From the Los Angeles Daily Times,
June 1, 1904

AX SWINGS AT NORMAL.

Prof. W.S. Small the First to Be Decapitated.

  

Without a preliminary gleam, the keen official ax chopped off the head of Prof. W[illard]. S. Small, supervisor of the Normal Training School [predecessor of today’s UCLA] at the meeting of the Normal Board yesterday morning.

Even some of the members of the board are mystified.

One of the members of the firing squad on the board assumed an air of injured innocence when asked for the reason yesterday.

“Why, Prof. Small was not discharged,” he said piously. “He — er — he just failed to get elected again.”

“Why did he fail?”

“Why — er — (inspiration) he failed to be elected because he did not get enough votes.”

The worst is not yet heard from. Although Small was the only victim actually sacrificed, other heads do not set easily

One of the members of the board stated yesterday that Prof. [Jesse] Millspaugh, the new principal, will be given full swing at the school, and if he does not like the faculty, all the members who have not his “King X” will be promptly discharged.

Prof. Millspaugh is now in the East selecting teachers to fill three or four vacancies in the staff of the school. . . .

The list of teachers reappointed by the board yesterday is as follows:

Prof. Melville Dozier, Sarah P. Monks, Harriet E. Dunn, Josephine E. Seaman, May A. English, Everett Shepardson, Ada M. Laughlin, James F. Chamberlain, Charles D. von Neumayer, Sarah J. Jacobs, Jennie Hagan and Agnes Ellliot, Charles M. Miller, Ella M. Wood and Mrs. Hazzard.

 

 For more on the Los Angeles State Normal School, go to the Site Search Engine and type Normal School.
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Image From the Los Angeles Public Library.

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The success of Dr. Millspaugh in recruiting scholars can be measured by the words of the famed child psychologist Lewis M. Terman, who taught at Normal in the last part of the decade:

  

I was at Los Angeles for four years. The library facilities were unusually good for a normal school, the work was not too heavy, and the associations were pleasant.

 

Among my colleagues in psychology and education during a part or all of my four years were Dr. Jessie Allen (now Mrs. W. W. Charters), Dr. Arnold Gesell, Beatrice Chandler (now Mrs. Gesell), Everett Shepardson (since deceased), and Dr. Wayne P. Smith -- a group that would have been hard to match in any normal school in the country.

 

All were scientifically minded and intellectually stimulating. Without them, the years I spent in Los Angeles would have been far more arid than they were.

 

Go to Source

 

From the Los Angeles Daily Times,
June 1, 1904

In Agony

Woman Thrown From Her Buggy in Crowded Street and Seriously Injured.
 

Mrs. M.M. Barnes, whose home is in Highland Park, was the victim of an accident near Fourth street and Broadway yesterday afternoon which, if it does not cause her death, may cripple her for life.

She was seated in her buggy in front of the Broadway Department Store [shown] when a wagon on the Los Angeles Transfer Co. . . . came abreast the lighter rig, [and] the horses swerved, causing a collision . . . . She was thrown to the pavement with great violence and was unable to rise. . . .

She was taken to the Emergency and General Hospital [between Towne and Crocker near Fourth Street; map] , where it was found that she had sustained a fracture of the pelvis. It will be necessary to encase her body in a plaster cast, and she will be confined to her bed for months. . . .

 

Image is from A Visit to Old Los Angeles
by Brent C. Dickerson.

 

From the Los Angeles Daily Times, June 1, 1904

OLD BELL IS STILL SILENT.

Methodists and Catholics in Fast Deadlock.

Still stands in its frame of solid oak, in the pretty tower of the new Methodist Church on Twelfth and Fedora streets, the old Methodist-Catholic bell.

The new church will be entirely finished by the end of the week, but no attempt has been made to ring the old bell, and no solution of the perplexing problem is as yet forthcoming.

[The former sanctuary was sold to the Catholic Diocese, and] . . . the old building, renovated and fitted with comfortable pews, stained-glass windows and a costly altar service, will be ready for early mass next Sunday morning. . . .

Pico Heights is buzzing with speculation as to the final course to be pursued in regard to the bell.

The older members of the Methodist church . . . claim the bell as a gift entirely separated from the old church property. They say it was placed in the church three years after the old structure was completed. . . .

The Catholics on their part say the old church was purchased with the understanding that the bell was part of the church property. . . .

Yesterday it was given out on good authority that the bell had been removed from the ancient belfry without the consent of the pastor of the Methodist church . . . .

[Roman Catholic] Bishop Conaty will return next Saturday morning; . . . it is expected that legal steps will be taken . . . 

From the Los Angeles Daily Times,
June 7, 1904

FAN-TAN CHINKS UP TO SNUFF.

They Pin Their Faith to a Melican Jury

 

It may not be difficult to imagine the scene in Justice Austin’s court when the thirty-four Chinese gamblers and their many friends appeared yesterday.

The roster containing their names looks like the photograph of a flash of zig-zag lightning, and when they were all perched on the railing and sitting about the floor in the lobby, it suggested a dark corner in Chinatown, aromatics included. They stood not in awe of the court, but seemed to enjoy the fun.

The was the party of Chinamen arrested by [Police] Capt. [Walter H.] Auble on Saturday night when he dropped through the ceiling of a Chinatown joint into the midst of a fan-tan game.

They were all immediately released upon the deposit of $25 each, but a Jap boy who was arrested with the gang was left in jail.

When the Chinamen had slept over it, they concluded it would not be the part of wisdom to let the Jap stick, for fear he might tell too much, so early on Saturday morning a Chinaman appeared at the Police Station and asked:

“You got Jap boy here?”

When the officer answered that he was still there, the Chinaman said:

“All lightee; fetchee him out; I pay tlenty-five.”

Attorney Appel appeared for all the defendants yesterday and demanded a jury trial, which was set for the 16th inst., when there will be another roundup in the Police Court.

 

From the Los Angeles Daily Times, June 7, 1904

BANNER OF REVOLT

 

On Sunday five boys escaped from the Detention Home, but were not shrewd enough to cover their tracks and were captured late the same night by Deputy Sheriff Sepulveda.

 

The list of incorrigibles in the home is steadily increasing, and twenty-two of them were returning from the County Jail, where they had been having dinner, when five of the bigger boys broke ranks and scattered.

 

The boys took to the hilly part of the city up from Temple Street and made their way into Elysian Park, where they discarded their uniform coats.

 

As nightfall approached, they came back to the city and went foraging and, after dark, crept into the ruins of the Tenth-street Hotel, where they coiled up for the night. There they were tracked by the deputy sheriff and marched back to the County Jail.

 

The boys stated that if they had not been captured they intended to take brake-beam tourist tickets for Arizona . . . .

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Los Angeles history

For a personal look at Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, click for
He Usually Lived With a Female: The Life of a California Newspaperman

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