by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With this fourth part of a post on some of the early history of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, we take up the situation in the last half the first decade of the 20th century as the facility continued to grow and serve as many young residents as possible with increasing demand in the burgeoning metropolis.
Reliant on charitable contributions from citizens, the board of managers of the association operating the hospital maintained a reliance on amateur and professional theatricals at some of the Angel City’s finest venues. In February 1906, for example, the Mason Opera House hosted a performance of “The Toy Shop,” which, an advertisement declared, “the young folks and the old should see this jolly show. To portray dolls in the titular establishment, 250 “young folks” appeared in what was billed as “a children’s opera.”
In November 1909, a much larger spectacle was presented at Temple Auditorium, located in the Baptist church of that name across from Pershing Square at the northeast corner of Olive and Fifth streets. The play “Professor Napoleon,” which was billed as a “mammoth musical extravaganza of college life,” featured a massive cast of 720, including a group of Anglo women dancers in Japanese costume. Although proceeds were not specified, the well-reviewed performance appears to have drawn large crowds.
On the amateur side, almost three dozen students from the Sonneschein School presented a version of “Sleeping Beauty” on 29 May 1908, with the four to six year-olds doing so “almost without help from their teachers” and dressed in 16th century costume and performing “several little songs and dances.”
Other important fundraisers included a week-long Shriners “circus, menagerie museum, Hippodrome and Wild West” show operated in conjunction with well-known Sells-Floto organization, and offered for a week in April 1908 at Prager Park, located at the corner of Washington and Grand avenues. The Homestead’s collection has a photo connected to this offering, so we’ll look to put together a post about it at a future date.
Musical performances included ones in May at the Mason facility that was under the guidance of a National Mothers’ Congress, which involved what were known as “child study circles: and in early November at the University/St. James Park house of utility official Walter B. Cline and his wife Clara with 40 youngsters with the Maria Louise Society hoping to endow a room, which would involve $5,000 while the group had only 30% of the funds to date, and 14 of them comprising an orchestra. As noted in an earlier part of this post, this function involved themed booths employing fairy tales, gypsy and Japanese motifs.
On 15 May 1909, another fundraising event was held at the Boyle Heights estate of former mayor and city treasurer William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, with his wife Maria (pronounced Mar-aye-ah) as a patroness and their daughters Mary Julia and Gertrude as assistants. The May Day gathering was under the auspices of the Los Angeles Kindergarten Club of the State Normal School for teacher education and Mary Julia was a product of that institution and member of the organization.
In November 1907, the Los Angeles Record reported, Kennith Fether and his dog, Georgia, entertained the patients at the hospital and it recorded that “there was real laughter in the eyes of the patient little sufferers as Georgia walked on two feet, sat up and pranced for their amusement” and as young “smiling-faced, happy little” Kennith demonstrated “genuine sympathy and good fellowship” from his “chubby face.” It was added that “sunshine is looked upon as a guest of honor rather than an every-day caller” and “playthings are fondled with a love that comes of long usage” while “child faces wear the mark of suffering, heroically borne.”
A week later, the paper noted that “wealthy children will help little cripples in Children’s Hospital” as “the wish to aid the suffering little inmates . . . was not just a passing fancy with the boys and girls who live in ease and comfort” in the University Park area near the University of Southern California. An “unpretentious entertainment” was held at a residence and the efforts therein “fell on fertile ground and have already produced a crop of deeds that will bring sunshine into young lives for days to come,” including money raised to buy a wheelchair. This was followed by a visit to the facility with three young persons playing with the patients.
Holiday activities were also regular occurrences, especially for Christmas. The Los Angeles Herald of 22 December 1905 went into detail about the expectations of patients like Wallace, who wore a cast because of spinal issues, and hoped for an operating automobile toy; Fred, the eldest of the patients and who was recovering from a severe foot injury, who hoped to be able to return home for the holiday; 11-year old Frieda who acted as a mother figure to the younger ones, including providing a drink to a two-year-old Mexican girl and said, after some provoking, that she wanted a doll buggy from Santa Claus; and Pablo, a six-year old, who “is willing to trust everything to Santa.”
The paper, on Christmas Eve 1906, observed that Santa, played by Belasco Theatre stage manager George W. Barnum, paid a visit to the youngsters, including the thirteen current patients and another seventeen others released in the past few months, but who returned to celebrate the holidays with the others. Candles in blue, green, red and yellow colors were placed among the branches of the pine Christmas tree, with silver and gold tinsel and “diamond dust” to simulate snow completing the décor, while presents for all thirty children were under it.
The 20 December 1908 edition of the Herald included a couple of holiday letters penned by young Angelenos, with 15-year-old Helen M. Howell of Highland Park writing that she would “carry my Christmas cheer to the children’s hospital to gladden the hearts of those who are unable to run and play” as well as to bring gifts. 12-year old Irene Slater, a resident of Redondo Beach wrote of a visit to the facility so she could “give all the little children a nice present.” There were also frequent requests in the papers for gifts by donors to the patients.
The Los Angeles Times of 4 November 1906 summarized a Halloween party thrown by the aforementioned Maria Louise Society as a “jolly lawn fete” at the Cline estate, at which “round-faced babes with saucy bows on nodding heads mingled freely with older sisters, and small boys in the knee-pants stage were on terms of equality with their superior big brothers.” More booths and fairy gardens included “chubby-faced witches [which] flitted happily hither and thither,” while there were “little Jap maidens,” in costume, that is, as well. Fortune-telling, a mandolin orchestra of 20 youngsters, a “witches’ caldron” with treats and shadow plays were other elements.
Some reports of note concerned problems, perceived or real, at the hospital. In April 1906, Mary Langdon, arrested two years prior in San Diego and wanted in St. Louis for stealing money from a concessionaire (the only woman so licensed) from the World’s Fair of 1904, was accused of embezzling some $560 for a hospital event. After a spate of crime near the facility, as well as one $6 theft from a nurse’s desk, a late August 1907 incident took place in which a purported burglar was confronted by superintendent Amy Smith, who produced a pistol and peeled off two shots at the man, who turned out to be a hearing-impaired local janitor seeking help for his sick wife. It turned out that, several days prior, Smith shot at another presumed interloper.
A review of the newspapers during this period includes a significant number of death notices for young patients at the hospital, a reflection of the child mortality that was so much higher than in our era. While many of these were from diseases, most of which have been eliminated or greatly reduced by vaccines and advances in medical care, others were for chronic conditions, some of which can be presumed to have been endemic from birth.
Yet, there were others that came from a range of accidents, including being children being hit by streetcars, automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles, those burned by scalding water, gasoline or in other ways, and other terrible causes. Mabel Cooper, who, with a young boy, was shot in July 1905 by another girl, was hit in the brain and, despite being in mortal danger for several days, survived, though she was paralyzed on one side and had other aftereffects.
In July 1909, three-and-a-half year old Alexander Spalding was playing with matches and gasoline that he found on the rear porch of the family house after his mother cleaned some ribbons and was consumed by flames as he ran screaming into the house. While the father smothered the child in bedclothes, the mother ran to a doctor’s house, but found him away, while neighbors put oiled dressings on the child, whose grandmother died just the day before, until an ambulance from the hospital arrived. The Herald of the 19th continued,
The little sufferer lingered for several hours and passed the time talking to his parents and his playmate. Finally realizing that he had but a few minutes to live, the little fellow threw his arms around his mother’s neck, told her how much he loved her, and how sorry he was to have to die and leave her. He then whispered the same message to his father and called to his little playmate and told him good by. Then, with a smile on his disfigured face, the brave little fellow closed his eyes and was dead.
While this was among the more dramatic of the articles located, there were others that were heart-wrenching to read. In late 1904, another child, 9-year-old Hazel Elden, was badly burned in a bonfire at her family residence and hundreds of persons responded to a call to donate small pieces of skin to graft onto the young patient—the intricate procedure, however, failed to stave off infection and, after five weeks, Hazel succumbed to her terrible injuries.
In August 1907, Marcia Rains, who was “the life of the guests at Hotel Catalina” in downtown Los Angeles, but who suffered from kidney cancer, died at the hospital, despite the report in the Herald of the 14th that she was “cheerful and lovable in her affliction of invalidism.” This occurred even as parents were enmeshed in marital discord, including the father’s reported drunkenness, despite their daughter’s dire condition.
Other accounts noted patients who were living in dysfunctional households and, in some instances, were assisted with finding other homes on release, such as the March 1906 case of Howard Curran, of whom the matron related, “a sweeter or more lovable disposition I never saw in a child.” While the young man’s stepmother showed a desire to help raise Howard, the father was “hardly a fit and proper person to be given the care of a child,” so other arrangements were being sought.
In May 1905, nine-year-old Zobiana Gervais was brutally beaten with a rawhide strap by her 22-year-old brother, William, purportedly because she misplaced fifteen cents while their father was away. He asserted she spent the money on candy and claimed she lost the sum, but a Humane Society officer assigned to investigate told a judge that the “muscular iron molder” was raised in such a way that he was not aware of the damage done to his little sister. Remarkably, the jurist handed down a lecture and a $10 fine to William Gervais, who was sent back home with the injured sibling.
We’ll conclude this part with excerpts from a poem by Earl A. Brininstool, whose verses were frequently published in local papers, about the recent death at the hospital of 4-year-old Edward Hutchison, the son of a lawyer and who had an abscess on his thigh bone. The boy, called the “Little Colonel,” perhaps after a famous series of children’s books at the time, was partly memorialized with these lines:
It seems as though but yesterday
The clasp of fingers, moist and sweet
Were yours, and that you heard at play,
The pattering of baby feet;
The little lisping evening prayer,
You recollect it through your tears;
His baby songs will echo there,
Adown the long and lonely years . . .
The little garments that he wore—
You fondle them with tender care;
His playthings strewn about the floor,
Still wait his childish pleasure there . . .
Yet, God remembers, and He gives
To you the sacred, golden key
Of memory, that ever lives,
And which with you fore’er shall be,
And you may there unlock the door,
And see a rosy, smiling face,
And feel soft baby arms once more,
About you in a glad embrace.