by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As has been observed here in several posts, greater Los Angeles became a “health-seeker’s paradise” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as hordes of locals and visitors flocked to numerous sanitariums in the region to seek a variety of treatments for a plethora of illnesses from tuberculosis to nervous prostration and many others.
While there were such institutions in Los Angeles, Glendale and other local cities, the mecca for the sanitarium seeker was in the San Gabriel Valley, specifically towns and communities along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, from Altadena eastward. La Viña, in Altadena, was recently mentioned in a post here, while Monrovia had several with Pottenger’s being the best known, and El Reposo in Sierra Madre was also recently highlighted on this blog.
In 1940, towards the end of the sanitarium era, which largely ended after World War II, Harry and Lois Brown of Monrovia acquired the 92-acre Homestead, where their three sons attended military school several years prior, and opened their El Encanto Sanitarium, now known as El Encanto Healthcare Center, including in the historic Workman House and the Temple family’s La Casa Nueva.
The highlighted object from the Homestead’s collection for this post is a postcard issued, probably in 1909 and with a postmark from 25 November 1911, by the Long Beach Sanitarium, which operated in that burgeoning coastal city for about fifteen years from 1908-1923 at what is now the Dignity Health-St. Mary Medical Center. The card, which was sent without a message to a recipient in Stockton, California, features a collage of images, including the expansive facilities of what had been the Long Beach Hospital, as well as views of a couple playing tennis, bathers frolicking in the surf, and a sailboat on the placid Pacific. A brief description reads:
The LONG BEACH SANITARIUM, 10th St. and Linden Ave., Long Beach, Cal. A strictly modern medical and surgical HEALTH RESORT, where the famous BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM methods are used and given the same as at Battle Creek. A specialty is made of scientific electrical treatments of every description. Write for FREE booklet TODAY. W. Ray Simpson, Manager, Long Beach, Cal.
The reference to Battle Creek is vital, as it relates both to the Seventh Day Adventist Church and its views on health and healthcare and the Kellogg brothers, who established the sanitarium as well as the Kellogg food empire, now known just in the last several weeks as Kellanova. Simpson and his second wife, Dr. Abbie Winegar, were proprietors of the sanitarium until 1921, and had interesting back stories worth delving into briefly.
William Ray Simpson (1862-1940) was born in Macon, Missouri, northwest of St. Louis, but spent much of his early life in southern Kentucky, where his father, William G., was a farmer. By the early 1890s, however, the Simpsons were in Delta, Colorado, in the western section of that state, where they ran a successful hardware business.
In September 1893, W. Ray achieved national renown when the McCarty gang of bandits, a trio of brothers and one of the men’s sons, robbed the town’s Farmers’ and Merchants’ Bank. Hearing the commotion as one of the bank tellers was shot and killed, Simpson grabbed a shotgun and, as the trio fled on horseback, he fired at all of them and, from a considerable distance, killed Bill McCarty and his son Fred, with the former’s brother Tom able to escape.
With his local notoriety, Simpson ran for political office and, that failing, was appointed postmaster of Delta by President Grover Cleveland, while he also managed the town’s opera house. Within several years, however, he, his wife and their three daughters relocated to Battle Creek, where Simpson became the manager of the Kellogg family’s health food company. Presumably, he’d converted to the Seventh Day Adventist Church and his hardware store background may have served him well with his new position. In April 1900, however, he lost his father and wife in the same week and raised his children as a single father for a few years.
Martha Abigail Winegar (1865-1949) hailed from the Oregon town of Canyon City, situated in the east-central part of the state. One of eight children, Abbie, as she was generally known, attended the University of Michigan and then became a rare woman graduate of a medical school, when she completed her studies at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois in 1894.
Soon after, she was hired at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, operated by John H. Kellogg, whose brother Will K. became the founder of the family food empire—and much later purchased property near Pomona where he established a famous Arabian horse-breeding operation and where California Polytechnic University, Pomona is today. The Spokane [Washington] Chronicle, in its 24 July 1900 edition, just after Simpson lost his wife and father, briefly discussed her with the headline “Is A Famous Lady Doctor,” observing
She is considered next to Dr. Kellogg, in charge of the famous sanitarium, and is the head lady doctor of the Seventh Day Adventists all over the United States . . . Preparations are being made to receive the well known lady, and she will deliver several lectures while in the city on Battle Creek ideas.
The “Battle Creek Idea,” as it was often known, followed the Seventh Day Adventists’ abhorrence, based on the teachings of founders James and Ellen White, of medications and drugs and promoted a healthy, vegetarian diet (which is where the Kellogg cereals, like their famous corn flakes, came into prominence), as well as treatments using baths and, as the postcard noted, “scientific electrical treatments.” Winegar, and her sister Lucy, who also worked at the Sanitarium, became noted lecturers on health and diet based on the “Idea.”
While there was talk of establishing a Battle Creek-affiliated sanitarium in Spokane, Winegar headed to California, where, in the 11 June 1902 edition of the Petaluma Courier, it was noted she was working at St. Helena, now a major part of the Napa County wine industry and where a sanitarium was established nearly a quarter century by another Kellogg, Merritt, and which is now a Seventh Day Adventists hospital.
At San Francisco, in early March 1903, Simpson and Winegar were married and they remained at St. Helena briefly before heading south to greater Los Angeles. The 28 July 1903 edition of the Los Angeles Times reported that Ray Simpson was in Anaheim talking to local officials about the possibility of establishing a sanitarium, though nothing was realized. The Long Beach Telegram of 6 January 1904 noted that he offered to open an enterprise there if certain unstated conditions were made, but his overtures were rejected.
By mid-1905, however, the Simpsons were in Glendale, where an ornate hotel from the great Boom of the 1880s (there were many of these in greater Los Angeles) was acquired by the Adventists from the town’s major developer, Leslie Brand. The couple stayed there for about two-and-a-half years before picking up stakes and heading down to Long Beach—as in St. Helena, the Glendale Sanitarium is now an Adventist hospital.
The 16 November 1907 of the Telegram reported that the directors of the Long Beach Hospital agreed to a deal with Ray Simpson, said to be “proprietor of the Glendale sanitarium,” but also referred to as general manager while Abbie was the head doctor, by which the hospital “would pass into the hands of parties who would conduct it on Battle Creek sanitarium plans.” The terms were by a ten-year lease of 5% of the property’s valuation of $65,000 during the first five years and 7% afterward, with an option to buy at that price. Because the Simpsons were already pursuing plans for two treatment buildings and a park, costing $8,000, it seemed clear he would purchase the compound, which they did.
Arriving shortly afterward from the Philippines, where he was a civilian physician for the occupying American government, was Dr. Preston S. Kellogg, yet another of the Battle Creek family, though while he assumed duties with Abbie Simpson, Kellogg soon after returned to the Asian archipelago with an extension of his former duties there. The chief health officer for Long Beach, Dr. W. Harriman Jones, then joined the sanitarium as a replacement for Kellogg.
At the start of 1908, patients began to be welcomed officially to the facility and local press coverage was sure to note some of the more prominent patients and guests—there was a notable combination of those coming basically as tourists, those seeking treatment for nervous conditions and those needing general medical care. Included were a capitalist from Spokane, where Abbie Simpson spent some time as noted above, as well as a former Utah state supreme court justice, and prominent names were clearly a selling point for the institution.
The 7 March 1908 edition of the Long Beach Press included a lengthy description of a “‘Personally Conducted’ Tour” of the sanitarium and the paper commented
A visit to the Sanitarium is full of pleasant and profitable interest. The place breathes a homely reposeful and cheery atmosphere, from the moment one turns up the pretty flowered bordered walk and enters the building on his tour of inspection . . . The amber California sunlight which has been the inspiration for many a nature poet floods the place and while one is looking about or waiting to be shown through the place he feels he is getting a sun bath thrown in.
A parlor was in a soothing green color and there were “furnishings in excellent taste,” while guests sewed, read or conversed, with some visitors “people of note who have enjoyed the delights of extensive sojourning in many lands.” During the tour, questions were directed at staff about the “Battle Creek Idea” and it was noted “the food reform is in vogue there . . . [and] which include a multitude of tasty digestible and wholesome dishes.”
The reporter continued that “as you enter the dining room, you see these health foods which really look appetizing.” Venturing further into the facility, the writer observed the “bright cheery rooms on each side with an abundance of sun and air,” while a visit to the “sun parlor” meant the opportunity to “linger a minute enjoying the splendid view of the surroundings.” As for the treatment rooms, “there is the . . . electric light bath, there are the sprays, showers and dozens of other appliances [for water treatment].”
With respect to the proprietors, some of their background was provided with respect to their ties to Battle Creek and the journalist added, “they are charming and courteous and make one feel at home.” Abbie, moreover, “gives lectures in the parlors of the Sanitarium twice a week and these talks are full of practical suggestions in general health building.” Additionally, some of the guests lecture on “their varied travel experiences in both the old and the new world for the enjoyment of the fellow members of the Sanitarium family.”
Abbie and her sister Lucy also became part of a major Chautauqua assembly in summer 1908, a popular program throughout the country in those years and especially in Long Beach, as the doctor focused on a “School of Health” while Lucy conducted a “School of Cooking.” The 8 December 1909 edition of the Telegram briefly noted that “the Long Beach sanitarium has distributed by mail from the local postoffice about 40,000 postcards, prettily illustrated,” so it may be that the card featured here is one of those.
The 7 March 1910 issue of the paper featured an exchange of letters from a Colorado Springs doctor to Simpson and the latter’s reply about what C.A. Dennis wrote was a warning given to his wife, who was looking for a sanitarium, that “some friends of hers who live in Los Angeles . . . told her not to go to Long Beach.” These friends advised Mrs. Dennis to go to the Bimini baths west of downtown or to Ocean Park at Santa Monica “for salt air outings” instead and asserted that Long Beach “is too foggy, too damp, too low, the wind from the ocean too cold, the place too lonesome, and there is [sic] no nice places to go, no nice parks to sit in, or nothing to entice one out in the open, etc., etc.”
This getting Simpson’s dander up, the sanitarium manager responded with professions of surprise at such criticisms, telling Dennis, “we came to Long Beach more on account of the climactic conditions than any other one thing.” He added that he’d been in greater Los Angeles for some eight years and proclaimed, “I do not consider that there is another point in California that will equal the all-year-around climate of Long Beach.” He boasted that the environment there was warmer, drier, less foggy and less wet and with less cold weather than the Angel City and that temperatures did not much fluctuate between day and night.
Simpson asserted that “the nearer you get to the mountains the worse it is for nervous people” and he added that Glendale was even worse than Los Angeles. The sanitarium, being ten blocks from the ocean was in a “warm belt” and sheltered from “cold, raw winds” emanating from the beach. Allowing that Bimini was “all right for some people,” he continued that
It is certainly a grave mistake when any one claims that California people do not go to Long Beach. It is no uncommon thing for as high as 50,000 people to come here in a single day. We have all the nice parks that are necessary for this sized town . . . There is not a place anywhere else in this part of the country better adapted to nervous cases than the Long Beach Sanitarium and we trust you will decide to bring her on at once.
The 7 November 1910 edition of the Long Beach Press highlighted the institution’s “Static machine” with the paper reporting that “the weird electric current may be so completely controlled that 50,000 volts may be sent through the human body and the only sensation which results to the person so treated is one of buoyancy and exhilarating delight.” Moreover, it was stated that this staggering voltage involved the spectacle that “tiny blue flames of electricity will wave startlingly but gently and harmlessly from the ends of the finger tips in spectacular array.” Beyond “the reproduction of the lightning,” there was “the thunder clapp [sic] . . . as real as any heard in the sky.”
The Static machine was accounted as the largest in use on the Pacific coast “and it is only one of the many modern and scientific processes used by the magnificent institution in the healing of the sick.” The article concluded with the observation that “the same methods of treatment are used in Long Beach as are used at the Battle Creek Sanitarium” and “among the ailments which have been successfully treated by the use of the Static machine . . . are asthma, rheumatism, nerve troubles, headaches, etc.”
In fall 1914, William Workman Temple, grandson of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and the son of their daughter Antonia Margarita Workman and her husband F.P.F. Temple and who’d long resided in México before returning to Los Angeles when the revolution of 1910 burst forth, spent some time at the Long Beach Sanitarium. We’ll look to continue the story of the institution as part of a future post sharing letters William wrote to his brother Walter.