ransacked Chinatown in a house-to-house. They never found noted highbinder Lem Au Toy, implicated in the shooting, but did arrest Lee Ming, a tailor and Hop Sing hanger-on, at 214 Apablasa.

Barring blood poisoning, Mon is expected to recover.

We will keep you posted of local developments.

An interlude from the future:

Baravelli and Pinky arrive carrying blocks of ice. They deposit them in the wall safe. Wagstaff: That’s a fine way to carry ice! Where are your tongs? Baravelli and Pinky stick out their tounges. Looks like a tong war.

— Horsefeathers, 1932

Kim and Nathan on the Radio on Friday

In the early 1990s, 1947project bloggers Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak collaborated on a demented college radio program in Santa Barbara called The Manny Chavez Show. Nathan played Manny, a washed-up Catskills comic with a soft spot for bizarre thrift store records, while Kim manned the boards and giggled at Manny’s unfunny gags in the character of daffy twins Mandy and Candy Dubois. A lowlight of their broadcast career was the night Nathan got arrested on his way to the studio, and the County Sheriff agreed to let him phone the show if he’d deliver an anti-drunk driving message.

These days, their collaboration is somewhat more scholarly, though still demented: they blog historic Los Angeles crimes of 1947 and 1907 at the 1947project website, and lead Crime Bus Tours to scenes of forgotten mayhem.

This Friday night, July 14 (and into the morning of the 15th), from midnight to three, Kim and Nathan return to the airwaves as special guests of Stella, whose KXLU (88.9 FM) program Stray Pop has been providing an eclectic disarray of music with in studio guests since 1980.

They’ll be sharing favorite local true crime cases from their upcoming Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus Tour, spinning incredibly odd thrift store vinyl, plus talking about Kim’s projects like the Bubblegum Achievement Awards, Lost in the Grooves, the long-lived journal of unpopular culture Scram and her recent 33 1/3 book on Neutral Milk Hotel and the Elephant 6 collective. Listen for a special visit from Manny Chavez and his moldy joke book, and call in with questions or comments.

What: Manny Chavez Show Reunion
When: Friday July 14/Saturday July 15 from midnight-3am
Where: KXLU 88.9 FM in L.A., streaming at https://www.kxlu.com
Request line: (310) 338-KXLU

More info:
1947project
Scram Magazine
Bubblegum Achievement Awards
Lost in the Grooves
Stray Pop

Wrap-Up of the Recent Tong War

tongheadline

Tong war, born of woman! Of few days, and full of trouble!

Seems there’s always a highbinder war simmering down in Chinatown. But despite the literality of that damn’d “huddled masses” business, there stays an easy peace down amongst the Celestials. Until.

When a Hop Sing Tong all-tong banquet (for those of you not in the know, a Tong could throw down on your local set) was held in the early weeks of June, the Bing Gon Tong was forbidden to attend—and as such, the Bing Gon elected to remove their slave girls from the Chinatown sex market.

And thus comes the storm.

At first the cops—informed (as they are to-day) by merchants and oldtimers who have little stake in any war—spent their time shaking down and locking up local Chinese for carrying Caliente-smuggled firearms, and having hired Caliente gunmen.

chinhai

Then Chin Hai, local laundryman and Bing Gon fellow-traveler, was shot at by the Hop Sing Tong, and cops arrested Ah Quay, Ah Mee, Ah Soo, Tom Tong and Wong Kee. After cops picked up these men and the hammerless revolver they (or one, or perhaps none) used in the shooting, two knifing attempts by highbinders went down. It was a busy night. Chinese merchants slept in their stores. They appealed for police escorts. And all cops could uncover in the Chinese interstices were some smokeless-powder cartridges for great-caliber weapons.

lingauk The young and fair Ling Auk, left, who had been friendly to the Bing Gon, was surprised by Hop Sing hatchetmen on June 19. Luckily, they were scared away by her protectors. The Hop Sing Tong has always been the most warlike in the Chinese settlement. They are centered at 529+1/2 North Los Angeles Street, where they have built a walled fortress replete with intricate tunnels that repeatedly prevent their capture. That White girls retire there to smoke opium is a sad, accepted fact of modernity.

Outside agitators are, of course, a factor.

Tong representatives from San Francisco are urging bloodshed. storm

stab

Meanwhile, the bloodthirsty boys of the Hop Sing have donned their mail. What looks like an ordinary quilted silk Chinese coat to the naked eye actually conceals a screen of steel links, bullet and knife and, most importantly to the tong war, hatchet-proof.

Legendary San Fran avenger Lu Fook has even arrived in town; he is storied to have survived four shots in the back while his followers killed six hatchetmen. Heavy muscle from up north always makes copper flee in LA; where in SF the Great Six Companies War Board settle tong differences, Los Angeles just has some officers watching the trains to note incoming highbinders and look on as the Oriental Quarter, centered at Alameda and Marchessault Streets, erupts in bloodshed.

Luckily, Wong Fong, mayor of the San Francisco Chinatown, was called to Los Angeles last week to settle the dispute. Sui Hoo Fow and Sam Ham Gay were named as the perps in the Chin Hai shooting, and were ostracized by their tongs. Again we settle into an uneasy, easy peace.

Popped by Pups

The other day officers saw a man blazing down Pico in his autoed-mobile and gave chase for two miles. He was arrested, promised to show for court, and of course did not.

He had given the name Harry King, but a little sleuthing revealed him to be one H. B. Roy. Officers were dispatched to Roy’s home on West Seventh Street.

Walking down the street, Roy made the cops, ran into a garage, left by the back door, and snuck into his home. The policemen asked for Roy at the home but was told by a woman he was not in residence. The cops roughly badged their way in, which forced the woman to call out reinforcements—two snarling, snapping bulldogs. The officers drew their revolvers and advanced on the dogs, loudly proclaiming their intent to shoot them. This got Roy’s attention, and he emerged from the back of the house, to wind up in the paddy wagon.

(While the arrest of J. S. Cravens for a similar high-speed driving offence, posted here June 22, did not mention the speed attained in his chase, in this case Roy’s pursuit was clocked at forty-five miles per hour.)

I TOLD Bell the Electro-Dynamic Transmitter-Receiver Would Be Nothing But Trouble

June 26, 1907
Los Angeles

07phone John Richie, contractor of East Fourteenth Street, has an unsavory record. Richie used to, daily, beat his son with a rake handle, until such time as the boy became an idiot. This finally drove Richie’s wife insane, and she died in an asylum, whereafter Richie got drunk and danced about in the room where the casket had been placed.

But now he’s gone too far. He’s making rude phone calls.

Richie was hauled before Justice Rose to defend a complaint sworn by Mrs. Rose Mustactia, Richie’s grocer:

“He has been annoying me for some time. At first he just said spiteful things, but at last his actions became unbearable. Saturday afternoon he called up the store and told me his name and then he began to abuse me. He called me names and my husband names and said we were bums and that all our groceries were stale and that most of the stuff we had in the store was second hand. The next time he called up, my daughter answered the ‘phone. He told her the same thing, abusing us all and saying hard things about us. Twenty-five times during the afternoon and evening he called us up and used bad language until we refused to answer the ‘phone any more.”

Richie was convicted of a misdemeanor.

The Mysterious Ms. Pulva

June 23, 1907
Los Angeles

pulvaheadline What can one say about pretty young Eva Pulva? She lived in a lonely cottage on West Fifty-Fourth, and though her mother and sister lived on East Fifty-Seventh, she told people she had no kin. Her gentleman friends knew little of her. The police knew her best of all—watching as she, a ward of the probation department, came to the verge of trouble via men of low character. But she’d secured her nice little cottage, and things seemed to be going well…

…until she shaved her head and disappeared. The cops looked for her to offer her protection from whatever trouble she was in, but didn’t find her until she had a self-inflicted bullet in her chest.

Her note read “Dearest Sister: You will find my trunk at 2739 Budlong avenue. Please don’t tell the lady you are a relative of mine. I told her I had no relation. So let me go knowing that one person on your Sunny Earth don’t think me a liar. I am sorry I don’t leave espense money but (I belong to a gang that have my money) and when they hear I am goine most likely you will get it. Don’t tell mother. I wrote anything. Put me anywhere sister. I do don’t care where. I know you understand and my dear I am no good here…I am a coward to live but not a coward to die.”

Banker Busted!

June 22, 1907
Los Angeles

John Smith Cravens. Pasadena pioneer. Influential LA banker. Director of Security First National Bank. Founder and Director of Southern California Edison. Instrumental in founding Torrance with his buddies in Dominquez Land Co.; also deep into the Los Angeles Extension Co., Chino Land and Water, and American Conduit. Trustee of the California Institute of Technology and Barlow Sanitarium. Known for the 14-acre estate he owned at 1101 South Orange Grove (“Millionaire’s Row”) in Pasadena. Belonged to all the best clubs. You get the idea.

Not mentioned in any of the many recountings of J. S. Cravens’ greatness is his badass lead foot and disdain for the coppers. True since time immemorial, the fact stands that landed gentry get to do what they want: according to news reports, Cravens was taking an airing in his “high-power machine” Friday morning, June 21. He caught sight of the auto guards and blew by them like a comet. The Motorcyclized Auto Squad of Pasadena gave chase, and Cravens threw his beast into overdrive, leading the bulls on crazy chase for many blocks down Pasadena Avenue.

Some have said that Cravens’ recent Black Hand threats–yes, the blackmail-prone Camorra had reached Los Angeles in 1907–have left him justifiably untrustworthy of any and all authority figures.

That notwithstanding, the officers overtook Cravens and arrested him, hauling him into court today and extracting the $15 fine.