1909

RIPLEY BIO: BELIEVE IT NOT (REVIEW)

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Robert L. Ripley was the most famous man born in Santa Rosa, and the town really should apologize for that.

The first-ever biography of Mr. Believe It Or Not! is out (A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley by Neal Thompson, Crown Archetype 2013) and our hometown boy is revealed to be quite a piece of work. He was a roly-poly (yet athletic) bundle of wild contradictions; he repeatedly said he abhorred “freaks” yet made his fortune exploiting what he called “oddities,” such as the baby with a cyclops eye and the man who smoked cigarettes through a hole in his back. He was probably the most well-traveled man of his day to exotic lands, yet refused to utter a single word in a local language, presuming that everyone could understand English if he only spoke loud enough. For a man in his racket, he was curiously incurious; he didn’t seem to care what caused a weird medical peculiarity or why someone would inflict tortuous pain or mutilation upon themselves (“their folly is my fortune,” he said, “I’ll get rich off the ridiculous yet”). He was a real-life Charles Foster Kane mixed with eccentric Howard Hughes, employing a team to search out priceless objects for his mansion as he obsessively kept redecorating it, spending part of each day personally moving furniture, objets d’art, deformed skeletons and whatnot from room to room in the quest for the perfect spot.

With such rich material available, you’d think this bio would be impossible to put down. You would be wrong. Much of this book is a slog and sometimes hagiography. (“Ripley was becoming the country’s know-it-all professor of history, geography, science and anthropology. His offbeat lessons gave people hope.”)

(RIGHT: Image courtesy, A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert “Believe It or Not!” Ripley)

Leroy Robert Ripley was born in 1890 on Glenn street, the family moving three years later into a house on Orchard street (no longer existing) built by his father. The characteristic that defined him was his appearance – his upper teeth flipped outward in a disturbing manner; biographer Thompson references him looking like “Dracula,” but it was more like a kid wearing a pair of absurdly comic wax teeth. His buck teeth were so bad that you can enter variations of “worst example overbite” into a Google images search and not see anything nearly so extreme, even in Photoshopped pictures that are supposed to be horrible. As a result of his disability he was unable to form certain sounds. Being insecure because of that and stuttering made his childhood even more miserable. He escaped his problems by drawing.

In high school he gained a measure of popularity through his caricatures and skill at baseball, even playing for the local semi-pro team and dreaming of a career with the New York Giants. His education lagged because he was a poor writer and turned into a stammering train wreck when required to speak before the class. His salvation was English teacher “Fanny” O’Meara, who allowed him to turn in drawings for homework instead of written reports, even posting his sketches in the classroom and using them as teaching aids. Still, he dropped out of school in the middle of his senior year. Later he floated the excuse that he had to go to work to support his family, but it appears he mainly played ball. (Much more below about this book’s problems concerning his Santa Rosa years.)

Five days after the rest of his class of 1908 graduated, his first cartoon was published, LIFE magazine paying him eight dollars, which was nearly a week’s pay for most Santa Rosans. Also that summer, in a true believe-it-or-not coincidence, the Ripley family rented a room to a journalist writing a feature on Luther Burbank. Impressed with the drawings of her landlady’s son, she took his portfolio back to San Francisco and by early 1909 he was hired by the San Francisco Bulletin as a cartoonist for the sporting page. He was fired after four months but quickly found a new position at the Chronicle (see item below) while taking art classes for the first time in his life.

Ripley’s talent blossomed at the Chronicle, and a year later he was given the coveted assignment to cover the Jim Jeffries-Jack Johnson “fight of the century,” where he rubbed elbows with Jack London and top newspaper writers and cartoonists from New York. Emboldened to ask for a raise, he was fired instead.

(RIGHT: Ripley illustration from “Joe Taylor, Barnstormer”)

Hoping to parlay his connections into a position with one of the big New York papers, “Rip” prepared to leave the West Coast for the first time. His last work here was a freelance assignment illustrating an autobiography, “Joe Taylor, Barnstormer.” Ripley’s biographer passes over that event quickly dismissing it as a job to earn a much-needed $100 for the cross-country trip, which makes it doubtful he ever saw the book. As an artist, the Robert L. Ripley we knew from the Believe It Or Not! columns was a very skilled draughtsman, but nothing more; as illustrator of that book, Ripley demonstrated his originality and depth of talent for caricature. The drawings remind of the brilliant Edward W. Kemble illustrations for the first edition of Huckleberry Finn (which received mixed critical reviews for the story, but universal praise for the art). A better biographer – one less determined to shoehorn Ripley’s life into a simple rags-to-riches story – would have recognized this work as Ripley’s moment at the crossroads. He was 21 years old, unmarried with no obligations and about to depart for the publishing capitol of the world. Had he considered a career in book and magazine illustration, we might well be speaking today of Ripley as a memorable artist of the early 20th century. Or, he could have arrived in New York City and sought another gig drawing fearsome boxers and baseball sluggers. Guess which path he chose.

At the prestigious New York Globe, Ripley’s star was ascendant. His cartoons were featured several times a month and his paychecks grew fatter as the paper began promoting his name. His was the life of a minor celebrity; evenings spent salooning with pals, dinner dates at nightclubs. He lived at the New York Athletic Club in a closet-sized room large enough for him to change his clothes and sleep, at least when he had no better offers for the night.

He married a chorus girl in 1919 but the relationship quickly fell apart. Ripley refused to move out of his lodgings at the Club, the couple spending increasingly fewer evenings together at nice midtown hotels. Ripley was always off on assignment somewhere, chasing baseball teams or boxers in training camps. He went to Europe without her to cover the 1920 Olympics. He was also producing the very first cartoons with the Believe It or Not! title, most of them about sports history, with a particular interest into the quirky and odd events. By their first wedding anniversary they had been apart more often than not. She filed for divorce about a year later citing cruelty, excessive drinking, and “fondness for other young women.” Ripley did not contest the charges – she had caught him in a hotel room with a woman.

From the 1920s onward, Ripley’s name and fame became legend. The Globe made him a globetrotter with the popular syndicated series, “Ripley’s Ramble ‘Round the World.” William Randolph Hearst made him one of the highest paid journalists in the world when he lured Ripley to his newspapers for $100,000 a year. Book collections of his Believe It Or Not! columns made him richer still. Newsreel and radio appearances further established the Ripley brand. He became a millionaire many times over. He bought an island north of New York City with a 28-room mansion.

The wildly successful years from 1929 to his death in 1949 are densely covered in the book, thanks in part to that era of his life being so thoroughly documented as one of the most well-known men in the world. What emerges from those years is a private portrait of a man that is less one of Horatio Alger’s plucky heroes and closer to a villain in a Dickens novel, such as Mr. Quilp of The Old Curiosity Shop – a creepy, manipulative jerk that seemed to fundamentally dislike people, probably himself most of all.

Hearst-like, he was unable to control his passion for collecting. “Friends assumed there was something chemical at work,” biographer Thompson writes. “Ripley was neurotic and compulsive, perpetually sophomoric and impetuous, that he simply couldn’t help himself or control his urges. Empty floor or wall space? It seemed to make him uncomfortable and needed to be filled with a stature or a weapon or a chair or a painting.”

(RIGHT: Ripley and Frances O’Meara during his 1936 visit to Santa Rosa. Image courtesy Sonoma County Library)

More disturbing was that he also collected women. In the island mansion were always found a few models, starlets, and other pretty young things who were titularly his “secretary” or “research assistant,” signing a waiver acknowledging they were staying there voluntarily. “One writer speculated that Ripley stocked his life with women so he wouldn’t have to choose just one,” writes his biographer. A member of his inner circle commented the mansion “looked just like a harem,” and later said Ripley “lived in open concubinage.”

Ripley himself told interviewers, “women are wonderful, simply wonderful–in their place” and “the only time women are happy is when they are completely under the domination of men.” Yet at the same time Ripley had women buddies, apparently fell deeply in love at least three times, and was utterly devoted to his high school teacher, Frances O’Meara, whom he called “mother.”

Which brings us back to the deeper problems with “A Curious Man” – its portrayal of Ripley’s years in Santa Rosa.

“A few years past its cowboy-and-Indian days, Santa Rosa and nearby Sonoma and Napa could be dangerous and deadly,” the book exclaims, quoting an incident reported in the Sonoma Democrat about drunk Indians on a “wild debauch.” Huh? When was Santa Rosa ever mistaken for a Wild West cowtown like Dodge City? What does the Indian story – which the author concedes dated back to “when Ripley was a toddler” – have anything to do with him? The misportrayal continues:


Also full of debauch were the newspapers. LeRoy learned to read in a lively two-paper town whose editors practiced what would soon be called yellow journalism. The Democrat and its rival, the Santa Rosa Republican, cackled with stories of murderous deeds and accidental deaths, divorces, suicides, and all variety of lunacy, a daily ‘news of the weird.’ People plunged off railroad trestles, lost limbs beneath train wheels, became mangled by farm machines. They shot each other over card games, stole horses, robbed banks. The Democrat was especially poetic in its depictions of death, offering vivid descriptions of ‘putrescent’ bodies ‘lying in pools of blood.’

Boy, I’d like to go back and read them excitin’ papers! Wait a sec – I have read every single page of those newspapers on microfilm starting from 1904, when Leroy was fourteen, and I can assure you that the debauch was far and few. Yes, odd and horrible things sometimes happened, but it’s a gross fabrication to call the Santa Rosa papers “a daily ‘news of the weird,'” or even “yellow journalism,” for that matter. The author is confusing the Press Democrat and Republican with the more lurid big city papers such as the San Francisco Examiner and Oakland Tribune (although it’s quite possible Leroy did see those sensationalist newspapers, which were always for sale at the newsstand in town).

Ripley had a lifelong fascination with all things Chinese, which author Thompson traces back to his childhood explorations of Santa Rosa’s Chinatown, “where he’d peek into the laundries, restaurants, and shops.” Well, when Ripley was growing up, the maps show the town’s Chinese district on Second street was a half block long, with two laundries, a single restaurant and a building used as a temple. Unless he was barging into their residences (and presumably speaking loudly so they would understand his English), there wasn’t much at which to peek, but if Ripley claimed otherwise, it would be interesting to know what he really experienced.

But next to the Chinatown that Ripley supposedly prowled was another neighborhood that the book doesn’t mention at all: The red light district. When Ripley was growing up, there were eleven bordellos in Santa Rosa and when he was seventeen, the town legalized Nevada-style prostitution. If you’re writing about a guy whose personality is greatly defined by seriously conflicted views about women, it seems important to ponder what influence the proximity of dozens of local prostitutes might have had on the teenage boy.

But my teeth-grinding gripe with this author is that there are no notes, so Gentle Reader has no idea where he’s pulling some of this stuff from. Yes, there are endnotes, but they are generalized by chapter and not connected to specific assertions on specific pages. The promise that “more information on sources” is available at the author’s web site yields only reviews (the favorable ones) of his book and a short Ripley bio with pictures.

The endnotes do show, however, that too much of the book is drawn from newspapers and magazines, and much of the details specific to his early years comes from secondary sources published decades later. This is particularly maddening because the author had unrestricted access to Ripley’s extensive archive with his journals and diaries, as well the papers of his long-time agent and others confidantes.

As a result of these failings, the book tells us much about where Ripley went and what he did, with precious little insight into why he was how he was. It would have been better if author Neal Thompson had stuck to writing about NASCAR and high school football and spared us this poorly researched, sketchy biography.

 

Ripley With the Chronicle

Leroy Ripley of this city, who has been doing some creditable work as cartoonist for the Bulletin, has severed his connection with that paper to secure a much better one with the Chronicle. He has been here this week visiting his mother and enjoying his home.

– Press Democrat, June 25, 1909

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THE ASYLUMS NEXT DOOR

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

The North Bay’s economic foundation was remarkably solid a century ago, but not thanks to grapes, hops, prunes or other agriculture; it was because we had the most asylums. In Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino counties the largest employers were the huge state hospitals used to warehouse the mentally ill. And while a crop might fail or market prices fall, the asylum business was always growing – California has never suffered a shortage of crazy people.

Insanity stories appeared regularly in the old Santa Rosa papers but they’ve been ignored here because there’s rarely anything interesting reported – typically a drunk/drug addict goes bezerk or a despondent person attempts suicide. A three member “lunacy commission” is convened. The drunk vows to sober up and maybe does a little jail time; the suicidal person’s fate usually isn’t mentioned, but he or she is likely sent away to live with relatives.

Then there were the tales of “wild men.” Newspaper editors around the turn of the century loved these stories, and would reprint accounts about some poor demented soul living in the woods even though it happened hundreds of miles away. Locally we had the “Wild Man of Mendocino” who was captured in 1909 near Cloverdale (apparently the “Wild Man of Cloverdale” didn’t have the snap) just a few weeks after an escaped asylum patient was found in the same hills. A Press Democrat article about the Wild Man mentioned a woman had written to the Cloverdale police asking if he could be her long-lost son; when the PD item was picked up by a paper in Arizona, her son saw it and wrote an “I’m alright, ma” letter to her from Yuma. Let that be a lesson into the power of the press, at least when it comes to Wild Man stories.

Certifiably Insane

Being hunted down as a Wild Man pretty much assured a one-way ticket to the asylum, but otherwise being declared certifiably insane required some doing, such as Ed Bosco repeatedly shooting at police officers. Herman Welti asked the sheriff to do something about the men controlling his mind “by use of a wireless instrument.” And then there was William Franklin Monahan, who went mad trying to count the stars.

When these men arrived at their particular asylum, each would have found the place bursting with erstwhile lunatics. In that era California was clocking an “insane ratio” sometimes above the state’s annual growth percentage – in 1903, one out of every 260 state residents was adjudged crazy. Many asylum wards were 300 percent over capacity with patients sleeping in hallways and basements. To make room, the institutions kept expanding and the state began looking closely at the immigration status of its asylum population; under 1907 federal law, any immigrant found to be insane within the first three years of residence could be deported to their native country. Superintendents also began an early release program, which certainly wasn’t good for anyone.1

Today California may have one of the largest prison populations but for fifty years starting in 1870, we were tops in the nation per capita for locking up people in asylums. And before wisecracking about California being the national nuthouse, consider that medical authorities were seriously raising that question 140 years ago. Speculation as to why relatively more Californians were committed to asylums included the nice weather, dashed hopes of striking it rich in the Gold Rush, the distance from family and friends on the East Coast and “fast living.” These explanations ignored that most of those deemed insane were simple laborers and housewives, not down-on-their-luck 49ers or burned-out Barbary Coast gamblers.2

In 1875 the superintendent of the state’s first asylum warned that the cities were using the place as a dumping ground for the senile or indigent elderly, incurable drunks and anyone “simply troublesome.” But whatever their problems, 19th century California sought to accommodate them by building five public asylums plus the California Home for the Care and Training of Feeble-Minded Children. (There were also three private asylums, but these never housed more than a tiny percentage.) More about the institutions in a moment.

Even as the state asylums were grappling with overcrowding, the legislature required by law that medical examiners adopt a new form to determine if a patient was certifiably insane.3 While the document sensibly begins by collecting vital statistics including nationality and length of U.S. residence, it goes off the rails quickly by asking questions that seem irrelevant to mental health. A sample:

* Have any relatives been eccentric or peculiar in any way in their habits or pursuits? If so, how? Have any relatives, direct or collateral, suffered, or are suffering, from any form of chronic disease, such as consumption or tuberculosis, syphilis, rheumatism, neuralgia, hysteria, or nervousness, or had epilepsy or falling sickness?

* Which parent does alleged insane person resemble mentally? Physically? Habits (cleanly or uncleanly)?

* Has alleged insane person ever been addicted to masturbation or sexual excesses? If so, for how long?

* Age when menses appeared: Amount and character before insanity appeared: Since insanity appeared:

* Has the change of life taken place? Was it gradual or sudden? How changed from normal?

* What is the supposed cause of insanity? Predisposing or exciting?

The final example reflects the 19th century notion (or maybe older) that a mentally ill person was either “predisposed” to insanity because of heredity or “excited” into madness by drugs, events or ideas. But many of the other odd questions have more to do with interest in the new pseudoscience of eugenics.

The history of the eugenics craze is discussed in the earlier article, “Sonoma County and Eugenics,” but let’s summarize that it was a set of crank theories that proposed some individuals – even entire races – were genetically inferior and prone to insanity, epilepsy, “moral degeneracy” and criminal behavior. Many educated and otherwise sensible people in the first half of the 20th century bought into this nonsense to varying degrees (including Luther Burbank) but no body of government was as eager to actually pass eugenic laws as California. At the same time as the new certification form was legalized, the state authorized forced sterilization of anyone deemed incurably mentally ill. These laws were extended in 1913 and 1917, and by the time ten years had passed, California had performed 2,558 sterilizations, about 4 in 5 of all such operations in the United States in the 1910s.4

Most superintendents of the asylums and the Sonoma State Home embraced the new asexualization law with gusto. Soon after it became law the Press Democrat ran an item that the director of Napa State Hospital “thought there were a number of patients in the Napa Hospital upon whom the operation should be performed” and it wasn’t long before they were doing an average of a procedure a week. The asylums at Stockton and Los Angeles were sterilizing every person being released of child-bearing age.

Since each asylum had its own policy on sterilization, it mattered a great deal where a patient was committed, but it appears it was fairly random and probably based simply on which hospital had an available bed. Someone found insane in San Francisco could end up in Stockton where a vasectomy was guaranteed. (A few early newspaper accounts mention castration although it is likely reporters didn’t understand the difference, and the law did not specify what “asexualization” technically meant.)  At Mendocino, the patient would probably escape the operation; that asylum and the one in San Jose were singled out in the 1918 state review for their “poor record” of sterilizing less than five percent of their inmates. But odds were always that anyone committed in the northern part of California would end up in the North Bay simply because we had the majority of asylums, plus the home for “feeble-minded children” in Glen Ellen.

The Napa State Asylum for the Insane was built to handle the overflow from the state’s premiere asylum in Stockton. Admitting its first patients in 1875, it started as a 500-bed institution and was the first building in the West following guidelines of the Kirkbride Plan, an early Victorian design for massive hospitals. Its architecture was viewed at the time as a form of treatment itself, offering patients humane lodging along with an infrastructure to support thousands of people – there was even a railway in the basement for transporting food, bedlinen, and whatnot. They were also gothic monstrosities that looked like the setting for a Stephen King horror novel, and the open floor plan made it easy for one screaming patient to upset hundreds of others. And then there was the problem of them falling down; the unreinforced Kirkbride-design asylum in San Jose collapsed in the 1906 earthquake killing 100, including a Santa Rosa woman. Napa’s “castle” was demolished in 1949, but the grounds still serve as a psychiatric hospital. Your obl. believe-it-or-not factoid: under 1874 state law, no alcohol could be sold within one mile of the hospital’s location – maybe the Napa tourist board should check to see if that’s still on the books.

The Sonoma State Home was discussed in the longer article about eugenics. It may have been called the hospital for “feeble-minded children” when its doors opened in 1891, but about one in five was epileptic. Its mission shifted after Dr. Fred O. Butler became superintendent in 1918 and it became an outright factory for asexualization surgery in California. By the mid-1920s, half of the women patients there were classified as “sexually delinquent,” and male patients were often “masturbators” or “passive sodomists.” Recall that “masturbation or sexual excesses” was a prominent question on the state form, and masturbation was the third most commonly reported behavior “indicating insanity.”5

Opened around the same time in 1893 was the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane at Talmage, near Ukiah. The facility was intended to be the new overflow mental hospital for the state system, but records from the early 1900s show the great majority of patients came directly from San Francisco, for reasons not clear. Like the other hospitals it ballooned as its inmate population and staff grew to the size of a small town over the first half of the 20th century. But the story of the Mendocino Home takes several odd twists that Ripley might not have believed; for 25 years starting in 1929 it housed the criminally insane (a must-read story can be found here), then became an alcohol and drug rehab center during the 1950s and 1960s. In this era there were psychiatric residency and research programs that experimented with giving alcoholics massive doses of LSD. As the hospital was shutting down in 1972 because of a directive by Governor Reagan, cult leader Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple reaped a financial bonanza by setting up nursing homes to care for the former inmates. (It is also alleged that cult members who worked at the hospital before closing had stolen a stash of psychotherapeutic drugs like Thorazine and Lithium that would later be used to control dissenters at Jonestown.) Today the site is a Buddhist monastery that’s supposedly the largest Buddhist temple in North America.

NOTES:


1So Far Disordered in Mind: Insanity in California, 1870-1930, Volume 1, Richard Wightman Fox
2 ibid pg. 123
3 Certificate of Medical Examiners, Feb. 26, 1909
4 op. cit. pg. 27
5 ibid pg. 141

 

NEW LAW INVOKED
State Authorities Will Try Vasectomy on Insane Patients

Napa, March 22–A number of patients in the Napa State Hospital for the Insane will shortly undergo the operation of vasectomy for the purpose of their sterilization, as provided in the new asexualization law, applicable to certain patients and certain inmates of State Prisons.

A few days ago Dr. F. W. Hatch, Superintendent of State Hospitals, came here from Sacramento, and held a conference with Dr. Elmer Stone regarding the new law, the constitutionality of which has not been doubted by the Attorney General. Superintendent Stone of the hospital told Dr. Hatch he thought there were a number of patients in the Napa Hospital upon whom the operation should be performed. Dr. Hatch directed Dr. Stone to segregate these patients and get them ready for examination. When these arrangements have been made the patients will be examined by Dr. Hatch and Dr. W. E. Snow of the State Board of Health, and if the operation is deemed necessary will be ordered performed.

– Press Democrat, March 23, 1910
STAR GAZER FOUND INSANE

William Franklin Monahan was brought down from Fulton Friday afternoon by Sheriff Smith and County Physician S. S. Bogle and examined before an insanity inquisition. The man has become a star gazer and has attempted the impossible task of counting the stars in the heavens. Each evening he goes out and steadfastly gazes into the heavens. He was tried before Judge Thomas C. Denny and Dr. S. S. Bogle and Dr. P. A. Meneray and ordered committed to Mendocino hospital. He will be taken to that place on the evening train Friday.

– Santa Rosa Republican, April 9, 1909

SMITH SAYS HE GUESSES HE HAD ‘EM SURE

William Smith, an aged man who was arrested several days ago near Penngrove, at an early morning hour by Deputy Sheriff Rasmussen of Petaluma, and was to have been taken before a lunacy commission on Thursday to have the state of his mind inquired into, was put over for a day or two longer. Smith, who says he is a carpenter by trade, is apparently sans now. He blames his condition the other morning, when he was armed with an axe with which he had prepared for battle with an imaginary foe, to the mixing of beer and wine, and the imbibing of too copious doses. He told the Sheriff and Rasmussen Thursday morning that he honestly believes that he was suffering from the “d. t’s” at the time. He must have been, he said, for he firmly believed then that he was being pursued. The feeling then was a terrible one, but now it has disappeared. Sheriff Smith will have County Physician S. S. Bogle take a look at the man and if he passes inspection then he will be turned loose with his kit of carpenter tools. He says he can get a job.

In the corridor of the court house, in the presence of the officers and a newspaper representative, the man raised his right hand and swore that he had taken his last drink. “I will never touch a drink of wine, beer, or whiskey,” he said, “as long as I live.”

– Press Democrat, June 18, 1909

AN INSANE MAN IS FOUND IN THE HILLS
Escaped Inmate of Stockton Asylum

William J. Wash, an escaped inmate of the Stockton Insane asylum, was found on Monday night wandering in the hills, near Cloverdale. He was brought to Cloverdale, and detained there over night and Constable W. J. Orr took charge of him and accompanied him to the county jail here yesterday morning. Stockton asylum was communicated with and an officer was set to take Wash back there.

Wash is said to have escaped from Stockton about three weeks ago. He was wearing some of the clothes provided by the institution when Orr took him in charge. It is probable that he had been wandering in the hills ever since he made his getaway.

– Press Democrat, November 10, 1909
CAUGHT HIM IN THE HILLS UP NORTH
Cloverdale Constable Captures “Wild Man” After Search Lasting for Several Miles

Constable William J. Orr of Cloverdale headed a posse on Thursday who captured Amelio Regoni, who for some time past has been described as the “wild man of Mendocino county.”

Since last May there has been a lookout for the man who was run to earth seven miles from Cloverdale on Thanksgiving day. Numerous robberies of cabins and farm houses in the wooded hills of Mendocino county have been charged up to the “wild man.” He has been near capture on a number of occasions, but always managed to get out of the way and into hiding before his pursuers came up with him.

Constable Orr got word that a man had been seen dodging in and out among the hills near Cloverdale. He got a posse together and they tracked the man and he was captured in the fissure of a large rock. He was taken by surprise and covered with guns before he had time to reach for his rifle even if he had determined to resist capture. Thursday night Constable Orr landed his man in the Mendocino county jail at Ukiah. He is wanted in that county, as stated.

– Press Democrat, November 27, 1909
PRESS DEMOCRAT FINDS WANDERER
Victor Green Reads Story in This Paper and Writes to His Mother in Her Far Away Home

Two or three weeks ago when the Press Democrat mentioned the letter Constable Orr of Cloverdale had received from Mrs. Green of Pennsylvania, anxiously inquiring if her son, Victor Green, who had left home several years [ago] to come west, was the “wild man” Orr had captured in Mendocino county, a strong appeal was made if the item met the eyes of the boy that he at once write to his mother, and let her know of his whereabouts. The Press Democrat asked other papers to copy the story it published.

A Santa Rosan received a copy of the Press Democrat in Arizona and passed it along to a newspaper there. The story was published and it was read by the missing son, who at once wrote home from Yuma, telling his mother of his whereabouts. In turn Constable Orr and the Press Democrat have received the cordial thanks of Mrs. Green.

– Press Democrat, February 2, 1910

INSANE MAN SAYS HE IS HYPNOTIZED
Herman Wells Placed Under Arrest–Has Threatened Residents of the Bloomfield Section

Deputy Sheriff William Coret of San Rafael has arrested Herman Welti at Tomales, charged with insanity. Welti is a frog catcher by trade and for many years has made his home in and around Bloomfield, but a short time ago removed to the Tomales section. He has been in the habit of spending his money mostly for liquor and at times would stay intoxicated for weeks at a time. It is thought that this is the cause of his present demented condition.

A few weeks ago he made threats to injure Wm. Minck the post master at Bloomfield, who is also a general merchant. Mr. Minck had had some trouble at times with Welti, owing to the fact of his coming into the Post Office intoxicated and using improper language before patrons and children, but Mr. Minck, having been previously warned through the mails to look out Welti, had managed to avoid any trouble. About the 2nd of December Welti wrote a long letter from Fallon’s to Sheriff Smith of this county and sent it by registered mail, wherein Dr. Cockrill and others were charged with holding a hypnotic spell over him, by use of a wireless instrument and claiming that they had followed him through ten or twelve counties of this state, trying to unbalance his mind. Sheriff Smith immediately remailed this letter from Dr. Cockrill at Bloomfield. The doctor was inclined  to treat the matter as a josh, but his son, W. A. Cockrill, reflecting what serious consequences might result from such persons being allowed their liberty, forwarded and the letter to Sheriff Taylor of San Rafael and requested him to get Welti and have him examined as to his sanity. Deputy Sheriff Coret made the arrest as stated before, but on arriving in the jail at San Rafael, Welti drew a pocket knife and attempted to stab Coret, and only for the deputy’s presence of mind probably would have succeeded.

Coret while parleying with the prisoner, made an offer to trade knives and in that way get possession of the knife which Welti had, after which he succeeded in locking him up without any further trouble. Welti will undoubtedly be adjudged insane and committed to an asylum when he comes up for examination.

– Press Democrat, December 15, 1909

INSANE MAN IS ARRESTED
Wandering About Barefooted and Without Hat

Ernest Bassanessi, formerly an employee of the Santa Rosa tannery, was arrested near Melitta Tuesday by Deputy Sheriff C. A. Reynolds and brought to the county jail. During the latter part of the morning of that day word was received over the telephone from Melitta that a man, supposed to be crazy, was in the neighborhood. The message stated further that the man was bareheaded and barefooted and that he carried a revolver. When the deputy sheriff took him into custody Bassanessi had no revolver, but was carrying a rock with which to protect himself from imaginary enemies which he believed were trying to kill him. An insanity commission will likely look into his case Wednesday.

– Santa Rosa Republican, May 24, 1910
JOKING PRAYED ON MIND AND DROVE MAN INSANE

Ernest Bassanessi, the man who was found wandering around Melitta on Tuesday, is a man of good family and was born in Venice, where he taught school for some time. His wife was a native of Rome, and also a school teacher before her marriage. Mr. Bassanessi is a sensitive man and took the joking of his fellow workmen as an insult and their talk bothered him and preyed on his mind.

When he and his wife landed in this country from Italy, they had a sum of money with them, which they had saved, and immediately they were robbed. This was the first of their misfortunes and this and other things worried the man and he finally went insane.

– Santa Rosa Republican, May 25, 1910
BOSCO COMMITTED TO INSANE ASYLUM
Former Resident of the Vicinity of Healdsburg Adjudged Insane and Not Sent to Penitentiary

Ed Bosco, an aged man charged with an assault with intent to commit murder, was examined on a charge of insanity in the Superior Court in Napa yesterday afternoon. He was declared insane by Judge Gesford and was ordered committed to the Napa State Hospital.

Bosco attempted to shoot Officer Ed Powers at Calistoga when Powers arrested him on a minor charge. Bosco, who formerly resided in Sonoma county, imagines that people have taken his land away from him. The officers in Healdsburg and in this city have had experiences with Bosco.

– Press Democrat, January 22, 1910

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LET THERE BE (RELIABLE) LIGHT

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

And so it came to pass; in 1910, Pacific Gas and Electric finally kept the lights burning in Santa Rosa for an entire year.

Not a single article appeared in the Santa Rosa papers about power outages in those months, which is remarkable; long blackouts were common in that decade, as was flickering current. During peak usage hours of 6 to 8PM, voltages dropped causing lights across town to dim. City Council members said in 1909 “citizens are continually kicking [complaining] to them of the service,” according to one of the articles from that year transcribed below.

Then there was the gas problem. Some businesses and better homes (including Comstock House) were plumbed for gas lights as well as electric, so that was an option if the “juice” fizzled. Many more homes had gas just in the kitchens for stoves and water heaters. This “town gas” was actually coal gas generated at the big facility downtown on First street, and typically once a year there would be a mishap at the power plant causing the gas to smell foul – or even be potentially lethal, as carbon monoxide was a significant part of the mix (MORE). In 1908 the fire chief complained polished brass was turning black in a few hours and later a man complained his pet bird nearly died from noxious fumes.

So why did the situation improve so dramatically in 1910? Mostly because PG&E finally upgraded the infrastructure it had inherited from the small regional power companies it began buying up in 1907 and 1908. A spokesman from the company told Santa Rosa city council that they were rewiring lines to carry heavier loads and were building auxiliary steam plants to supplement the main power still generated by a dam in the Sierra foothills. Also, Santa Rosa now had a backup option of tapping electricity from the Snow Mountain Water and Power Company on the south fork of the Eel River. After months of working out bugs – or rather, wiping out most “eels” in the Eel River via electrocution – they were now supplying the grid in Sonoma County.

At the city council meeting the PG&E rep also advised consumers wanting the best lighting should be “…throwing away lamps [lightbulbs] when their period of usefulness had been reached, and with new lamps better lights would be secured and better results obtained.” Of course PG&E thought this was a great idea; you could only buy new light bulbs directly from them, and cost the equivalent of about $40 today. Most of the public didn’t buy bulbs so much as leased them from the company with a surcharge for each bulb on your monthly bill. And adjusted for inflation, electrical service was also about 25 times more expensive than we now pay (MORE).

The ads shown to the right are from electrical contractors and appeared in the 1910 Santa Rosa Republican, reminding that most homes outside of the larger towns still did not have electricity. It was just announced the year before that power was coming to the towns along the Russian River and other communities in West County; when it arrived, they wanted you to know it would be affordable to install. Methinks their estimates probably did not mention the ongoing costs of service and lightbulb rental. One wonders how many farmers later read their first PG&E bill under a new electric light and promptly turned the dang thing off. 

FIXING RATES IS POSTPONED
Electric Company Will Give Perfect Service

The fixing of rates to be charged by the gas and electric company and telephone company for service here was postponed by the council at its meeting Tuesday evening until an adjourned meeting next Tuesday evening…

[..]

…Mayor Gray called twice on any citizen who desired to speak of the gas or electric service to step forward. Not a solitary complaint was made by any citizen, although Mayor Gray and the councilmen claim the citizens are continually kicking to them of the service.

Mayor Gray declared he was not satisfied with the service furnished and said the lights were far too dim between 6 and 8 o’clock each evening. He said the rates charged by the company  were satisfactory, but the service rendered was poor at times. The interruption in the service this year, over previous years, the mayor said, showed a decided improvement.

George C. Holberton, an engineer of electrical distribution for the company, addressed the council later in the evening. He spoke of the improvements in the service which the company had made here by building heavier lines to carry the voltage and the installation of steam plants at congested districts. Speaking of the lights going out that evening, Mr. Holberton said the break in the wires had occurred many miles from here, but that in seven minutes current was again being supplied with the aid of the auxiliary steam plants.

The speaker told of the big regulators installed here to keep the pressure uniform, and said these would do the work accurately if the variation in use of current was not too great. He invited all who had complaints to consult Thomas Petch, the local manager, and declared that all these things could be remedied by Mr. Petch at once. Mr. Holbertson pointed out that in some of the older houses the service wires were too small to carry the number of lights placed on them, and advised throwing away lamps when their period of usefulness had been reached, and with new lamps better lights would be secured and better results obtained. He declared the company was not attempting to carry too great a load here, and denied that would make the lights dim between 6 and 8 o’clock in the evenings. The company’s first aim had been to stop the interruptions. Mr. Holbertson said and now that this had been accomplished, the next aim was to give the patrons a perfect service. He said the company would not stop in its betterment of conditions until everybody was satisfied.

 – Santa Rosa Republican, February 17, 1909

SAYS THE GAS IS VERY IMPURE HERE
Citizen Demands that Noxious and Dangerous Fumes be Removed from the Gas Furnished Santa Rosa

“I don’t care so much about $1.25 gas; and Santa Rosa does not care, in my opinion. What I do want, and many citizens share my demand, is a better quality of gas than that with which we are being served at the present time.

“I maintain that the fumes from the gas that we are using now are absolutely injurious to health. In fact a number of times of late they have driven us from the room. Only the other day a song bird, hanging in a cage in a room where the gas was being used, was almost suffocated by the impurities sent off by the gas. Don’t bother about the $1.25 gas yet. We’ll be content with $1.50 gas, but do insist that we are served with a purer article. These are my sentiments and I have heard many other people express themselves just the same.”

The above statement was made by a well known citizen of Santa Rosa, who uses gas for fuel and cooking purposes, and from what he says he apparently has a good kick coming in his demand for better and purer gas.

 – Press Democrat, February 26, 1909

 CAUSE OF NO JUICE ON FRIDAY

 An oil switch in the Colgate power house of the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, burned shortly after 11 o’clock Friday night leaving all the towns served by the Company in total darkness for a few minutes but repairs were quickly made and the current was again turned on. The cause of the accident is unknown.

 In the handling of switches there is a spark even on the low voltage lines while on the high potential lines it is so heavy that the only way the switches can be used is to keep them submerged in oil which smothers the spark.

 The Snow Mountain Company has taken a portion of the load from the older company in this county and is now furnishing the power for Sebastopol. Work is nearing completion on the local station which will allow of the Snow Mountain power being cut in here at anytime there is an accident on the old line preventing the company from furnishing light and power.
 

 – Press Democrat, February 28, 1909

 WESTERN SONOMA WILL TWINKLE WITH ELECTRICITY

 The whole of western Sonoma is to twinkle with electric lights before long. Graton, Forestville, Eaglenest, Guerneville, Montrio, Occidental, Camp Meeker, Duncan’s Mills, Mesa Grande, Markhams and Freestone are all included. The Board of Supervisors were yesterday asked by H. C. Eastman, representing the Russian River Light and Power Company to grant a franchise for the running for the running of electric light and power lines from Sebastopol to the place names. The electricity will be obtained from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company from the station at Sebastopol. The Supervisors will order the franchise advertised.

 Mr. Eastman informed the Supervisors that he had already signed up a number of contracts with the places specified above for the taking of the light. For sometime the work has been in progress. This will mean a great thing for the towns and resorts that will be reached by the system.
  

 – Press Democrat, September 11, 1909

  
  

“JUICE” PRANKS WERE BEWILDERING

“Off agin, gone agin, on agin, gone agin, Finnigan.”

Mr. Finnigan’s brief but to the point message describing the derailing of a train might have been applied to the electric “juice” yesterday. Many times during the afternoon the electricity hobbed off and on “agin,” momentarily stopping presses and linotype machines in the printing establishments and the machinery in the factories.

 – Press Democrat, September 11, 1909

MAIN LIGHT “OUT;” NO LIGHT RESULTS
Santa Rosa and Petaluma in Darkness on Saturday Night Until Relieved by Snow Mountain “Juioce”

The electric “juice” suddenly disappeared on Saturday night and was off for some time, causing considerable inconvenience. Manager Thomas Petch of the lighting company stated that the main line of the big system was “out” somewhere between Napa and Petaluma, and that had occasioned the trouble here and in Petaluma during the afternoon and evening.

At nine o’clock Saturday night the Snow Mountain “juice” was “cut in” for Santa Rosa and Petaluma to furnish illuminant until midnight.

 – Press Democrat, September 12, 1909

LIGHTS WENT OUT AND CHURCHES AND HOMES DARK

About 7:30 o’clock Sunday evening the electric lights all over this city went out, and it was near three hours after before the juice came on again. Many homes were compelled to get out the old coal oil lamps and candles to light the family circle during the remainder of the evening. The churches of the city suffered considerably.

Most of these have gas as well as electricity, but in a number of instances the members of the church were compelled to go out and search for lamps and candles. At the Congregational church back in the classrooms at the rear of the main auditorium, there is gas, and by throwing open the sliding doors that separate the two rooms and also by lighting the gas jet in the organ loft, the services were able to be held. The Fourth street Methodist church was another that was discommoded. There candles and lamps were borrowed from the neighbors and after about ten minutes delay the services were continued. At a number of other churches the same conditions prevailed, but all managed to hold the usual services.

The Columbia Theater was left in darkness during the time the electric company’s trouble was on. the few gas lights that are situated in the different parts of the building were brought into use and the performance of “The Little Outcast” was presented in good shape by the Scott-Lynn Company. The body of the theater was not lighted as much as the Columbia management desired, but the stage was well lighted. To be fixed for an emergency like last night’s the auditorium will be piped throughout with gas and henceforth electrical troubles will not bother our local play house.

The trouble with the electric juice was that the main line between this city and Petaluma  was broken down just in the city limits of Petaluma and it took a long time before the break could be fixed.

 – Santa Rosa Republican, November 15, 1909

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