by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Continuing our summary of the death of Minnie Blough after a night of carousing at the Imperial Café and Del Monte Tavern in downtown Los Angeles, in the deep of the night on 6 and 7 February 1906, the sensationalism of the reporting in the press ramped up. Under the headline of “Whole City Stirred Over Sudden Death,” the Times of the 16th (it took several days for the incident to be made public) offered in a side bar, “Minnie Blough’s Dying Statement,” which, however, was a paraphrasing based on what it said was obtained by the paper from “one who saw her die, and who talked with her just before the end.”
The account continued,
In mortal agony she faltered out the story of the last mad revel—the revel that closed a life that had, so far as known, always been beautiful.
She said she was dancing on a table in the Del Monte. In trying to jump down from the table, she accidentally struck the base of her spine on the back of a chair.
At the time she did not realize that she was hurt. When the party left the Del Monte, she walked out with them. They talked for a moment on the corner of Broadway and Third street; then she and her man friend, Mortimer Helmer, left the others.
With her last breath, knowing that she was dying, poor Minnie Blough declared she danced on a table in the Del Monte. Yet the management of that drinking place denies that such a thing occurred.
With Helmer officially named as Blough’s companion, Helmer was said to be listed in the city directory as secretary of a medicine company on Hill Street south of 6th of which his brother, Otis, was vice-president. While the paper previously claimed that Minnie’s escort was a young man, the Times now reported that “Helmer is a widower—a fat, prosperous-looking man about forty years old.” Moreover, he purportedly had a decent amount of money and was a regular at the Imperial.
Mortimer [sometimes known as Morton] C. Helmer (1864-1914) was a native of Iowa, specifically Cedar County near Cedar Rapids and resided in Mechanicsville to the southeast where he and Otis were listed as grocers in the 1900 census. Shortly afterward, they decamped for Los Angeles and became involved in the medicine supply business and Helmer had no public mention to speak of until the tragic death of Blough took place.
The Times continued that “at his rooming-house he told an attaché last evening that she need not worry about any disgrace attaching itself to her house” because “he had ‘fixed up’ the scandal” and that “he practically confessed to her his share in the tragedy.” Absent of hearing from Helmer, the paper spoke to friends who said “he fell in with the girl by accident,” called the doctor “as an act of charity,” and that he was “rather entitled to credit.”
Yet, the paper asserted, “this quiet, conservative city was in a fury of indignation yesterday over the pathetic death of this unhappy girl” and under the subheading of “People Indignant” stated that it received many phone calls by those “who wanted to know why this man had been spared publicity and the dead girl’s name made to bear the whole burden of the disgrace.” As to those at the Rookwood, where Blough was a server, they were “thunderstruck to hear of the pretty waitress’s fate” and was appreciated for her politeness and, tellingly, “knowing her place.” A friend informed the paper that Minnie came from a good family “and was always known as a modest, refined girl.”
The Times, however, then turned from this and her “beautiful life” to her “Piteous Life Story,” this being the common one of “the pretty, unchaperoned waitress and the ‘masher,’ with his ogling and his invitations.” As quick as the paper was to judge and moralize, though, it followed by acknowledging that “the stories . . . were as confusing and as contradictory” as the prior day and, in relating the varied accounts, it observed that “many cruel and probably scandalous stories of her dance on the table have been told” so that “whatever the character of it, she has paid a terrible price.”
Police Chief Auble’s investigation included an adamant denial by Del Monte owners John Koster and John J. Lonergan “that no scenes of revelry occurred” and did so “with many strange oaths.” Restaurant records showed three women and two men in a private room with four rounds of beer and food. The paper went on that what Auble discovered “would convince any one that the third floor of the place was planned for a bawdy house,” in which ten suites were laid out including small dining areas for two, maybe four, persons and “back of this is a bedroom, and back of that a bathroom.”
Auble found most of the suites locked, though he entered one and was embarrassed when a young woman was there and then “presently a young man of rather elegant attire came tripping upstairs” and entered the room with the door closed and locked behind him. The account went on that “after a while another man, fat, 40 and sporty, came up the stairs with a woman 30. She was neatly, not flashily dressed” and the couple disappeared into another of the suites. Was anything illegal done during this tour? The paper would not admit to it, but certainly hinted at immoral doings behind closed doors in a hotel.
The landlord of the rooming house where Minnie and her sister Lillian resided for a month, told the Times “I have never met nicer or more respectable girls” and they were home early and never smelt of alcohol, with no male visitors to her knowledge. She reiterated that Minnie had a fall, the day before the carousing, into a hole on Grand Avenue to the extent that she was covered to her armpits and her clothing covered with mud, oil and water, while it was said she was “seriously injured.”
It was at 5 a.m. two days later that her bell was ringing excitedly and Lillian poured out that Minnie had died after “she took sick in the theater” and succumbed in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. It was two days later that the body was shipped, after embalming, to Michigan, and the landlord said it was the brother, Claud, who paid the bills based on what their father communicated via telegram. As to the cause of death, it was again noted that the ectopic pregnancy was considered primary and an abdominal hemorrhage determined to contributory.
W.M. Phillips, acting as something of an agent in helping to prepare for the return of the remains, visited the Times office and stated that he was a family friend, being a saloon-keeper in Clarksville near which was the Blough family farm but was staying at Long Beach for his wife’s health.” He added “why the girls should have come here and gone to work as waitresses” was puzzling as “they were always considered refined and moral young women in their old home. Phillips found Lillian Blough at the mortuary and found that she needed money to send the body home, as well as the fares for the Blough siblings. As for other expenses, they “seem to have been paid for by the young man,” that is, Helmer, “who was with her the night she died.”
A separate article was headed “Scenes of Disgrace in Bohemian Joints” and it began with the statement that there were those who thought Blough’s death would mean the end of the Del Monte, Imperial and other places, with the private rooms at the former said to have a list of patrons that “would reveal the names of many officials.” Moreover, it was asserted that,
It is an open secret in officialdom that hands are to kept off the Del Monte, which knows altogether too much to be raided. Frankly, the powers that be in certain quarters are more afraid of the Del Monte than the Del Monte is of the officials.
While one member of the Police Commission, Frank James, was said to be evasive when interviewed by the paper, though “a man of unquestioned personal character,” George Mason, a colleague who spoke up the prior day, ” called it “a tough place” and that he would pursue action if evidence warranted. A third commissioner asserted that “there is nothing in the idea that because this is getting to be a large city we must allow certain vice to exist.”
Lonergan went to great lengths to defend his establishment, offering $100 to anyone who could prove that liquor was served to a young female patron and that “never is a loud laugh heard in our place,” adding that “it is just a quiet, pleasant hotel.” But, the paper turned to other “vile dens of Bohemia” and shared two purported examples of shameless bacchanalia before it averred that “the revel which resulted in Minnie Blough’s death was mild in character compared” to others.
It then concluded with a brief, but chaste, description of “a new fascinating game called ‘strip poker,'” in which female companions of male players had to remove one garment at a time when their consorts lost a hand and “the game continues until—well, for a long time.” Purportedly, a Yale University researcher and librarian, Fred Shapiro, shared in an email discussion list in 2019 that the earliest reference in print to “strip poker” was this very article.
The Los Angeles Express had a more modest but direct headline of “Would Close Rooms,” though it published a telling cartoon titled “The Working Girl’s Dilemma,” as it cited Chief Auble as remarking,
The objection to the Del Monte [and another establishment] is that they offer inducements for beastly drunkenness and indecency by providing bedrooms for patrons, and that the management does not inquire as to whether such patrons are entitled to such rooms. The hotel part of each place is a bluff—there are no permanent lodgers, no baggage in any of the rooms . . . [With these “suites” at the upper level of the structure] It is a case of the higher you go the lower you become. I am in favor of prohibiting the sale of liquor in such places. There is little need of further investigation—the police have learned enough . . . —to condemn it.
The paper continued that the Police Commission was forced to take up the question of revocation of the Del Monte liquor license because of “public indignation which refuses to recognize politics in the case of a young woman’s death from drunkenness.” The thrust was that any place, including the Bisbee Inn, was to be forced to abandon its “hotel” sections or lose their license, even as Koster was said to have undue influence among the city’s officials.
Mayor Owen McAleer, chair of the commission as chief executives were, said he would raise the matter at the next meeting and commissioners agreed to carefully consider the situation. Meanwhile, Helmer, also a bond and investment house director, was located by a pair of detectives and told the paper that he migrated to Los Angeles from Iowa three years prior after the death of his wife (a daughter remained east). He knew the Blough sisters for two months and said that Minnie went to his office and asked him to join them and Nellie Courser, along with a man that Helmer refused to identify, at the Imperial.
After some drinking, but not to intoxication, Helmer insisted, the party moved to the Del Monte at this suggestion “as it was a place where we can drink in private.” After the four rounds of beer (recall that earlier accounts mentioned champagne), he continued that “I played the piano and all the girls got up and ran across the table,” though he said he put a stop to it after Minnie fell. At 1 a.m. on the 7th, Helmer and Minnie went to his lodging house, while Lillian, Nellie and the unnamed other man went to the Venice rooming house.
Ten minutes later, Minnie complained of terrible pain, so that Helmer called Dr. Thomas C. Myers, Lillian and Nellie and at around 5, the ambulance arrived and the rest was explained above. Helmer freely admitted he sought to keep wraps on what happened, but did not write out a $500 check as the Los Angeles Record reported, providing $175 to Lillian, who then borrowed from Phillips.” He added “I am only one of hundreds who have been in such hilarious times at such places, but the others were not so unlucky as to be caught.”
For its part, the Record, in “His Part in Death Dance,” commented that
The tragic death of Minnie Blough after but two months’ contact with the perils of city life will find a monument in the reform wave which will probably sweep through official life as a result of the disclosure of some of the nightly scenes of the protected cafes.
It asserted that blame was moving from Koster and Lonergan, as well as Helmer, and that those looking for the guilty parties “have wiped away the girl’s fault with a tear of charity” and fixed on “the men in official power as the real forces which permitted conditions under which such an affair could happen.” Mayor McAleer was scored for being “inclined to minimize the death of a girl after a nightly midnight orgy in the cafe” while “the [official] protection given Koster & Lonergan is recognized” especially as “the secrets of the place concern the names of such ‘prominent men'” that the Del Monte owners could use that as leverage in keeping their license no matter the efforts to revoke it.
Police Commissioner O.T. Johnson told the paper that “innocent, unsuspecting girls, who know nothing of the character of the Del Monte, Imperial . . . and such places, are being debauched and ruined every day” and he insisted that “the Del Monte is rotten, and the public, as well as the police, knows it.” For his part, the mayor said he was doing his own investigating, but added “those people were only at the Del Monte a couple of hours, and walked home” and concluded, “the reports [in the press] are exaggerated.” A cartoon in the Record graphically depicted its view on the hotel license question with the revelry ignored by a hand marked “Police Board” signing its affirmation of the license.
Finally, under the headline of “Would Reopen The Blough Case,” the Los Angeles Herald recorded that “shaken by the horrible fate of Miss Minnie Blough the general public have demanded an investigation of the circumstances surrounding her mysterious death” and it added that “efforts to make certain whether a crime was being hidden or not have to all practical purposes failed.” The paper remarked that “the police are handicapped” and “the coroner is powerless to act,” the latter because the body was borne back to Michigan, though the official said he would consult with the District Attorney as to an inquest and that removal of the remains before a proceeding was a violation of the law.
Paul Flammer, captain of the Los Angeles Police Department detective bureau, was quoted as saying, “I am satisfied that the case is not a crime, but that Miss Blough died from natural causes” based on the work of a pair of detectives. This was echoed by Chief Auble who said “I . . . found no evidence of any violation of the law,” but he thought such establishments should be closed even as “I believe that the proprietors know nothing of it.”
Significantly, the Herald stated that “there is still a strong impression that Miss Blough was induced to make the fatal leap to produce conditions that would would save unfortunate complications,” which seems to suggest that the idea was to produce an abortion. It was added that “this theory may lead to the arrest of a man,” even though whatever evidence officers were said to have gathered regarding this was considered “meager.” Even though it was said that the police had material that “will be valuable if the case is carried into the courts,” that was a matter for the District Attorney, while Auble told the paper, “I am in favor of closing all places that have dining rooms, bedrooms and suites of rooms in which liquor is served.”
We will return tomorrow with part three, so be sure to check back with us then!