Raymond bombing

Dist. Atty. Buron Fitts charges Police Capt. Earle Kynette* with attempted murder ... An Assembly committee issues more than 100 subpoenas in an investigation of vice, graft and corruption in Los Angeles ... Caltech engineers discuss the possibility of sending a rocket into space. On the jump: Wedding bells for King Zog of Albania?

* Some Times stories misspell Kynette's first name--Earle--as Earl and I have repeated that error.

 

Jan. 27, 1908

Women prove themselves to be good shots during a target match in the Cahuenga Pass ... A.C. Freeman scores 22 out of a possible 25 at 50 yards with his rifle upside-down and the stock resting against his forehead ... An attorney attempts suicide ... A waitress is injured when she steps between two men who are fighting over her ... Chamberlain's Cough Remedy contains no opium, chloroform or any other harmful ingredient!

 

Best sellers

Jan. 26, 1958
Los Angeles

Jan. 26, 1958

Sepulveda and Centinela is flooded after a heavy rain ... Officials reveal that cattle and milk in the British countryside were contaminated by radioactive material unleashed when an Oct. 10, 1957, fire destroyed a plutonium pile ... And the chairman of the New York Central Railroad commits suicide in the billiard parlor of his 25-room mansion.

 

Raymond bombing

This is getting complicated. Police Capt. Earle Kynette has been cleared by Police Chief Davis and has promised to capture whoever attached a bomb to Harry Raymond's car. Kynette has already been charged with wiretapping Raymond's phone. Now he's in hiding because Dist. Atty. Buron Fitts wants to charge him with attempted murder ... I have never head of the Wives of Spanking Husbands Club, but I can't believe it was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, never mind the Daughters of Spanking Parents ... And the buffalo nickel is doomed!

On the jump, a judge halts formation of a grand jury in the Raymond case ... And the Los Angeles Fire and Police Protective League accuses Kynette of trying to wreck the union. I can't help but think 1938 must have been a fabulous year to be a reporter in Los Angeles.

 

Jan. 26, 1908

Newspapering a century ago: The Times blasts the City Council's spending in caustic language that is unimaginable today--and so much fun ... Eight newsboys and messengers are arrested for--what's this?--selling tips on the horses ... And complicated lawsuits in the courts. Note: A car that cost $4,200 in 1908 would be $87,639.37 USD 2006.

 

 

Man kills himself

Jan. 22-Feb. 22, 1958
Los Angeles

Bonnie saw him standing on the sidewalk in a crowd of people across the street from the theater. He was holding a gun.

His name was Delmer.  Delmer Dean Dobbs, 23.

A month before, in the late afternoon, he had gone to the roof of the Rosslyn Annex at 5th and Main. More than 100 police officers and firefighters tried to control the thousands of people who gathered 14 stories below and yelled: "Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump, you coward, jump! Chicken, chicken, chicken!"

As twilight fell, Delmer teetered on the edge of the roof, clinging to a metal railing.

Police Detectives L.W. Lane and Joe La Monica tried to talk to him, but he warned them away.

Then the Rev. D. St. Sure, a priest from Loyola University, approached. "Don't you want to talk with me a little bit about this, son?" he asked.

Delmer cursed at the priest. Then he took off his wristwatch and threw it to the chanting crowd.

"I'm going to follow that unless you call Bonnie," he said.

Police rushed to the Rialto at 8th and Broadway and brought Bonnie La Ross, a 15-year-old cashier, to the roof of the hotel.

Detectives warned her to stay at least 15 feet away. Otherwise, Delmer might grab her and jump off the building, they said.

But Bonnie ignored them and walked to the railing, touching Delmer's sleeve.

"You don't want to die," she said.

"You're right, I don't," he said. "But I'm afraid to back down and quit now."

He looked down at the chanting mob. "I hate to disappoint that crowd."

Across the street in another hotel, a man pulled an overstuffed chair to the window and sat, puffing on a pipe as he calmly watched the drama of life and death.

 

Delmer slumped and Bonnie put her arms around him. Two detectives rushed forward and grabbed the couple. Concealed on the roof in the darkness, officers swarmed from their hiding places and grabbed all four of them.  Delmer fought until the detectives dismissed the officers and assured Delmer that they would not handcuff him. Then he went downstairs and got into an ambulance.

Bonnie told police: "He had threatened to take his life before and I finally got tired of that talk. He said he was going to get a gun and try again and I told him to save the trouble and just go jump off a building. So that is what he was going to do, I guess."

While Delmer was being treated in the psychiatric ward at General Hospital, the city asked itself what made the crowd so bloodthirsty that evening. Martin Grotjahn, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at USC, told The Times that the crowd's reaction showed that mobs are "no more than an inch higher than they were in the days of the Roman circus, when the audience would laugh at the expression of people being devoured by lions."

Delmer was released after two days in the psychiatric ward and began threatening newspapers and reporters for publishing stories about his suicide attempt.

And then, on that afternoon in February, Bonnie saw him on the sidewalk across the street from the Rialto. Delmer had finally gotten a gun.

She called detectives. Before they arrived, Officer Joseph F. Scanlon, who was walking the beat, saw Delmer and approached him. Delmer pointed the gun at Scanlon and said: "Stay away."

Then, in the distance, police sirens.

Delmer Dean Dobbs, 23, pointed the gun at his abdomen and pulled the trigger. He died a few hours later at General Hospital.

The Times never reported anything further of Bonnie LaRoss.

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Found on EBay

 

The Hotel Alexandria in the background identifies the location as Spring Street south of 6th Street. Note the early design of the streetlights and the streetcar tracks.

Here's a nice little trove of historic Los Angeles images that I stumbled across on EBay. The same vendor is selling some photos of firefighters, like this one:

 

There are also some shots of firefighters here and here.

Jan. 25, 1958

 

Raymond bombing

 

 
The February 1938 issue of Vogue--delayed because of antisemitic words hidden in a cartoon.

A big news day: Japanese soldiers brutalize Nanking, China, while Japanese authorities apologize and eventually issue an edict that malicious cables discrediting the Japanese army will not be allowed to circulate abroad ...  A grand jury is impaneled in the Harry Raymond bombing ...  Antisemitic words hidden in a Cecil Beaton cartoon force Vogue to delay its February issue so a corrected page can be printed ... And a battle between union leaders Harry Bridges and Dave Beck over West Coast ports.

 

 

Jan. 25, 1908

Abbot Kinney is the target of 150 complaints about a tent city in Venice ... Los Angeles County collects nearly a quarter-million dollars in taxes in one day, its highest record to date ... Secondhand dealers -- mostly Jews, The Times notes -- are furious over items they bought at a warehouse sale of unclaimed boxes ... Residents drink 40,000 quarts of milk a day -- and use 16 tons of butter ... The marital travails of a wandering barber ... And someone has stolen a 250-pound cannon from 222 E. 29th.

 

Matt Weinstock

Jan. 24, 1958

There are about 110,000 streetlights in the city of Los Angeles. Keeping them lighted is quite a chore.

The Department of Water and Power has 23 two-man crews assigned to service and maintenance. Last month they replaced 15,800 damaged or burned-out globes.

The lamps are regularly washed inside and out, a job requiring the steady attention of 15 men. Know where the globes get the dirtiest the fastest? On Hollywood Freeway outbound, just beyond Hollywood Bowl. Diesels chugging up the grade are believed the cause. It was on this stretch, by the way, that a WP serviceman was killed recently when an out-of-control truck knocked him from a ladder.

All this service is provided at an average of 5 cents a day to taxpayers, including replacements and maintenance. It is generally accepted that good street lighting is cheap insurance against accidents and burglaries.

When a light standard is knocked down, the replacement is made by the Board of Public Works' Street Lighting Department, not WP. The board also makes the original installation and pays the original cost, WP takes over the rest.

Some persons expect a great deal for their 5 cents a day. One indignant lady berated an emergency crew for not being there when the light went out. She didn't like waiting in the dark. That's quite an order, with about 500 globes to replace nightly throughout the city's spread-out 455 square miles.

BY NOW it must be obvious to regular readers that all this is leading to a question raised here by Julie Byrne. When she reported the light in front of her home broken, a crew came and replaced the outer globe. When darkness came, however, it didn't go on. But around 10 p.m. another crew came and put in a new bulb. Why, asked Julie.

Well, WP procedure is for the daytime crew, replacing an outer globe, to leave the inner bulb intact if it isn't broken. It isn't feasible to turn on a whole string of lights to test one lamp. At night, when the circuit goes on and the lamp stays dark, another crew replaces the bulb. Experience has proved this seemingly duplicated service is cheaper than arbitrarily replacing every bulb. That's that the WP man said.

But let us look to the brighter side--a view of Los Angeles at night from a plane. With its 110,000 streetlights and colored neon, it's an immense, incomparable, breathtaking jewel.

A BOY NAMED Roland, 9, returned to Cedars of Lebanon clinic a few days ago to have several stitches removed from his forearms--a quick, painless process.

Nevertheless, Roland was obviously scared and dreaded the "ordeal." As the nurse made ready, he looked around furtively, then began removing his belt from around his waist. Whenthe nurse asked what he was doing he replied grimly, "I got to have something to bite down on."

Been seeing too many bullet-between-the-teeth sequences on TV westerns.

BIG ITEM on the agenda at the meeting of the L.A. County Locksmiths Assn. Tuesday was the counting of votes for the new officers. But, irony of ironies, the custodian of the ballot box had lost his key. Fortunately, someone had a set of picks and got it open, disclosing that Morey Gold of East L.A. had been reelected president, Bill Myers of Compton and Lou Merritt of Temple City veepees.

AT RANDOM -- George Vaughan of Hawthorne can hardly wait for the first TV western with villainous, sneering Ku Kluxers trying to take advantage of poor Indians ... A U.S. mail truck was coming out of Calvary Cemetery on Whittier Boulevard as Paul Grimes passed. Couldn't decide whether it was picking up or delivering dead letters ... Very provocative article, "Let Your Kids Alone," by Robert Paul Smith in Life. Contends youngsters today are victims of too much planning and supervision.