peppertitle

I, PEPPER

She was funny, she was annoying, she was quirky and she terrorized a generation of kids. Her name was Pepper.

Everyone who lived in Santa Rosa between (roughly) 1955 and 1985 knew her, if not through a personal encounter then from Gaye LeBaron’s columns where her antics were often chronicled. And although she passed away in 1992 Pepper has achieved a kind of immortality via social media, particularly in the FaceBook nostalgia groups where stories about her pop up regularly.

(TOP: Pepper Dardon watching the Rose Parade in the early 1980s. This is the last known photo of her. Image courtesy of Linn Eikenberry)

Pepper was called the “town character” but that doesn’t ring quite true, as that usually describes someone genuinely eccentric. In Pepper’s day Santa Rosa did have those sort of people too, such as the woman who burned off nervous energy by walking miles every day wearing ballet tights, a scarf and floppy hat. Or the Russian man who handed out malt balls wrapped in handwritten prayers and liked to perform scenes from Othello.

No, Pepper was better described as the town jester – it was as if she thought the Marx Brothers’ movies were instructional films. She did things she hoped people would think funny. She would yodel in the Exchange Bank or into the microphone at a store’s checkout register. She would stand next to the Post Office and ask people where the Post Office was. She would pretend to direct traffic at the corner of Mendocino and Fourth. She would plop herself in the backseat of cars waiting for a stoplight to change and expect the driver to take her somewhere. Once she pulled that stunt with a convertible and when they drove down the street she royally waved at pedestrians. They waved back.

Another of her hallmarks were the cornball jokes that would only tickle the funnybone of a very young child. “Squirrels are looking for you. They think you’re nuts!” Instead of saying goodbye she might make the lame quip, “If I don’t see you in the mattress, I’ll see you in the spring.” And then there was her perpetual favorite: “Hey, you dropped something. Your footsteps.”

She would be considered a little person today, about the height of a smallish 12 year-old girl. It’s not cruel to say she dressed clownish (but not always) and her usual attire was so garish she appeared to glow radioactive. She wore neon-bright Hawaiian blouses and shirts, muumuus so baggy she could have shoplifted half a store underneath, and invariably had children’s moccasins on her feet with plastic flowers poking out of her hair. After she had gall bladder surgery in 1970 she carried her 45 gallstones in a jar to show people.

Gaye LeBaron wrote a further description in a 2005 column: “She was a sight to behold — built like a fireplug, heavy on the makeup, including glitter and those gold stick-um stars the teacher puts on very good tests; heavier yet on the perfume, which she applied from test bottles on the counters at Rosenberg’s and the several drugstores on Fourth Street.”

LeBaron knew Pepper better than anyone else, and that column is a wonderful tribute which I urge you to read straightaway. “People have always had mixed feelings about Pepper,” she wrote in an earlier profile. “Some people, sad to say, hate her. I have mail to attest to that. But mostly people grin at her, shake their heads in wonder, and pass by amused because that’s just Pepper and everybody knows Pepper.”

Judging by comments on social media over the years the jury’s still out. Folks (like me) who weren’t around in her heyday fifty years ago only know her through anecdotes, so it’s easy for us to view her as a goofball who made downtown Santa Rosa a fun place to be. But to those growing up here a common complaint was “she scared me to death.” To kids Pepper could seem crazy and acted like a police-sanctioned bully.

Pepper Dardon in 1974. Photo originals Santa Rosa News Herald via Helen Rudee: Michael Sawyer/FindAGrave.com
Pepper Dardon in 1974. Photo originals Santa Rosa News Herald via Helen Rudee: Michael Sawyer/FindAGrave.com

Pepper already was a downtown denizen for several years by the time Gaye LeBaron formerly introduced her to readers in a February 29, 1960 column. “Pepper fills a number of roles primarily those of town greeter, semi-official courier and court jester,” Gaye wrote. One of her stunts at the time was “shouting good morning to the telephone workers down manholes in such a voice that brings them up out of their hole with their ears ringing.” Pepper sought only a “grin and pleasant word” for her good deeds, but wouldn’t turn down a few coins in thanks:

…she is one of very few citizens around these days, who offers to help old, crippled or blind people across intersections or up and down curbs. She excels as an errand girl, bringing coffee and doughnuts to busy office workers or running to the bank or the post office for a clerk who just can’t get away. Sometimes she gets a tip for her efforts, and immediately spends it on candy to pass out to her friends. A crying child will bring Pepper running from a block away to assist the harried mother with offers of cookies and condolences…

pepper1960Hotpot(RIGHT: Pepper Dardon as seen in the February 29, 1960 Press Democrat. Photo enhanced using HotPot AI)

Almost nothing was known about her at the time except she was married; she claimed her name was Florence but wouldn’t give her age. Over time a few biographical tidbits leaked out yet even in her PD obituary many details were wrong or questionable. The dust didn’t clear until Michael Sawyer researched her genealogy (available on Ancestry), thus making him the world’s first certified Pepperologist.

Her name was originally Linda Garcia and was the youngest of eight children when she was born May 2, 1914 in Salinas.1 Sawyer found she was a direct descendant of the Californio family who had the first Mexican land grant in the Carmel Valley (thank them the next time you enjoy Monterey Jack cheese). Her father was an illiterate farm laborer who mainly worked around southern Monterey County.

She was only eight months old when her mother died of cancer. The children were probably taken in by relatives but there’s no evidence of where any of them were until 1920, when Linda and three of her sisters can be spotted in the census at the Santa Cruz Female Orphan Asylum. At age fourteen she and five siblings were listed as half Native American on an Indian census roll.2

Two years later she was living at the Castroville Detention Home. Before jumping to conclusions she was there because of some wrongdoing, consider at that time a “detention home” was more like what we would call a “group home” today. It might house orphans, children who temporarily did not have adults to care for them, and yes, “mild delinquents”.3 Locally Lytton Springs was just such an institution run by the Salvation Army.

Comes the 1930s and she along with all her brothers and sisters were now adults. Those who can be traced were still living around southern Monterey County, mostly near their dad in Peachtree Valley. The exception was Linda. She was sent away to the Sonoma State Home for the Feeble Minded.

Gaye LeBaron says today it was recognized she was intellectually challenged, but locking her up in an institution – particularly the Sonoma State Home, where she was expected to remain for the rest of her life – was no act of kindness.

As discussed here earlier, the medical abuse done on the sprawling campus at Glen Ellen (also known as Eldridge and now called the Sonoma Developmental Center) played a significant role in the eugenics movement in the United States. Linda Garcia, like other women inmates, would have been forcibly sterilized because of a lack of “mental hygiene” and/or being classified as “oversexed.” She was at the Sonoma State Home for at least fifteen years but more likely was there from 1932 to 1951, admitted when she was around 18 years old and staying until her mid-thirties.4

By the late 1940s the institution was hopelessly overcrowded with over three thousand inmates. Benches were pushed together to become impromptu beds, recreation rooms became wards and infants were sleeping two to a crib. There was some state funding available for new construction but not nearly enough. About half of the inmates were committed there for life because of severe mental or physical disability, but it was decided that after training and treatment (especially sterilization) the rest were eligible for release to live with relatives or take jobs.5

And as Gaye wrote in her 2005 column, Linda Garcia was among those allowed to leave: “She lived for a time in a household where she cared for children and did housework.” She also met her future husband, Paul.

Very little is known about Paul Dardon; he was born in Arkansas in 1911 and mainly grew up in small Oklahoma towns. A note on his high school records stated he was “feeble minded” and while he went to school until age seventeen he still may have been illiterate – on his WWII draft registration card he signed his name with an “X”.

He came to Santa Rosa around 1944 and was a member of the Foursquare Gospel Church, attending their national convention at Los Angeles in 1949 as one of two Santa Rosa delegates. He and Linda were married September 1952 by a Justice of the Peace at the old courthouse.

Paul had menial jobs as a restaurant worker and janitor – although he curiously had himself listed as a “horseman” in the city directory during the mid-1950s, when he was really a janitor at the Occidental Hotel. While they didn’t have much, she quit (or lost) her domestic job and reinvented herself as She Who Shall Not Be Ignored. “While Paul was on the job, Pepper was around town, at her life’s work, which was assisting the police in keeping law and order and annoying those who found her annoying,” penned Gaye LeBaron.

“You’d see them walking hand in hand to their apartment on College Avenue when Paul’s workday ended,” Gaye also wrote in 2005. “They made a pair. Pepper was perhaps 4-foot-10 in her shoes. Paul was a loose-limbed 6 feet tall and dressed exclusively in bib overalls.”

Thus “Pepper” was born. And for the next thirty years, the mean streets of Santa Rosa would never be the same. Lizards, beware.

NEXT: THAT’S MARSHAL PEPPER TO YOU, LIZARDHEAD

 


1 Salinas was named on her Social Security application and her mother died there, suggesting the town was where the Garcias sought medical care. Michael Sawyer believes it is more likely she was born in King City or other small unincorporated place in southern Monterey County. Her mother was strongly linked to San Lucas in her obituary. LeBaron and others have broadly stated she was born in the Salinas Valley.

2 The 1928 Indian census roll list them as associated with the “Digger” tribe, which may be shocking because that name was commonly used as a racial slur in the Old West during the 19th century. But there was a federally recognized Digger Reservation in Amador county which is now part of the Jackson Rancheria.

3 Evidence that the Castroville Detention Home was like a group home is shown by three of the 15 residents being children ages 4-8 who share the same last name.

4 The federal census identifies her as being at the Sonoma State Home in 1935, 1940 and 1950. Michael Sawyer believes it is likely she was sent there once she turned 18 (I concur). In March 1951 she applied for Social Security, which would not have been necessary if she were still at the Home. LeBaron has stated variously she came to Santa Rosa and became a domestic worker in 1942 or 1948 and it is possible she returned to Eldridge before 1950, either willingly or not. The Feb. 9, 1949 article in the series discussed in fn. 5 says some inmates were discharged temporarily on “leave of absence.”

5 In Feb. 1949 the Press Democrat produced an excellent three part series on Eldridge written by Phyllis Seidkin (“Inside Sonoma State Home“) which stated 1,313 inmates during 1944-45 were “with relatives or for employment under supervised conditions or for family care in private homes” (Feb. 6). “…life at the institution is aimed at quickening arrival of the time when those patients who are mentally and physically capable, may rejoin the outside community from which they have been separated. Of the total of 3,200 patients, Dr. Porter estimates that about 50 per cent are custodial patients, lower imbeciles and idiots who participate in institution life dances, movies, church services but cannot ever leave the home” (Feb. 9).

Read More

Ed Heald

SOMEONE YOU KNOW DIED TODAY, AND LIKEWISE TOMORROW

Forget the 1906 earthquake: The “Spanish Flu” which swept through Sonoma county in 1918 was the worst disaster to hit Sonoma county – or at least, since the smallpox epidemic  wiped out nearly everyone in the Pomo communities in 1837.

Our ancestors here were caught off-guard even though there was a month’s notice that it was remarkably deadly and would inevitably reach Santa Rosa. From mid-September onwards the Press Democrat and Argus-Courier printed bad news every day. There were seventy deaths a day in New England. It was spreading rapidly through the Army camps in the East and Midwest; the number of soldiers and sailors infected doubled every few days – 23 thousand total, 42 thousand, then 14 thousand new cases in a single day. The military reported 112 dead, then 377, then 653. By the beginning of October the killing disease was now in almost all states.

They had no defense against this influenza, which usually resulted in a severe case of pneumonia. Although this was before the discovery of antibiotics, they could treat pneumonia with an antiserum (or “syrum,” as the Press Democrat spelled it), but only if treated early. The patient also had to be in a hospital with a well-equipped lab, as a saliva sample had to be injected into a mouse to ID the type of bacteria. An effective vaccine was developed at this time, but only in limited quantities and after the peak of the pandemic.

The Spanish Flu reached Sonoma county around October 12. A highway crew working near modern-day Rohnert Park was rushed to hospitals in San Francisco. “There are already considerably more than one hundred cases receiving attention,” reported the PD, but it’s unknown if they were counting the 75 sick children at the Lytton Orphanage. Strike that; by the time the newspaper went to press there were 102 children ill. One of them was teenager Helen Grouel, who became the first person here to die because of it.

On October 18 Walter Reiman, a sailor on furlough to help his dad harvest grapes at their Windsor vineyard, died after being back only five days. As the incubation period for influenza is 2 to 7 days, he must have brought it home with him. Later that same evening his fiancée, Edith Olin, died as well.

While the PD and the A-C were trying to quell panic by reassuring readers this was a “mild” form of the flu, there was no denying that the crisis was now upon us. That same day all schools, churches, lodges and “places of amusements” were closed until further notice. By then there were 59 known influenza cases in Santa Rosa, with two more reported during the Santa Rosa Board of Health meeting. The Board further required on November 4 the wearing of gauze masks by everyone when in public – although the newspaper wryly noted that as the Supervisors voted to pass the ordinance, not one of them was wearing a mask.

The County Health Board already required masks to be worn by anyone infected or nursing someone sick, and before the ordinance the PD did its civic duty with many little items mentioning clerks and shopkeepers wearing masks, noting that everyone on the train up from San Francisco was wearing them, and so on. Still, there was resistance; twenty people were fined $5 for not wearing them after Nov. 4 and the paper noted in San Rafael “a number of people were arrested and were compelled to decorate the mahogany with five-dollar pieces in the recorder’s court.” Some people wearing glasses were caught wearing the mask beneath their nose because their lenses fogged up (the PD printed tips on how to avoid this); others thought it was just unfashionable. District Attorney Hoyle said, “a mask may not add to your beauty, but a homely, living, useful citizen is better far than an unnecessarily sacrificed life, regardless of looks.”

Given the ferocity of that flu it seems incomprehensible the Health Board waited almost three weeks to require masks in public, but the general knowledge level of preventative hygiene at the time seems shockingly poor. Never once was the importance of frequent hand-washing mentioned, although it had been recognized as a critical method to stopping the spread of disease for over a half century. Instead, the Board offered a mishmash of advice, including:

*
  Avoid public gatherings of any kind and stay off the street

*
  Do not cough, spit or sneeze promiscuously

*
  Don’t attend funerals. Say it with flowers

*
  Don’t visit your sick friends unless you can be of some material advantage to them

*
  Don’t wait until in the night to call a physician. They are all being overworked and need all the regular rest they can get

*
  Avoid coal oil heaters, with their noxious fumes

Likewise the advice on what to eat while sick is mostly the reverse of what we believe today. Dr. Adelaide Brown (“eminent woman physician of San Francisco, and member of State Board of Health”) told the Press Democrat that the diet should be mostly milk, sugar and starch, no meat broth, no vegetables (unless pureed) and no fruit with fiber. “No other foods than those mentioned should be used. Do not experiment with the patient’s digestion during the critical period.” Notice there is no mention of the importance of keeping the patient well hydrated.

Lacking modern medicines, people turned to folk remedies and the Victorian-era pharmacopoeia. It appears they mostly nursed themselves as if it were just a really bad chest cold, but some treatments had antibacterial effects which might have saved lives – and others might have made their conditions worse, or even killed them.

Someone wrote to the PD to remark the late, esteemed Dr, William Finlaw said “there was no better remedy for those ailments” than camphor in a steam vaporizer. It was a sensible idea, but the correspondent added that “a smoker may crumble a piece of camphor gum the size of a pea, and mix it with the tobacco in a pipe, or cigarette,” which is really not a good idea if you’ve got pneumonia.

Newspaper ads promoted camphor-based Vick’s VapoRub to be used in a vaporizer, melted in a spoon and inhaled, or rubbed into the chest and back between the shoulder blades “until the skin is red…attracting the blood to the surface, and thus aids in relieving the congestion within.” Never mind that in years earlier, physicians used that same basic argument to promote leeches.

Some drug stores sold atomizers which were to be filled with abietene, a kind of turpentine made specifically from California’s native Gray Pine, and sprayed on the back of your throat and inhaled every ten minutes to prevent the flu (supposedly).

Dr. Bonar, the city health officer, specifically warned against quack cures and preventatives like that: “Don’t be taking drugs. If ill, consult a physician. Gargles and nasal douches are of doubtful value, if not a real danger…Avoid all advertised cures.” But that advice appeared only once in a Press Democrat article and not at all in the Petaluma newspapers – while local merchants bought large ads in every edition to peddle nostrums exactly like those.

In Petaluma, Schluckebier Hardware advertised Phenolene (caustic, poisonous carbolic acid) as a disinfectant to mop floors, pour down drains, spray under beds and then “put three drops in a tumbler of warm water, then gargle the throat and stuff it up the nose.” Towne’s Drug Store suggested “formaldehyde liberally yet judiciously used is most valuable,” but did not say how it should be used. Today formaldehyde’s recognized as causing bronchitis and pneumonia when inhaled with even small exposures, not to mention being a carcinogen.

Press Democrat, October 26, 1918

 

Press Democrat readers were assured the disease had “run its course in most Army camps” – hopefully showing not everyone would croak – but there was considerable fear in the days following the closures. The PD quoted a “well-known physician” saying “there is a lot of hysteria about now as well as influenza.” While this doctor and others interviewed were not named, they agreed this was a mild form of the flu. This was all propaganda; there were still 300+ deaths daily in the camps and not everyone here was taking the situation seriously. A few days later Earle E. Jamison died; he was the ticket agent of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad in Santa Rosa and had constant contact with the public, yet once Earle caught the flu he had to remain on duty a “day or two” until replacement was found.

At the end of October – before the Board of Health made gauze masks mandatory – the District Attorney’s office announced the situation was so dire they were considering a quarantine of the entire county. It seems many of those urban dwellers who had summer cabins around the Russian River and elsewhere were fleeing up here to escape the epidemic raging in the cities:


…I have been informed that persons from the bay cities, fearful of the disease there, are rushing to the country resorts and are occupying cottages, built many of them in cool, damp places, and saturated with a two weeks’ rain, which must necessarily endanger them to cold, and frequently to resulting pneumonia, whether they in fact have Spanish influenza or not. This should he stopped at once.

The news did not get better as October faded into November. There were 310 reported sick in Santa Rosa with deaths almost every day. The married daughters of Serafino Piezzi died four days apart and a double funeral was planned as soon as the rest of the family recovered themselves. Rocco Poncetta of the Hotel Italia de Unita (5 West Sixth st.) died at age 31; the PD commented he was “a man of strong and robust constitution,” reinforcing the popular notion that the young and strong were most likely to die.

Then on November 5 came the most shocking news of all: There were 400 influenza cases at the Sonoma State Home – almost one-third of the institution’s patients. A few days later it shot up to 500.

Now the Sonoma Developmental Center (at least, as of this writing), the Press Democrat still called it by its old name: The Sonoma State Home for the Care of the Feeble-Minded at Eldridge. The 1,400 patients there ranged from people needing custodial care because of severe cognitive issues to those suffering epilepsy; criminals deemed “feeble-minded” by someone in authority were sent there for indeterminate sentences as were some accused of anti-social behavior – see “SONOMA COUNTY AND EUGENICS“ for more background on the place in those days.

“Medical Superintendent Fred O. Butler M. D., and his staff of assistant physicians and the nurses and attendants are doing everything in their power for the stricken inmates,” the PD reported, but they clearly were not following best medical practices for dealing with an epidemic. The next day 25 were reported dead. Four days later, another 24. Five days after that, the death toll was over 70. By the end of the month there were 85 dead.

It is maddening to read the day-to-day coverage of this crisis at Eldridge. Complete management of the situation was ceded to Dr. Butler; additional medical help was neither requested nor demanded. There was no talk of evacuation. There was no charitable outreach from the community. By contrast, a month earlier Santa Rosa and other towns had mobilized to help the Lytton Springs orphanage, with nurses rushing there to help, department stores donating blankets and bedding and businesses collecting donations to buy medicines. 

Petaluma Morning Courier, October 27, 1918

 

Aside from their appalling indifference to the Sonoma State Home situation, citizens of Santa Rosa rallied together to fight the epidemic as if it was just another part of their patriotic duty in those last months of WWI. The Red Cross Shop became like a command HQ, distributing food, medicine and many hundreds of masks sown by volunteers; nurses were dispatched; babies and small children with sick parents were placed in temporary homes. The elite Saturday Afternoon Club clubhouse on 10th st became a critical care hospital, handling 53 patients (“some of them the worst cases near Santa Rosa” – PD).

Finally, after three weeks of emergency measures, the tide began to turn shortly before Thanksgiving. The public library reopened and the mask order was lifted. All schools reopened.

But the good news was short lived. Influenza came roaring back after Christmas, with 243 new cases in San Francisco with 35 deaths. While there had been ongoing cases of flu in rural areas, in Santa Rosa masks were ordered on again because it had “returned to the towns.”

This second wave proved just as severe and heart-breaking. In one week a toddler, mother and grandmother all died; Adeline Gray on January 9, 1919, her mother Julia Marsh two days later, and then 3 year-old Alice Gray on Jan. 16. They are buried together at the Calvary Cemetery.

Some schools reopened in the middle of January, with students and teachers wearing masks. On the 26th the mask ordinance was dropped again, although “it is highly advisable that masks be worn whenever one person approaches within ten feet of another.” Theaters, pool rooms and lodges remained closed.

The epidemic was never declared over and lingered in Santa Rosa until the end of April. Obituaries as late as November of that year mentioned the person had contracted the Spanish flu and never recovered.

The official report of the Board of Health stated there were 67 deaths from influenza in Santa Rosa and 1,145 cases, although “many more cases were unreported or unrecognized.” There were 87 flu deaths at the Sonoma State Home.

It’s now understood that 9 out of 10 Spanish influenza victims died from pneumonia – that the flu stripped the inner lining from the bronchial tubes and lungs, which left the patient susceptible to infections. “In essence, the virus landed the first blow while bacteria delivered the knockout punch,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, when the definitive study was published in 2008.

Even factoring in pneumonia, a final tally proves elusive; remember Edith Olin, the young woman who died within hours of her fiance? She had tuberculosis and her cause of death was listed as such, even though there’s little doubt that her death was hastened by his return to the area carrying the flu.

About 85 people are known to have died in Santa Rosa during the 1906 earthquake with another handful killed elsewhere in the county, but those numbers are also squishy; some remains were probably totally consumed by the fire and some people who were mortally wounded probably died elsewhere. Throw in a fudge factor and guesstimate the earthquake killed 120 in Sonoma county. But even without counting the pneumonia cases, the total influenza deaths in Santa Rosa combined with the Sonoma State Home remains higher. Even with the joy of the war ending, those were very dark days.

Ed Heald wearing influenza mask. Photo: Sonoma County Library

INFLUENZA CONTINUES TO SPREAD
Malady Has Now Reached Practically All Parts of Country, and Is Epidemic in Western and Pacific Coast States — Movie Releases Stopped.

Washington, Oct. 9 – Spanish influenza now has spread to practically every part of the country. Reports today to the Federal Health Service shows the disease is epidemic in many western and Pacific Coast states as well as in almost all regions east of the Mississippi river. Its spread also continues in army camps. The number of new cases reported being greater than on the day before.

 The disease is reported from many parts of California, while in Texas the malady has been reported from 77 counties, with a number of cases varying from one to 4,000 in each county…

…The National Association of Motion Picture Industries decided at a meeting here tonight to discontinue all motion picture releases after October 16, because of the epidemic of Spanish Influenza. The embargro will remain in force until further notice, it was announced by Wm. A. Brady, president of the association.

– Press Democrat, October 10 1918

DOCTORS OF THREE STATES ARE MOBILIZED

Mobilization of all the doctors of California, Nevada and Arizona to combat the epidemic of Spanish influenza were ordered today by the U. S. Public Health Service, It was announced here by Dr. W. G. Billings, sanitary officer of the service for California and Nevada. The public was warned by Dr. Billings to avoid picture shows, churches and all other places of assemblage until the epidemic was passed.

– Press Democrat, October 10 1918

SPREADS IN CALIFORNIA

The total number of Spanish influenza cases in California has reached the four thousand mark, according to the State Board of Health.

– Argus-Courier, October 12 1918

INFLUENZA HAS APPEARED HERE

More Than a Dozen Cases Reported in Santa Rosa and the Immediate Vicinity Monday Night—State Highway Camp Near Wilfred Station Suffers: Spray Your Throat and Nostrils and Keep Away From Crowds.

Spanish Influenza secured a hold in Sonoma county over Sunday and according to reports made to the county health officer there are already considerably more than one hundred cases receiving attention.

The Golden Gate Industrial Farm and Orphanage at Lyttons reported 75 children in bed with the malady Monday morning. By night the number of cases there had increased to 102, as stated in another column.

Half a dozen or more men working in the State highway camp on the Cotati boulevard near Wilfred were also reported down with the disease. Some of these have been removed to Santa Rosa hospitals, while others were rushed to San Francisco for treatment. By prompt isolation of every case and early detection of the malady in schools throughout the county it is hoped to keep it within bounds; but every family should take unusual care to prevent exposure. Children should he kept off the streets as much as possible. Avoid crowds wherever you can.

Physicians state that best thing to do after possible exposure is to spray the throat and nostrils with a solution of 10 per cent argyrol, or some other good disinfectant.

According to reports by local physicians Monday evening more than a dozen cases of the malady exist in Santa Rosa and the immediate vicinity.

– Press Democrat, October 15 1918

132 CASES OF INFLUENZA AT LYTTONS; HELEN GROUL DIES
Public Responds With Needed Assistance When Informed
Orphanage Now Transformed Into a Hospital – Urgent Need Exists for More Nurses, Bed Clothing, and Money With Which to Buy Medicines — Local Branch of Red Cross Interests Itself in the Matter

Death invaded the Lytton Springs Orphanage yesterday, when Helen Groul, whose critical illness was reported in these columns Tuesday morning, closed her eyes in the long last sleep. She is the first victim to be claimed in this county by the dreaded Spanish influenza, which is now raging everywhere and has the Lytton Orphanage tightly within its grasp.

“Thirty-one new cases developed here today,” said Captain S. Charles Isaacs, now in charge of the orphanage at Lytton, when interviewed by a Press Democrat representative last night over the long-distance phone. “One hundred and thirty-two of our children are now down with the scourge. We have two hundred and twenty-three children here at the present time.” Yesterday there were two hundred and twenty-four; today there are only two hundred and twenty-three!

What will it be tomorrow?

Public Responds to Call

The sad news from Lyttons published in these columns Tuesday morning met with an instant response in the hearts of the thousands of Santa Rosans, and offers of assistance soon began to come in. The first report of money being collected came from the employees of the Santa Rosa Poultry Association and Egg Exchange, where a hurried collection was taken and the sum of $11 sent to this office. The Press Democrat added $5 to the above amount, and last night Manager J. J. Fitzgerald of the Poultry Association walked into the office with another bunch of coin and left it here to be forwarded to the orphanage today. The list of donors is as follows…

– Press Democrat, October 16 1918

PLEDGED PAIR NEAR IN DEATH
Well Known Young Auditor for Proctor Bros. Succumbs to White Plague Last Night, Following Death of Her Fiance a Few Hours Earlier.

Miss Edith Olin, for the past six years auditor for the Proctor Bros., died at the home of Mrs. Jane M. Emperor. 421 College avenue, last night about 9:30, after a few weeks’ illness. Death was due to consumption.

Miss Olin came here seven years ago from Orfino, Idaho, where she had been residing with an aunt since the death of her parents. The aunt is her only living relative…

…Walter Reiman, who enlisted in the U. S. Navy some time ago. died Friday at the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. H. G. Reiman, near Windsor, after a brief illness with influenza. The young man secured a furlough and came home last Sunday to assist his father gather the grape crop, and was taken ill a few days later.

Mr. Reiman was the fiance of Miss Edith Olin, who died later in the evening, and news of his death, coming a few hours before that of his fiance, is an occurrence as remarkable as it is sad.

– Press Democrat, October 19 1918

DON’T GET SCARED IS THE ADVICE OF LOCAL PHYSICIAN
Statement Last Night That the Cases of Influenza Here So Far Are of a Mild Form—People Advised to Be Careful, But Not to Become Hysterical.

‘Tell the people not to get hysterical,” said a well-known physician last night to a Press Democrat representative. “It’s good advice to give people, believe me, for there is a lot of hysteria about now as well as influenza.”

Another physician stated that out of all the cases he has under his care, all of them are light, with the exception of a single pneumonia case.

Other physicians were seen and they agreed that the influenza here is of a mild form to date. They agreed that people should take care of themselves, but there is no occasion for alarm if care is taken.

– Press Democrat, October 23 1918

INFLUENZA WORSE OUTSIDE OF CITY
More New Cases Reported From the Rural Section Than Within City Limits — Epidemic at Standstill Within City at the Present, According to Reports

While the number of cases of Spanish influenza reported to the city health office shows no increase for the previous 24 hours, the number of cases reported to local physicians increased and from all accounts the country surrounding town is suffering worse now than the city.

Only 12 new cases were reported to the city health office up to 5 o’clock last night, although it is known other cases have developed in town which will he reported this morning. The total to date at the same hour was 396 for the city with only two deaths known to be directly caused from pneumonia caused by influenza.

The most of the deaths resulting from the disease are from out-of-town and it is believed this is due to the fact that those residing in town are being more prompt in calling in a physician and take no chances, while the country people try to wear it off, a very serious matter in the case of influenza, and almost sure to result seriously, if not fatally.

– Press Democrat, October 30 1918

MAY QUARANTINE COUNTY AGAINST THE INFLUENZA
District Attorney Issues Appeal to Residents to Take Necessary Precautions to Protect Themselves and Others From Dreaded Epidemic.

The District Attorney’s office has been aroused by the large number of fatal cases of Spanish influenza and pneumonia throughout the rural section of Sonoma county and will take steps to protect the residents unless they take the necessary precautions for themselves voluntarily. In a statement Wednesday, Mr. Hoyle suggested the possibility of a general quarantine of the county against outside districts pending an improvement of conditions in other parts of the state. He said:

For more than three weeks last past so-called Spanish influenza has been prevalent in Sonoma county. During that time many of our valuable citizens have suffered from the malady, and several have passed to the Great Beyond, as a direct result of the dread disease, from resulting pneumonia or otherwise. It is the nature of the disease to leave one in a weakened condition, thereby making the patient susceptible to any disease for which the weakened condition makes an opening. A cold creates just such an opening and pneumonia results. Other diseases follow instead of pneumonia as the condition of the patient may make one susceptible…

…I have been informed that persons from the bay cities, fearful of the disease there, are rushing to the country resorts and are occupying cottages, built many of them in cool, damp places, and saturated with a two weeks’ rain, which must necessarily endanger them to cold, and frequently to resulting pneumonia, whether they in fact have Spanish influenza or not. This should he stopped at once.

Unless the public takes the necessary and proper steps immediately for stamping out the disease, I shall call upon the state health officers for a strict general quarantine of the county.

If you are afflicted, stay inside until you have fully recovered, exercising every precaution to prevent the spread of the disease. If you have thus far escaped, use every precaution to avoid it. A mask may not add to your beauty, but a homely, living, useful citizen is better far than an unnecessarily sacrificed life, regardless of looks.

Yours for the public welfare, G. W. Hoyle, District Attorney.

– Press Democrat, October 31 1918

25 INFLUENZA DEATHS AT SONOMA STATE HOME

Inquiry over the long distance telephone to the Sonoma State Home at Eldridge last night as to the influenza cases in the institution elicited the information that since the epidemic broke out there had been twenty-four deaths among inmates and Mrs. Markee, one of the attendants, died yesterday. A number of the cases had developed into pneumonia.

 Among those who are suffering from influenza are the woman physician, Dr. Thorne, and Supervisor Johnson. Both their cases are slight. Secretary R. Q. Wickham stated last night.

 “There are over four hundred cases of influenza here and we have had twenty-four deaths to date among the inmates, and, this afternoon one of the attendants, Mrs. Markee, died. Otherwise the other sick ones seem to be getting better,” stated Mr. Wickham over the phone.

 Medical Superintendent Fred O. Butler, M. D., and his first assistant, Dr Whittington, have been working night and day with the patients, and prior to her sickness Dr. Thorne was constantly in attendance day and night. The physicians and the nurses and attendants have been doing loyal and efficient work for main hours day and night since influenza became epidemic. Everything possible is being done for the sick and to safeguard the inmates and protect those as yet not stricken with the illness. There are nearly fourteen hundred inmates in the Sonoma State Home.

– Press Democrat, November 6 1918

EMPHATIC DONTS FOR INFLUENZA
City Health Officer Makes Suggestions to General Public for Prevention of Infection and to Aid in Restricting Epidemic.

“There ia no doubt but that we are in the midst of a very interesting epidemic which will have extended and far reaching results. The climatic conditions here are ideal for its spread,” declared R. M. Bonar, the new city health officer, yesterday, after having heard from most of the physicians of the city and getting reports of 25 new cases of influenza for the day. This brings the total cases to date to over 355.

With the view of giving as much assistance as possible in preventing the further spread of the malady. Dr. Bonar makes suggestions and urges upon the general public adaption of the following rules:

Don’t attend funerals. Say it with flowers.

Don’t travel. If you must, use your own conveyance. The closed railway coach is the best place In the world to become infected as many sick are traveling, spreading the disease.

 Don’t visit your sick friends unless you can be of some material advantage to them, and then wear a gauze mask.

  Don’t be taking drugs. If ill, consult a physician. Gargles and nasal douches are of doubtful value, if not a real danger. The wash is on the throat or nose only a few moments being quickly carried away by the natural secretions. If used too strong or frequently they may impair the delicate membranes, making the person more susceptible to infection. Avoid all advertised cures.

Do not allow children to associate with those having the malady in the house. Under no clrcumstances allow a well person to sleop with one ill with influenza.

Keep in the open air. Avoid unusual fatigue and over eating and wear a mask of six layers. Bacteria cannot penetrate gauze. Don’t use antiseptic of any kind on mask, and wash dally, boiling it.

Don’t wait until in the night to call a physician. They are all being overworked and need all the regular rest they can get.

– Press Democrat, November 6 1918

MALADY TAKES ON NEW LEASE

Despite the precautions being taken, there has been an increase of Spanish Influenza cases this week in Santa Rosa, with eight new cases reported Monday and ten yesterday. The new eases in many instances are in families where it had prevailed previously.

 One mother was reported down with her four children yesterday, but they are all doing as well as could be expected and are being given the best of care.

 The city health officer urges all to comply with the mask ordinance and take all necessary precaution against spreading the malady and hold it in check. There can be no release from masks while there is so many new cases being reported.

– Press Democrat, November 13 1918

INFLUENZA NOW IS DECREASING
Santa Rosa Has Had 462 Cases Since October 18, When First Case Was Reported, While Total Deaths in Entire Suburban District Totals 37 for Period.

With six new cases of Spanish influenza reported Saturday, the total in Santa Rosa since the first outbreak, October 18, has reached 462. In the same period there has been 37 deaths in the district which includes Russian River township and the country to the east as far as Glen Ellen, but not the Sonoma Home at Eldrldge.

 While all indications point to a gradual falling-off in the epidemic in Santa Rosa, there has been a flare-up owing, it is believed, to carelessness resulting from the patriotic demonstration Monday. It is hoped the improvement will continue during the coming week, and if so some of the more stringent regulations can be released.

 The San Francisco theaters were all opened Saturday and each played to standing room. The churches will be open today, but the mask is still retained and insisted upon for all attending gatherings. The San Jose State Normal will resume November 25, when the San Francisco schools will reopen, by which time masks will be discarded.

– Press Democrat, November 13 1918

STRONG TAKEN – THE WEAK LEFT
Epidemic Is Still in Force at the Sonoma State Home, Where Over Fifty Deaths Have Occurred to Date — Most Fatalities Among High Grade Inmates.

They are battling with the epidemic of influenza at the Sonoma State Home for the Feeble-Minded. So far over fifty deaths have occurred to date and there are scores of inmates still down with the disease. The physicians and nurses and other attendants have had a hard task to perform for several weeks in ministering to so many of the sick.

A singular feature of conditions at the State Home is that the deaths have occurred among the strongest and highest grade inmates, both as regard boys and girls and the low grades have suffered little. Among those who have died were many boys and girls who were able to help about the institution and in the grounds.

– Press Democrat, November 14 1918

THE QUARANTINE IS ENFORCED

The quarantine for influenza has been put in force in this city by the Health Board and the yellow signs with the word “influenza” prominently displayed, are already noticed on a number of homes here.

– Argus-Courier, November 25 1918

85 DEATHS TOLL AT STATE HOME
Epidemic Is Subsiding and New Cases Are Among Girls — Eighty of the Dead Were Males – Secretary Wickham Visitor Here.

Secretary R. Q. Wickham was in town from the Sonoma State Home on Monday.

From Secretary Wickham it was learned that the epidemic had carried off by death eighty-five inmates.

He says there have been over five hundred cases of influenza at the institution and of the eighty-five deaths about five were girls, all the others being boys, youths and men.

At the present time, Mr. Wickham states, there are a number of cases, the illness having crossed to the quarters occupied by the girls, but no serious conditions are expected now.

Mr. Wickham paid a high compliment to the untiring labors of Medical Superintendent Fred O. Butler, Physician Whittington and Dr. Thoren, the woman physician, and the nurses and attendants who worked night and day in nursing and administering to the sick. “I tell you they ail stood up nobly “under the strain,” said Mr. Wickham.

– Press Democrat, November 26 1918

BAN PLACED ON DANCIN6 HERE UNTIL FURTHER ORDER

In an effort to check any further outbreaks of influenza the City Health Officer Thursday evening issued an order forbidding all public and private dances until further notice in Santa Rosa.

The Health Officer said it is generally recognized that dancing is one of the most successful ways of spreading influenza owing to the dancers being in such close contact that they cannot help inhaling each other’s breath and passing the germs.

Already eight cases, it is said, have been traced to two young men who visited a dance here recently from an outside town while ill and spread the malady.

– Press Democrat, December 20 1918

Clubhouse Opened as Emergency Hospital

The good women of the Red Cross made another noble response on Saturday to the demands of care for sick women and children and by night Saturday the Saturday Afternoon Club’s clubhouse on Tenth street was opened as an emergency hospital. Mention has been made of the shortage of nurses and it was with the idea of caring for many of those who are sick that the clubhouse was opened as a hospital. The clubhouse during the day was fitted up with cots and all other arrangements were made for the reception of the patients. It is a nice, cosy place, and it is mighty fortunate for some of the sick women and children of the town and neighborhood that such a place and such excellent care was available. Several patients were taken to the emergency hospital Saturday night.

– Press Democrat, December 29 1918

STRANGER ARRIVES IN TOWN WITH INFLUENZA

The county health officer was called to a local hotel yesterday to see a man who was ill. An examination showed that he was suffering from influenza, having arrived Thursday night, circulated about the hotel during the even[ing] and had been out during the morning for breakfast and about the street before giving up and going to bed.

The man was removed to a hospital and last night he had developed pneumonia and his fever was 104 degrees and his condition was considered critical. How many were exposed to the influenza through contact with this man is unknown, but it is such cases which has caused the necessity for holding the masks as a protective measure.

– Press Democrat, January 25 1919

Read More

dwheadlines

THE DELINQUENT WOMEN OF SONOMA

Dear Valley of the Mooners: The state will soon build a lockup there for morons who are outcast women, which is to say they are really prostitutes. P.S. Most of them will probably have chronic cases of venereal disease. P.P.S. It will be your patriotic duty to cooperate fully to show your support for our troops.

This odd proposition came up during the winter of 1917-1918, as California fully ramped up home front efforts for fighting World War I. Under the so-called “American Plan,” it was decided our draftee soldiers in training camps needed to be protected against booze and sex workers, so the Navy established “dry zones” around Mare Island and other military bases. Liquor could not be sold within this five-mile radius and brothels were likewise closed under military order. President Wilson expanded this further by declaring areas around shipyards, munition factories, and schools with military prep programs to likewise be temptation-free.

As explained in part one, this led to tens of thousands of women accused of prostitution nationwide being swept up in vice raids and held under “quarantine” without due process. For such women of Northern California, the state was proposing to build a secured building at the Sonoma State Home at Eldridge big enough to imprison 300.

Why they pitched the “moron” angle is less clear. In the early 20th century “moron,” “imbecile” and “idiot” were accepted quasi-medical terms (although the methods used to classify people as such were complete and utter bullshit). As the institution near Glen Ellen was still widely known by its old name as the California Home for Feeble-Minded Children, maybe it was thought there would be fewer objections from locals if the women supposedly were of lower than average intelligence.1

There was plenty of local pushback against establishing such a “moron colony” at Eldridge even after the projected number of inmates was reduced by two-thirds. Nonetheless, by the summer of 1918, there were 110 “weak-minded girls and young women” from San Francisco quartered there.2

When the federal government abolished liquor in the Dry Zones, it helped pave the way for passage of Prohibition after the war ended. Similarly, the interest in keeping prostitutes locked up continued unabated – although the excuse was no longer protecting the troops from disease in order to keep men “fit to fight.” As also explained in part one, the new call was to abolish prostitution in California by reforming the women – even if it was against their will (and likely unconstitutional).

The loudest voices calling for enforced reform were the women’s clubs. In April, 1919, they succeeded in having the legislature pass an act establishing the “California Industrial Farm for Women” which was “to establish an institution for the confinement, care, and reformation of delinquent women.” Any court in the state could now commit a women there for six months to five years. But where would this “Industrial Farm” be located? The state only considered two locations – both in the Sonoma Valley.

One possibility was the big chicken ranch of J. K. Bigelow between Glen Ellen and Sonoma (today it’s the Sonoma Golf Club, and the sprawling clubhouse is the “cottage” the Bigelows built in 1910). The other option was the old Buena Vista winery, where Kate Johnson, a philanthropist and noted art collector, had built a 40-room mansion in the 1880s. The state chose Buena Vista and began bringing in women after winning a 1922 test court challenge over a single inmate.

A slightly different version of the colorized postcard shown in “THE MAKING OF A CRAZY CAT LADY.”
From the Bartholomew Park Winery

Battle lines formed. Women-based organizations – the clubs, League of Women Voters, the W. C. T. U. and other temperance groups – enthusiastically supported the “Industrial Farm” (it was also called the “Delinquent Women Home” and every variation in between; here I’ll simply refer to it as the “Home”). On the other side were politicians and bureaucrats (all male, of course) who thought the property could be put to better use, or just objected to the idea of spending taxpayer dollars trying to rehabilitate women of ill repute.

The attack on the Home locally was led by the Sonoma Index-Tribune, grasping at every opportunity to bash the place as a misguided experiment by do-gooders who foolishly believed they could domesticate feral humans. A scrapbook of clippings from the I-T during the 1920s can be found in the museum for the Bartholomew Park Winery (which traces its history back to Haraszthy’s original Buena Vista vineyards) and I am indebted to the winery – as well as the anonymous soul who originally assembled the scrapbook – for sharing that invaluable resource with me.3

The Index-Tribune’s bias was so unfettered we can never be certain how much of what they reported as fact was true – and alas, it was the only newspaper regularly covering doings at the Home. Sometimes the fake news is obvious; the I-T once claimed the monthly cost was $509.59 per inmate, but from later testimony and articles elsewhere we learn it was really in the $80-90 range, and was only that high because of building construction and other start-up costs.

A popular theme in the Sonoma paper was that the women were dangerous, depraved criminals. When the W. C. T. U. proposed incorporating some of the inmates from the women’s ward at San Quentin (almost all women at the prison were in for non-violent crimes, mainly check kiting and forgery), the Index-Tribune played up the “unthinkable” threat they would bring to the community:

…We have had ample opportunity to judge the farm already, and do not hesitate to say that as a penal institution it is a failure, because it is a menace to the community and a nuisance to local officers…to bring 50 San Quentin inmates here, unconfined, without guards and a prison wall, is unthinkable. Surely the people of the surrounding country are to be thought of, despite theorists of the W.C.T.U. Perhaps if these good women knew how the handful already at the farm have acted, they would hesitate to pass their sob-sister resolutions. Perhaps if they were informed that there has been leaks, escapades and communication with companions on the outside, they might understand something of the danger such an institution is in our midst…

That editorial appeared in September 1922, when the Home had been accepting women only about four months and had thirty inmates. The I-T rushed to declare it already a failure, although the only reported trouble had occurred the week before. The paper would still scream about that incident years later, and as with all other damning news from the Index-Tribune, their version should be presumed slanted.

Two women escaped, were caught and returned. They became belligerent and started a riot. The ringleader was arrested, handcuffed (a later rehash would say she was “hog tied”) and taken to the county jail in Santa Rosa. While enroute, “the prisoner, who is a drug fiend, hurled the vilest epithets at the officer.” Deputy Joe Ryan was immediately called back to the Home to arrest another riotous inmate, and the two women were sentenced to 40 days in the Sonoma county jail.

Six months later the Sonoma paper reprinted a Sacramento Bee report about another escape under the headline, “THREE WOMEN’S PRISON MILK MAIDS FLEE”:

…[the] aesthetic atmosphere, created to comfort the women jailed because of commission of the sin that has come down the ages, now includes “lowing herds winding slowly o’er the lea.” At least, a herd of milk cows recently was installed at the home, there to replace a herd of milk goats. Perhaps the break for liberty taken from them was actuated by resentment over the transfer of the lowly but picturesque milk goat for the more impressive bossy. Or mayhaps the duty of parking a cow on the farm and relieving her of her fluid treasure proved more arduous to the three “sisters of sin” than being maid to the goats. This is not officially explained. It is officially admitted, however, that the maids three have gone…Anyway, the first big break has been staged at the prison farm. As far as is known, this is the first break from jail in California by three women.

The Index-Tribune felt compelled to append an editor’s note: “The Bee was misinformed as to this being the first break. There is such a gap between the honor system and discipline at the prison farm that there is a jail break every week.”

As the I-T had not been reporting all those weekly “jail breaks,” the editor was either admitting such events weren’t newsworthy or didn’t happen. Either way, it opens the question: What was really going on at the Home?

Rarely mentioned was that a small hospital was built next door when the Home opened. The original 1919 Act specified that women only could be released “with reasonable safety and benefit to herself and the public at large,” which meant treating – and hopefully, curing – any venereal diseases. As discussed in part one, the best medical protocols in that era involved weeks of painful shots using solutions which had to be prepared under very precise conditions. Thus it’s safe to assume that the hospital’s (20? 30?) beds were filled at any given time.

The Act also called for the inmates to be given “industrial and other training and reformatory help,” but aside from milking those cows – and before that, goats – there was no mention of other work, aside from a later comment in the I-T about them “painting flower boxes and pots,” which could be just gratuitous snark from the editor. Nor was any formal education or training ever mentioned.

Before the place had a single inmate, Superintendent Blanche Morse was interviewed by the Press Democrat. “We are going to give the inmates work to do,” she said, “but we are not going to apply the institutional idea and make them do it to bells and march-time. Each woman will help around the house in some way.” To her and other women’s advocates at the time, the inmates would be transformed once they were lifted out of their abnormal environment. That meant placing these women – who came from San Francisco and other big cities –  in the countryside to learn farm chores along with traditional domestic skills like sewing, laundry and housecleaning in a communal women-only setting.

(RIGHT:) Blanche Morse portrait used in the San Francisco Call 1911-1912

Blanche Morse was the guiding force of the Home from the beginning. When the Home opened she was 52 years old, a former Berkeley librarian, middle school principal, and feminist with a decade of positions in several East Bay and state women’s groups. In 1911 she was a speaker and organizer on the historic suffrage campaign tour to gain the right to vote in California. Her complete lack of any background in penology or social work or administration might seem to make her unqualified to handle the unique problems of the women sentenced to the Home, but she still probably looked like the ideal person to many in 1920 – because of her activism with the Mobilized Women.

The “Mobilized Women’s Army” was a coalition of Bay Area women’s groups that organized in Berkeley just after the U.S. entered WWI in 1917. Its objective was to locally enforce “Americanization,” which was another creepy project of the Wilson Administration akin to the American Plan – but instead of unconstitutionally locking up women accused of moral crimes, Americanization sought to encourage citizens to spy on their foreign-born neighbors and intimidate them into behaving more like “real Americans.”

It was Blanche Morse who organized efforts to compile a list of every single immigrant in the Bay Area via a house-to-house survey – a list which would have been invaluable to the government and industrialists after the war during the “Red Scare” years, when both sought to crush Bolshevism and labor activism dominated by first-generation immigrants.

And just as the American Plan gained more steam once the war was over, the Mobilized Women’s mission became a well-funded program to push cultural assimilation. It was the Mobilized Women’s “American House” in Berkeley that clearly became the model for the learn-by-osmosis rehabilitation efforts at the Delinquent Woman Home at Buena Vista. There foreign-born women were shown American-style houswifery, which, as one scholar put it, meant “in order to be better citizens, immigrant women should learn to dress, shop, cook and clean in new, better, and more ‘American’ ways.”4

It’s unknown whether Morse’s delinquent women similarly adopted “American ways” and became prostitutes no more. That is, if they were prostitutes to begin with; according to the Sacramento Bee, of the 54 inmates there at the end of 1922, only 17 were prostitutes and the rest were addicts/alcoholics. The law gave courts broad leeway to sentence any woman to the Home for having any connection at all with prostitution or merely being considered a “common drunkard.” One woman was reportedly 67 years old, and all were charged with simply vagrancy.5

Much was later made by critics about the 67 year-old; “When do ‘wild women’ cease being wild?” taunted the Index-Tribune, although she could well have been a bordello’s madam – and the law specifically mentioned, “any women…keeping a house of ill fame.” Others would accuse Morse of padding the rolls. A member of the State Board of Control shared with the I-T a letter where he made the unlikely charge that federal prisons were in cahoots with Morse, and wardens were lending her convicts in order to polish up her budget:

…The institution never had many of the class of women for which it was intended, namely prostitutes or street walkers. When criticism arose because the institution was costing about $1100 per capital per year, the superintendent ‘borrowed’ a number of narcotic addicts who were under federal conviction, thinking that by increasing the inmates the per capita rate would be decreased…

Hammered by critics, by the end of 1922 – when the Home had been active only about seven months – a bitter fight was already underway to keep it open for even another year.

The Sacramento Bee came out strongly against it, as did bureaucrats and politicians with influence and oversight responsibilities. Themes emerged: The women should be treated in regular state hospitals or imprisoned; the property should be used for a more deserving cause; if the women’s clubs wanted the Home so badly they should pay for it and make it their charity. On the other side, the state League of Women Voters vowed to fight closure and many women’s clubs demanded the project even needed to be expanded. Some clubs pledged to raise money.

Governor Richardson’s recommendations for its 1923 budget was chopped down to about twenty percent of what he asked, which clearly wasn’t enough to continue operations. Morse went to Sacramento ready to surrender. Then this happened:

Just after Miss Blanche Morse, superintendent of the Sonoma prison farm for Delinquent Women, had finished telling the joint legislative committee holding hearing upon the Richardson budget that she was about to recommend temporary suspension of the institution, word was flashed over the wires telling of the total destruction of the home by fire.

“Sonoma Valley’s beautiful landmark, The Castle, for 40 years nestled against the Buena Vista hills, is today a blackened ruins, for the building, since 1921 used to house women delinquents of the state of California, suddenly broke into flames Monday night at 6:15 and burned to the ground…” read the lede in the Sonoma Index-Tribune on March 17, 1923.

The fire began while the 65 inmates were starting supper and was well underway before a member of the Sebastiani family saw it from their house and called the fire department.

All managers were away that evening with Blanche Morse and the Home’s business manager in Sacramento and the farm manager off duty, leaving only a groundskeeper and attendants to cope with a life-threatening emergency. Everyone sought shelter in the hospital; even though it was made of brick, there must have been fear and panic as the immense building next to them blazed away for three hours. All of their clothing and personal items in their top floor dormitory were lost.

The Sonoma and Boyes Springs fire departments responded. The Index-Tribune wrote, “…When the fire departments arrived they found the farm water supply of little value owing to repairs which were being made to the reservoir, so the Sonoma engine therefore pulled water from a nearby creek. Despite four streams playing on the building it burned like tinder.”

A later view of the mansion at Buena Vista, probably c. 1920. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library

The I-T rushed to suggest inmates had set the fire. A few years later the paper fleshed out the rumor in more detail: “It was common talk in Sonoma that an inmate boasted she had set the fire — the last of three conflagrations in the building — had locked the door where the flames were started and thrown the key out of the window…” Today it seems commonly believed that it was indeed arson.

But less than three weeks earlier there had been a major fire because of a “defective flue” (no details were ever provided). So serious was the incident that the Sonoma firemen had to chop several holes in the roof to get it under control. Repairs were ordered and the very day of the big fire, a local contractor was working on the problem flue. It seems far more likely the building was destroyed because a workman accidentally did something (knocked loose creosote buildup?) which caused a chimney fire the next time the fireplace was used.

Although the old mansion was destroyed, the state still owned the land and its valuable hospital. Led by indomitable Mrs. Aaron Schloss – the feminist who almost singlehanded turned California clubwomen into a formidable political bloc – the women’s club organizations immediately began to lobby hard for a new building so the Home could resume its purpose.

The pushback was fierce, critical of not only rebuilding any facility for women at Buena Vista but continuing the project at all. Gilbert B. Daniels, State Board of Control chairman said, “If it is the last thing I do, I’ll oppose that farm. It is a fad.” The director of the State Department of Institutions called it a boondoggle and a failed experiment. And as always, from the Index-Tribune’s columns plentiful sexism oozed: The law only passed originally because legislators were “stampeded by the petticoat brigade” and the only people who wanted the Home to reopen were “women theorists and job chasers.”

But even though the governor wanted to give it funding for another year at least, the California Industrial Farm for Women ceased to exist on June 30, 1923.

Over the next two years many ideas of what to do with the hospital were floated. The Sonoma County Federation of Women’s Clubs wanted it to be a children’s TB sanitarium. A veteran’s home was suggested as well as an orphanage for children of WWI vets run by the American Legion, which was proposed by Jack London’s sister Mrs. Eliza Shepard, state president of the women’s auxiliary. In 1924 it unofficially became sort of an annex of the nearby Sonoma State Home at Eldridge, when they housed 35 epileptic boys at the hospital.

The women’s club movement was split; some moved on to lobby for new female quarters at San Quentin (it was built in 1927).6 But in 1925, there was a last push by some clubwomen to revive a woman-only institution at Buena Vista.

A bill was introduced to construct an actual prison building for a “California Women’s Reformatory.” Housed there would be women felons, drug addicts, and “women committed under the provision of the act establishing the California Industrial Farm for Women.” A group from Sonoma county went to the capitol to lobby against it; some, like Eliza Shepard, thought such a place was a good idea, but just didn’t want it in our county. The party rehashed all the old horror stories about inmates escaping and causing havoc – until a legislator produced a letter from Sonoma City Marshal Albertson “denying that wild women had ever given anyone trouble.”

A test vote easily passed in the Assembly and according to the I-T, “Senators had apparently pledged support to not antagonize ‘the army of women lobbying for this bill’ and hoped the governor would veto it.” He obliged, and that was that.

Whatever anyone’s opinion of the Home’s purpose, its ending was tragic, particularly the terrible loss of that building, which was the largest and most palatial home ever built in Sonoma county. It’s also a shame we don’t know what really went on there, except through the spittle-flecked pages of the Sonoma Index-Tribune. Blanche Morse was required to keep detailed reports on all the inmates, so there are probably reams of data in the state archives. Maybe there’s a grad student out there looking for an interesting thesis topic.

Morse certainly thought it was successful; during her testimony on the day of the fire she said, “so far 60 per cent of those who had been freed had made good in the occupations to which they were sent.”

“…I believe that if a 15 per cent average of those who make good can be maintained in the future we will be doing extremely well…I do not think it reasonable to expect a woman who has lived the life of the streets for twenty years to completely reform in one year.”

For the 65 women who were at the Home following the big fire, however, there would be only incarceration – and worse. Before winding up this dismal coda to our story, remember the women were sent there for up to five years only on the fuzzy charge of vagrancy after having been denied their basic constitutional rights. Nor had a county “lunacy commission” been convened to determine whether any of them were mentally unfit.

As they couldn’t remain confined in the small hospital for long, the plan was to gradually resettle them at Eldridge. Two days after the disaster, four of the inmates sent there escaped and had to be recaptured by long-suffering Deputy Ryan. The same day he was called to the hospital, where the women were said (by the Index-Tribune) to be rioting. Five of them were carted to the Napa State Hospital. A five year commitment to an asylum would be no fun, but it was the women taken to Eldridge who most deserve pity.

By 1923, the Sonoma State Home had become virtually a factory operation of forced sterilization under superintendent Dr. Fred O. Butler, a firm believer in eugenics (see, “SONOMA COUNTY AND EUGENICS“). Between 1919 and 1949 about 5,400 were sterilized there – “We are not sterilizing, in my opinion, fast enough,” Butler said. And in his early years there was also a marked shift in the types of patients arriving at Eldridge: Instead of the “feeble-minded children” of the old days, a large proportion of the inmates were now female “sexual delinquents.”7

Just as the legislature in 1919 gave the state broad powers over delinquent women, they also authorized forced sterilization of inmates, including any “recidivist has been twice convicted for sexual offenses, or three times for any other crime in any state or country” (emphasis mine). A later amendment extended it to include, “…those suffering from perversion or marked departures from normal mentality, or from diseases of a syphilitic nature.” In other words, there can be no doubt that all of the Buena Vista women were sterilized – the only question is whether Butler also performed some of the other horrific experimental genital surgeries which were described in part one.

There’s never been a book written about the Home, or even an article (well, until now). Was it was successful rehab program far ahead of its time or just a misguided social experiment by do-gooders? Or something in between?

What’s certain, however, is it ended up badly for almost all of the women. Picked off the streets on some misdemeanor – soliciting, drunkenness, homelessness – they expected a fine and a few days in county jail. Instead they were sent to state prison (albeit a beautiful prison) indefinitely. And then after a few weeks or months a few found themselves confined to the madhouse, while most of them discovered the punishment for their minor crimes would be going under Dr. Butler’s eager knives.

 

1 This era was the start of America’s faith that an “IQ test” objectively measured intelligence with scientific precision, although we now recognize the exam was filled with cultural and racial bias – see my discussion here. Using such quack methodology, a 1917 study by the San Francisco Dept. of Health claimed about 2 out of 3 prostitutes examined were “feeble-minded” or “borderline.”

2 Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom by Wendy Kline; University of California Press 2005, pg. 47. Although I could find no newspaper articles mentioning the 110 women arrived, Kline is the authority on Eldridge for that era and had access to the institution’s records.

3 Sonoma Index-Tribune clippings in the scrapbook sometimes were reprints of articles from the Sacramento Bee and Bay Area newspapers, but all clips are consistently negative about the Home. An op/ed in the January 13, 1923 I-T suggests the other regional newspaper, the Sonoma Valley Expositor, was in support of the Home, but nothing from that paper was included in the scrapbook. Scattered issues of the Expositor from the early 1920s only can be found at the state library in Sacramento.

4 Gender and the Business of Americanization: A Study of the Mobilized Women of Berkeley by Rana Razek; Ex Post Facto/SFSU; 2013 (PDF)

5 From the March 17, 1923 Sonoma Index-Tribune: “Senator Walter McDonald of San Francisco declared that he did not believe the women were being treated fairly in that they can be sentence to the home for a term not to exceed five years, while men charged with vagrancy, the charge under which all commitments have been made to the home, can receive only six months in the county jails of the state.”

6 A Germ of Goodness: The California State Prison System, 1851-1944 by Shelley Bookspan, University of Nebraska Press, 1991; pg. 81

7 op. cit. Building a Better Race, pg. 54

Collage of Sonoma Index-Tribune headlines, 1922-1925

 

 

MANAGERS ASKED TO COOPERATE
Would Establish an Institution for High Grade Morons at the Estate of the Sonoma State Home.

Representatives of the Probation Committee of San Francisco appeared before the board of managers of the Sonoma State Home at their meeting at Eldridge on Wednesday and asked the board for co-operation in the providing of cottages and a place for about three hundred delinquent women from the bay cities. They belong to a class designated as morons.

This step is said to be in the nature of an emergency measure on account of the unusual conditions that have arisen incident to the health protection of soldiers in camp in and around San Francisco. But long before the recent conditions that have arisen this matters was discussed at Eldridge.

The board of managers took no definite action in the premises other than promising whatever co-operation th«y could give. The delegation appearing before the board of managers wanted cottages built on the home grounds in some suitable location. There is no fund available for such buildings in the hands of the state at the present time and even though there was an available fund it is doubtful if the home estate is the proper place for an additional institution as that suggested.

– Press Democrat, November 16 1917

 

MUCH BUILDING AT STATE HOME
New Cottages for Female Delinquents to Be Rushed to Completion at an Early Date: New Laundry Building and Bakeshop Are Also to Be Built Right Away.

The Sonoma State Home at Eldridge will be the scene of much building for several months for there are a large cottage and the new laundry and the bake shop to he erected.

Work on the new cottage, which will house one hundred, has been commenced and it will be rushed to completion. As stated it will be used, for the present at any rate, as a moron colony, to which young women delinquents, will be committed from San Francisco and the other big centers. The matter was explained in these columns several days ago. From Manager Rolfe L. Thompson it was learned Wednesday that the work ot this building is to be rushed to completion right away.

The board of managers on Wednesday selected the sites for the laundry building and the bake shop. The two latter buildings will supply a long felt need at the home. They are very necessary buildings.

The State Board of Control has placed Business Manager William T Suttenfleld in charge of the construction work on the buildings. He is a splendidly capable man and is always so busy working for the interests of the institution and the state that one more little burden makes little difference to him. “Bill” has been at the Sonoma State Home for almost a score of years.

– Press Democrat, March 14 1918


OPPOSITION TO MORON COLONY
Many People in Sonoma Valley and the Town Object to Having the Colony Located With the Sonoma State Home for the Feeble Minded.

The people of the Sonoma valley and the old Mission Town of Sonoma are not taking very kindly to the idea of locating the “Moron Colony” at the Sonoma State Home for the Feeble Minded. Many protests are being heard and it is likely that a largely signed petition will be presented to the authorities, asking that the plan be not carried out.

In last Saturday’s Sonoma “Index-Tribune,” editorially, there was a strong protest against the additional institution being located in the Sonoma valley.

As stated in the Press Democrat some days ago the board of managers literally had the location of the colony at the home thrust upon them is an emergency measure, backed by the state and national administration, it was said.

There is considerable objection to having the moron colony established in connection with the feeble minded home, in addition to having it in the valley at all. The late medical superintendent. Dr. William J. G. Dawson, was bitterly opposed to having an institution for the care of socially outcast young women at Eldridge and shortly before his death again expressed his views.

There is said to be one ray of hope for the objectors and that is the one cottage that is to be built will only provide temporary relief for a very few of the young women who are to be removed from the big centres, particularly from the borders of army cantonments, as one building will afford only little room for conditions that are said to exist. It is knowm that the board of managers were reluctant to take in the new institution the grounds of the home, even as an emergency measure, but the showing made by the state authorities was so strong as a necessary war emergency measure that they withdrew their opposition.

– Press Democrat, March 19 1918

 

OBJECT TO LOCATION OF STATE HOME

The Sonoma Valley is still seething in protest against the establishment of the home for moron women and girls at Eldridge. Dr. A. M. Thompson, president of the commerce chamber, voices his protest in the following words:

“My protest not only goes against the location of the new institution in the Sonoma Valley, but particularly having it at the home for the feeble-minded. The late Dr. Dawson, the medical superintendent for many years, held the same views as I do–that the feeble-minded home had its problems to take care of without having any new ones.”

– Petaluma Courier, March 22, 1918

 

MAKES PLEA FOR FEEBLEMINDED
Senator Slater Leads Opposition to Proposed New Penal Institution or Farm For Delinquent Women and Urges More Room for Unfortunates

“Before we take on a horde of other dependents I believe the State should take care of those who are already dependent and must and should have attention first.” said Senator Slater before the Finance and Ways and Means Committee last night, when the proposed new penal institution or farm for delinquent women was discussed.

“At the Sonoma State Home for the Feeble Minded we have a waiting list of 447, and many of these cases are deserving in the fullest sense. In fact many of them heart-breaking in their need right now. Take the $250,000 you are asking for this women’s farm vision and build more cottages to house the dependents waiting, and who have been waiting for years to get the help and protection the State should offer.

“If the finances were available the new project, over which I have no quarrel as to its probable good, might be considered. But the State must stop somewhere when we are at our wits ends over taxes and finances, and particularly when we have hundreds of feeble-minded and other dependents who are crying for aid. Let’s care for these first. That is my idea, and I am sincere in my expression on this subject,” said Slater. Senators Ingram. Sharkey and others, and Assemblymen Salahnn. Stanley Brown, Stevens,. Madison and others agreed with Slater.

– Press Democrat, March 2 1919

 

Club Women From Various Parts Of County Assemble At Interesting Petaluma Session

The other speakers from abroad were Miss Blanche Morse of Berkeley, former corresponding secretary of the State Federation, and at present executive secretary of the State Industrial Farm Commission…Miss Morse, who will be the superintendent of the Industrial Farm which is to be situated in this county at “The Castle” the Kate Johnson estate near Sonoma, told of the needs for the home and the plans of the commission in reference to it. She met the objections raised in connection with the project and asked the cooperation or at least the interest of the Sonoma county women in the scheme when once it is under way.

– Press Democrat, October 3, 1920

 

S. F. POLICE HEAD AT NEW STATE HOME
Industrial Farm For Women, Near Sonoma, Not to Be Like a Prison; There Will Be No Bars.

The following article about the new industrial farm for women located near Sonoma appeared in Monday’s San Francisco Bulletin. It was written by Dolores Waldorf:

A prison that is not a prison, a jail without bars, an institution that spurns the stigma of the name, stands in the hills of Sonoma county today, waiting for its first inmate. It is to be known as the California industrial farm for women, a place where delinquent women over 18 years of age may make a fight to regain a normal view of life and where they may prepare themselves to face the world after their term ha* been served. The sentences will vary from six months to five years.

The house and surroundings were inspected Saturday hy Police Judges Sylvain Lazarus and Lile T. Jacks, Chief of Police Daniel O’Brlen and Captain of Detectives Duncan Matheson. They expressed their approval in emphatic terms and seemed to think that it offered the solution to one of the greatest problems before the criminal courts today.

In 1919 the legislature passed a bill providing for such a place and appropriated $150,000 to start work. Nothing could be done until the board was chosen, however. and in 1920 the governor appointed…

680 ACRES IN FARM

Since then men have been steady at work carrying out the plans. The Kate Johnson home, two miles east of Sonoma was purchased for $50,000. This included 680 acres of land mostly under cultivation. The house itself is a huge, rambling mansion with spacious rooms and great hallways. Though the whole place has been completely renovated new plumbing installed and modern conveniences added in the laundry, there is an air of ancient and settled serenity about it. The house will accommodate about seventy women.

Captain of Detectives Duncan Matheson, who attended to the purchasing and remodeling of the home, said of it during the inspection Saturday: “In choosing, a place, we had to think of two things Isolation and cheerfulness. Who couldn’t he cheerful with these hills around them?”

Miss Blanche Morse, recently ot Berkeley, and an active worker in all suffrage and reform movements, has been appointed superintendent of the farm.

SANS THE LOCKSTEP

“We are going to give the inmates work to do,” she said, “but we are not going to apply the institutional idea and make them do it to bells and march-time. Each woman will help around the house in some way.” Miss Jessie Wheelan of the Southern California hospital for the insane, is to have charge ot the indoor work.

– Press Democrat, December 20, 1921

 

Read More