“I Don’t Claim to be Any Scoundrel . . . Sometimes I Do Get Into Bad Company”: The Death of Minnie Blough and Liquor License Reform in Los Angeles Restaurants, February 1906, Part Three

by Paul R. Spitzzeri

With intense media pressure, including no small amount of sensationalism, applied to Los Angeles officials, particularly the Police Commission, which was chaired by Mayor Owen McAleer, and amid a wave of moral reformism that included increasing attempts to curb alcohol consumption and shut down brothels and other “houses of ill fame,” the aftermath of the death of Minnie Blough, after a night of carousing on 6 and 7 February 1906 at the adjacent Imperial Café and Del Monte Tavern, led to increasing scrutiny of the incident.

After two days of a significant level of florid assessment, the papers continued their crusade to have at least the “hotel” and private dining room portions of the Del Monte shut down, if not the revocation of its liquor license, which kept the enterprise in operation. Having gone into great detail about the tragic circumstances of Blough’s death, the identification of her male companion, Mortimer Helmer, and then addressing the failings of civic oversight, accounts of the 17th largely turned back to Helmer.

The Los Angeles Record, for example, ran the headline “Ostracism Will Be Punishment” as it reported that the Hotel Caine, on Olive and 2nd streets on Bunker Hill, “is in danger of losing its exclusive guests if H.C. [sic] Helmer continues to occupy his well furnished apartment in that hostelry.” Apparently, lodgers told the proprietor, a Mrs. Kirby, that she had to evict him if the Caine was to maintain “its reputation for exclusiveness and respectability,” though Helmer professed to know nothing of any problems there and Kirby was vacillating about what to do with her tenant.

A clerk stated to the paper that he told his boss “it would not do to have a sport around” as it “makes people lose faith in the house.” Noting that it was to his apartment that Helmer took Blough after their revelries, the paper repeated the 40-year old “sport” as saying that “his only crime is in getting caught and that he is only one of many bachelors whose rich apartments are designed to captivate their girl friends.

The Record thought it a matter of public interest to add that Helmer’s digs were “fitted up fantastically with wreaths of brilliant decorative stuff” including “oriental globes” along with a piano, a green and pink davenport (generally, an upholstered sofa) and other items that seemed calculated to portray its demimonde as a “Bohemian,” a derisive term for those considered members of the social fringe and given to too freely imbibing in alcohol and much else.

The paper cautioned that “Helmer’s punishment for any part he played in the tragedy will be in ostracism, the first effect of which he is feeling in his hotel.” The piece ended with the statement that the controversy was to be discussed by the Police Commission and that two members, O.T. Johnson and George Mason, “will insist on a clean sweep, beginning with a revocation of the Del Monte and Imperial licenses and then wiping out all private dining rooms in hotels and cafes.” Mayor McAleer, meanwhile, was investigating the matter on his own with Helmer and Del Monte co-owner John J. Lonergan called to his office and “gave their versions of the midnight revel which ended in the death of Minnie Blough.”

The Los Angeles Times, also of the 17th, offered its view of how “Poor Helmer [Was] Led Astray” and cited a passage in the Book of Genesis about how Eve enticed Adam to eat forbidden fruit as it quoted Helmer as asserting,

I don’t claim to be any scoundrel, I do claim to be a gentleman at all times. Only sometimes I do get into bad company. Unfortunately this was one of the times. An occasion of a lifetime. I ask you reporters, as men, to be as easy on me as possible.

The paper added that Helmer was roused out of bed as part of its reporting and that he was surprised that he was identified after the “very shrewd man” was sure he had the whole matter “fixed.” Being outed, however, he decided “there was no further use in trying to conceal his part in the orgy” and he spent much of the prior day answering the queries of journalists “who fell upon him in bunches.”

As to the other fellow with the party, Helmer continued to steadfastly refuse to identify him, saying the person others revealed only as “Frank” was only present at the Del Monte, but it was added that “Frank” was married and had “some business standing” in the Angel City, so he introduced his pal to the girls by a false name.

This led Helmer to tell the press, “I take all the blame for it—if there is any” and the Times briefly referred to his bachelor pad and business positions to suggest he was “just the sort of man who would be irresistible to a girl like Minnie Blough—big, good-looking and dark,” though this was a contrast, as the accompanying drawing of Helmer was, of earlier descriptions of him being both young (he was 40) and overweight.

Moreover, he was further accounted as having a strong face (that’s definitely depicted in the drawing, along with his bowler hat and pince nez glasses) and a plain manner of speaking, though the paper remarked “there is something about him as hard as flint.” Insisting that this was the most terrible ordeal he’d endured since the death of his wife a few years previously (after which Helmer left his native Iowa, where he was a grocer with a brother, with whom he was then a partner in a medical supply business in Los Angeles), he then apparently identified Blough as part of that “bad company” mentioned above.

As for why he sought the subterfuge involving Minnie’s death, Helmer told the Times that it was

For her family’s sake. Any one must admit that it would have been better had this thing never been known. We kept it secret several days. [Asked about how this squared with keeping his name out of the papers in connection with the tragedy, he replied] Well, what would you have done? . . . I told the doctor about it and I told the police about it; they said they exonerated me, and that they admired my conduct in the affair.

The details of the last hours of Blough’s life were presented, mostly as previously mentioned here, and Helmer insisted that the Del Monte and the Caine were not to be slighted in any way, though it was concluded that “it is to be sincerely hoped that no more wicked girls will lead Helmer astray,” though Minnie’s landlord told the press that she was anything but that.

A separate brief comment in the Times noted that there were no legal ramifications for Helmer, but “if he has a conscience that should do enough for him,” while other examples in the “Pen Points” of pithy remarks in the paper included “The crib district [brothels and other vice houses] has been wiped out, and the roadhouses have been closed. Now get after the shady cafés.” Also commented on was that “young girls naturally love excitement, but they would better search for it anywhere than in the dark-lantern booze joints of a big town.”

Specifically concerning the establishments involved in the Blough incident, it was remarked, “the way to close up hell-holes like the Del Monte Tavern and the Imperial is to close them up” and asked “why should there be a minute’s delay about it?” Also significant was this observation from the paper that led the charge for much of the moral crusade of the era:

We are convinced that the churches could do good work by organizing to look after the waiter girls in a quiet way. No class of people are more in need of a protecting hand. Let the heathen [in other countries] shift for himself, now and then, and let us do some missionary work nearer home.

The Los Angeles Herald, too, offered its take on Helmer’s uneasy turn in the media spotlight and, in its interview with him, he professed regret for how the incident became public and said that the Blough sisters “were two jolly girls, ready to have a good time.” Although there was time when he was alone with Minnie and Lillian and Nell Clouser were with “Frank,” Helmer said that Lillian was with her sister the entire evening “and I never took my clothes off.”

He added that there was no blame to assign to anyone and, while he noted that the direct cause of Minnie’s death was the accident at the Del Monte, “she had certain other troubles,” namely the ectopic pregnancy found in the autopsy. Helmer reiterated that “I was with Minnie and did all I could to take care of her while she lived and tried to shield her name after her death” and he asserted that “there are certain things connected with Miss Blough that no paper would publish or the readers care to read.” The piece ended that the police, to date, felt that “there is no chance for criminal action” without new evidence pointing to such.

From this point, Helmer disappears from the media focus, which returned to the matter of the official response to the Del Monte’s dining and hotel suites and its liquor license, though he remained in Los Angeles for the next eight years. He and his brother Otis continued in their line of work, including with the new Condor Medicine Company, though, by 1910, Helmer was working as a novelties salesperson.

In 1912 he married Mary S. Woollacott, though that was short-lived as he succumbed to the effects of diabetes two years later at the age of 50. Notably, however, his hometown Cedar Rapids Gazette remarked on the Blough affair in its edition of 24 February 1906, saying that it:

has attracted a great deal of attention and has been the cause of much discussion. Helmer is well known in Cedar Rapids and vicinity. Those who know him best are not at all surprised at the developments for he has long been known as a reckless fellow.

So much for the forthright and earnest Helmer being led astray! Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Express of the 17th published a short piece identifying the second male reveler as Frank Slood, stating that he lived in the southern part of downtown and was employed at McKee’s Café and Bakery, which during this time promoted its “Good Cup of Coffee,” though it offered “Wines, Liquors [and] Cigars” and one may assume that these were more popular with patrons than the java!

The named “Frank Slood,” however, cannot be found in other sources, though the paper commented that “detectives will question Slood as to what he knows of the affair” that included “Minnie Blough’s death dance.” It was also reported that, at the next meeting of the Police Commission, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Walter H. Auble “will tell the members what he knows about the Blough tragedy and will recommend that all private rooms at such drinking places as the Del Monte and Bisbee Inn be abolished.”

Moreover, concluded the piece, “it is probable that Mayor McAleer,” who initially propounded that the Blough party was only at Del Monte a short time and that nothing that occurred there seemed overtly untoward warranting official action, “will stand with Commissioners Johnson and Mason,” forming a majority among the five members, “who already have expressed themselves as favoring sweeping changes in the conduct of ‘hotels’ of this character.”

With this momentum rapidly developing, we’ll put a pause to the post here and return tomorrow with part four as the media accelerated its attention and pressure on the City to deal with the “menace” of such “dens of infamy” as the Del Monte, where Minnie Blough suffered the injury that brought about her sad and untimely end. Check back with us then!