by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With the pneumonic plague epidemic, which killed some thirty Latinos in two areas of Los Angeles (downtown near today’s Union Station and in Belvedere Gardens, now East Los Angeles), declared officially over by mid-November 1924, there was still plenty of coverage regarding the outbreak in the Angel City press through the end of the month.
On the 16th, just after the announcement was made, the Los Angeles Times ran a feature headlined with “GOVERNOR GRATIFIED AT END OF PLAGUE MENACE,” and reported that the Golden State’s chief executive, Friend W. Richardson, had a meeting with State Health Board official, Dr. Walter M. Dickie, who handled the epidemic response, and then issued a formal statement that noted,
I am deeply gratified by his report that the outbreak has been successfully combatted and overcome.
Dr. Dickie and his assistants, with the co-operation of county and municipal authorities, acted expeditiously and effectively as soon as the situation was brought to their attention.
The trouble was confined to the area in which it appeared and never passed beyond the borders of the district under quarantine. The district quarantine has been lifted and State and community interests are preparing to adopt a program that will make a recurrence of this disease impossible here.
The paper added that “the pneumonic plague was stamped out in Los Angeles in fifteen days, a noteworthy achievement accomplished by modern medical science and the tireless efforts of a small group of health officials ad epidemiologists who have personally directed the fight.” In addition to Dickie, seven other physicians were saluted including the city health officer, Elmer R. Pascoe, and John L. Pomeroy, the health officer for Los Angeles County, while two state and three federal figures were also included.
In reviewing the history of the outbreak, the Times stated that “the nine deaths” that took place in four households among those attending the funeral of Luciana Sambrano, who died on 19 October four days after falling ill, “were not called to the attention of the Los Angeles Health Department until late in the afternoon on October 31. As noted before, Jesús Lujón was the first identified sufferer, having contracted the disease on 1 October, but, he survived, apparently because his was of the bubonic, or glandular, variety. It was added that state and federal officials were “immediately notified,” the quarantine imposed and anyone who’d been known to have contact with the nine deceased persons were put into isolation at the General Hospital, including folks from Belvedere, of which six blocks were sealed off, “though only a few houses contained suspected cases.”
The paper continued that those brought in to deal with the crisis had experience with epidemics dating back to the turn of the century and it was remarked that, while “there were thirty-three deaths in a list of thirty-six positive cases,” a terrible rate of mortality, “there was no case reported as coming from any locality outside the two quarantined areas” nor among anyone not having direct contact from those infected by the plague. Excepting a Spanish priest and an ambulance driver, presumed to be Anglo, “all of the victims were Mexicans who resided in infected houses, of which there were twelve.”
While there was plenty of factual, at least as was then known, information about the nature and localities of the outbreak, nothing was said about the conditions in which poor Latino families, in households relying on incomes earned in low-paying jobs, were forced to live with almost no investment whatever in the improvement of their neighborhoods not to mention how and from where the infected rat brought the plague, there was plenty of complaint about the perceived damage done by reports of the epidemic to the reputation of Los Angeles abroad.
In the Times’ columns, “Pen Points By the Staff,” this query got to heart of that concern, rather than of the environment in downtown and Belvedere:
Wonder if the fact that the pneumonic plague was stamped out here in ten days [actually fifteen] will be read as widely as the announcement that it had broken out here?
In its edition of the 27th, the paper, a most vociferous booster of all things Los Angeles, featured an article by staff correspondent John P. Gallagher, from Chicago in which it was reported that, “a group of twenty loyal sons of Southern California . . . are preparing to tour the United States this winter on behalf of their beloved Southland.” It was added that, “through lectures, radio talks and paid advertising they intend to refute the alarming propaganda of a hostile eastern press which they say has distorted the truth, twisted the facts and maliciously given wide publicity under glaring headlines to a few cases of so-called pneumonic plague, the “wrecking of the Los Angeles water system,” drought, and “devastating forest fires.”
The second item on the list pertained to bombings of the Los Angeles Aqueduct by Owens Valley persons angered at the loss of water in their eastern California region from which water was diverted to our area, while the others related to bone-dry conditions at the time. The reference to “so-called pneumonic plague” is notable, however, because the Times and other papers routinely referred to the disease in those terms, including the “Pen Points” columns of that very issue of the paper.
In any case, these apostles of advertising “the bare truth” about greater Los Angeles were determined, as “staunch believers in the future of the great empire of the Southwest” to counteract the negative publicity, which H.M. Nickerson of the Hotel Maryland in Pasadena, remarking,
Alarmists’ propaganda, widely disseminated throughout the East under scarehead lines has a decided tendency to adversely affect business conditions in Southern California. The eastern press gives prominent display to any misfortune that may overtake the Southland, but scarcely a word is printed on the prompt and efficient measures adopted by State and municipal officials for the protection of the people.
For instance, while widespread publicity was given to the so-called attack of pneumonic plague, not a word was mentioned of the fact that the outbreak took fewer lives than almost any on record nor of the fact that millions of dollars were appropriated to make recurrence of the disease impossible.
The statement of “millions of dollars appropriated” is wildly different that what the local media reported, as noted earlier in this post—in fact, $25,000 was appropriated by the Los Angeles City Council and a like amount being considered was withheld as spending of that initial appropriation was considered more than sufficient and there were no statements about state or federal financial support.
Echoing what was noted in our post here from Veterans Day on the late 1880s establishment of the Pacific Coast branch of the National Home for Disabled Veteran Soldiers, Nickerson was paraphrased as adding that “Southern California and the west coast of the United States by all laws of average are more immune to epidemic and plague than other sections of the country.” He amplified this point by asserting that the “tenements and rat infested districts of the crowded and insanitary conditions of some of the larger eastern cities” were far more likely to lead to plague epidemics than the Angel City and its environs.
Simply calling for fair play, Nickerson concluded, was worthless and the only way to properly inform Americans outside of our region “of the wonderful opportunities of the Southland, its unsurpassed climatic conditions, relative freedom from disease and suffering, untrammeled liberty under law and industrial freedom [this parroting the Times’ plain view about its “open shop,” or nonunion, sentiments], is by lectures, radio talks and paid advertising.” One could question, however, how “industrial freedom” played a part in fomenting the environments in which the “so-called” plague operated.
The following day’s Times included a brief report from Pasadena that “beginning today and lasting for three days all Pasadena will be in the throes of letter writing to eastern friends” as some 40,000 missives were to be sent to broadcast “the wonders of Southern California and also branding propaganda about the ‘terrible Los Angeles pneumatic plague’ as false.” The Crown City’s Chamber of Commerce provided the materials for such correspondence (naturally, there would be a flood of posts, tweets and other social media offerings) and images of the city included along with “messages of an uplifting nature . . . sent to all parts of the world.”
Meanwhile, a war on rats was commenced. The Torrance Breeze of the 19th noted that “fumigation of all ships entering” the Port of Los Angeles “from foreign harbors will be commenced at once,” stated a federal health official, “as a precaution against possible recurrence of pneumonic plague in Southern California.” The Times of the same day observed that state health officials and the Angel City’s Chamber of Commerce lobbied the City Council to aggressively mount a “campaign of rat extermination to prevent any possible recurrence” of the plague recently stamped out.
A three-pronged approach was urged by a communication signed by Dickie including, 1) adoption of emergency ordinances, modeled after those in San Francisco, “declaring unsanitary buildings nuisances and providing for the abatement of these nuisances, including their destruction in whole or part” along with “rat proofing” basements and other below ground areas; 2) the creation of an organization to oversee the city’s health board [this apparently in response to the feeling that the municipal body failed to react in a timely and robust manner]; and 3) leasing a two-story building for this entity to have a plague laboratory equipped with traps, poison, axes, picks, shovels, kerosene, vehicles and other material “required in the rat extermination war, not to mention more than 120 staff, with the potential for another 100 more, for a five-year campaign involving a half-million dollars of expenditure in the first year.
Notably, Dickie and other health officials bluntly told the Council that,
Ships will never come into any harbor where an yquestion [sic] of plague infection exists. There is a suspicion cast upon Los Angeles Harbor at the present time [was Lujon, for example, an employee at that area?] So far we have found no infected rats at Los Angeles Harbor and I hope we never do . . . As long as this condition is here it is going to affect your harbor. If this is not cleaned up it will take a very little while before half of the commerce of your harbor has vanished.
Another recommendation for structures “within known infected areas” was to elevate them eighteen inches from ground level and removing all siding except at the front, with staff from that suggested organization going in to infected sections “block by block, exterminating the rats and making the houses and buildings there rat proof.”
The Los Angeles Record, also of the 19th, exhorted under the colorful heading of “Swat the Fly and Deadly Rat!” in which it warned against “the menace of the fly and the other household pests—little things and seemingly harmless—yet they may carry the germ of the dread bubonic plague” and “they may carry cholera,” while “mosquitoes may bring malaria.” Moreover, it intoned, “once they have brought the germ to the house, there is little hope of escape or recovery.” Consequently, the short account concluded, “until the rats and these insects are exterminated, there can be no safety,” so it was merely “a question of their lives or ours.”
The next day, Dr. George Parrish, the chief health officer of Portland, Oregon, was approved as the Angel City health commissioner by the Council, which included Boyle Workman as a member, with two of his colleagues voting against the appointment, because they preferred a local to have the job, though not having anyone particular in mind. Parrish was specifically tasked to oversee “the permanent eradication of conditions which were responsible for the recent outbreak of pneumonic plague. The Council also voted to appropriate a quarter million dollars for a Plague Education Bureau, taking the aforementioned suggestions in mind, under the Board of Health, with “full authority to order the wrecking or reconstruction of rat-infested buildings.”
The editions of the paper on the 25th included a feature by staff writer W.W. Ferguson with the heading of “Science Conquers Fear of Epidemic” and lauding the efforts against what it, like its competitor, the Los Angeles Express, also called the “pneumonia epidemic.” Including a photo of Dr. Dickie, the article made the notable claim that, with smallpox and typhoid fever “conquered by the microscope and its ally, the laboratory test tube,” and with tuberculosis and influenza remaining,
When those [latter] diseases are eliminated, it seems likely that the human race will be free from epidemic scourges, unless some strange new disease develops in the overpopulated regions of Asia where all the plagues of history have had their origin.
The Record recorded that a temporary laboratory for the “rat war” was installed “in a church in the area formerly quarantined, on Macy street,” and was already taking in vanquished rodents, “hanging by their tails, in long classified rows, like bats in a bat roost,” or, it could easily have been added, in a belfry. The creatures had tags identifying its former place of residence and, when one was found with a disease, “a concentrated attack is made on his household, and all of his neighbors and relatives are snared, shot or poisoned and taken to the laboratory.”
About a dozen officials involved in this work, aside from Dickie, were identified including health officer Pascoe, Edwin T. Ross (mentioned earlier for his work with the plague response), Dr. George P. Clements of the Chamber of Commerce, laboratory head Dr. W.F. Kellogg and the sole woman involved, assistant epidemiologist Mary Stevens. While all involved in battling the recent scourge were lionized, the paper concluded that, “another course of pneumonic infection could develop from an unguarded bubonic case,” such as occurred with the instance of Lujón, so “city officials have decided all rats must die,” this being a remarkable ambition, for sure.
On the last day of November, the Times went into some significant detail about the “army . . . of 127 men” battling the rodent population with Dickie as “commander-in-chief” studiously examining maps of area in which the war was being waged. One such layout showed the central part of the city from Hill Street on the west to Soto Street, in Boyle Heights, on the east and Alabama Avenue, which no longer exists, on the north to Washington Boulevard on the south. While the quarantined area near Union Station was the epicenter of the epidemic, “from it, other sectors branch out, each charted in red, marking the advance of the rat exterminators.”
To date, 5,000 rats were killed, of which nine were found to be carrying the plague, while Dickie clarified that the effort, at the moment, was not eliminate all the rodents, adding that “we just want to get a rat here and a rat there.” Once a diseased one was found, however, “we then set out our poison to exterminate nearly as possible every rat in that area,” moreover, a square mile around such an example was treated, starting at the perimeter and working inward, culminating in “sanitary work” after extermination.
With respect to structure mitigation, it was noted that property owners could choose to put in concrete walls, without openings, to the eighteen-inch line if the structure could not be raised, while restaurants were to have concrete floors and cellar walls and business properties were to be “rat proofed” throughout, as a type of rat resided on roofs and made their way to ground level before returning to their elevated houses.
Importantly, Dickie commented on the issue of residential abatement:
As for the housing situation, as we make the various blocks sanitary we deprive a number of people of housing facilities. We must take care of these people and move them. A certain number of them must assimilate, but this will lead to placing poor families in better and more sanitary homes.
Yet, nothing was found in media accounts that talked specifically about how this was to be done, so, while large sums were appropriated for the “rat war,” there was no program to help poor Latinos, living in substandard conditions beyond their ability to mitigate and presumed to have it be their responsibility to “assimilate,” move into those “better and more sanitary homes.” Instead, dwellings and other structures were razed wholesale in targeted areas occupied by Latinos.
This leads to a remarkable editorial in the Breeze of the 27th by Henry James, in his “Comment on Day’s News.” In observing that “the poor must be taken care of” and that this was “a public duty” considering that “many industrious folk live close to the edge of penury all the time,” something we see increasing rapidly in our own time, James then remarked, in apparent criticism of the blanket and rigid quarantine,
When pneumonic plague broke out in the Mexican quarter of Los Angeles, people could not go outside to work. Wages ceased, and hunger came stalking in. Had it not been for the bravery of Nora Sterry [see part two of this post] and a small group with her, there would have been deaths from lack of food. These people pay rent by the week. No work, no rent money; into the street next.
Thinking about them and other poor people, the sick and the crippled, anybody knows that something has to be done for them. Neglect would be disgraceful, too mean to be possible.
It was suggested by “a citizen” that city and county budgets include charity appropriations and, coming equably from taxpayers and without “question of sect or creed either in collection or disbursement,” it was argued that “the burden would be fairly apportioned, and none would feel it particularly.” Not only would this subvert “the hectic campaigning” of the charity drives, there was the benefit of “no chance for the well-to-do to escape.”
The featured photos here may well be from the “rat war” campaign and identification of downtown areas, southwest of the epicenter of the plaque outbreak but of the type of housing and business stock targeted, in red, for abatement on a large scale. Whatever their relationship to the outbreak, the fall 1924 pneumonic plague epidemic is a remarkable aspect of the history of Los Angeles and its environs.
One excellent discussion of the scourge and aftermath is by Bill Deverell in the 1999 anthology Over the Edge: Remapping the American West, while another notable account, with Deverell prominent featured and quoted, is from Hadley Meares on the Curbed Los Angeles site and published in April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was running roughshod throughout the world. The comparisons and contrasts from then to the modern period are, of course, well worth our attention as future epidemics and pandemics are inevitable.
As noted in this post, the people of Los Angeles and the greater Southland have worked aggressively to counter negative press from the East that painted the city in an unfavorable light after the epidemic outbreak. Ironically, after a century, a similar effort to protect the region’s reputation is urgently needed once again.
Over the past decade, particularly since 2019, Los Angeles and multiple other California cities have witnessed a rapid decline in cityscapes, environmental conditions, economic stability, and crime rates. Images of rundown or abandoned cities – deteriorating at a pace next only to the wildfire destruction – have circulated widely across the nation and throughout the whole world shocking viewers and prompting disbelief.
One might even wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger left behind a gubernatorial legacy of “Terminator” to his successors upon his departure from Sacramento.