by Paul R. Spitzzeri
We continue with this post that focused on the 23 May 1873 edition of the Los Angeles Express and which contained an advertisement for the Southern California Sanitary Hotel and Industrial College Association, of which F.P.F. Temple was the treasurer and his Temple and Workman bank the depository. With the project foundering in fall 1874, its instigator, Frederick Merrill Shaw, kept the flickering flame of his idea alive for about two years afterward, hoping he could find a way to get the project rebooted.
In the 13 February 1875 edition of the Los Angeles Express, Shaw, who was a prolific letter writer to Angel City newspapers for many years, offered “A Suggestion About Dwelling Houses,” in which he began by informing readers that “there is now available so many ways” for Angelenos “to enrich themselves, as well as to add to their health, honor and usefulness.” He added that “one of the certain ways to do this is to erect houses, to be sold, if possible, on the installment plan,” with the edifices to cost under $2,500 and sit on a half-acre, with many such properties being within a couple miles of the Court House (this the Market House built by Jonathan Temple.”
Moreover, Shaw went on,
The Social Science Congress which met me in England in 1874, did me the honor to endorse my views upon ventilation and general sanitary arrangements of dwellings [and there were papers he read in Europe and the Eastern United States] . . . receiving unequivocal endorsement and approval.
The pair of main points made in these were that any residences needed to “have sufficient space of ground to neutralize by the soil all excrement, sewerage or effluvia” as well as the vital aspect of ventilation of open air into interior spaces. Specifically, Shaw called for at least five rooms, exclusive of bathrooms, closets and hallways, with hot and cold water, gas, and the construction cost pegged at $1,500, while the land would run $500 for a lot from a half to a full acre and on which a small patch of alfalfa for a cow and room for fruit and kitchen gardens.
Shaw concluded that there were few of the houses of this kind, but, were more of these to be built, “it will be very difficult to induce any intelligent person to occupy less desirable quarters.” He remarked that he was ready to build such structures “that any man or woman of taste and discrimination cannot but be pleased with them, especially if once occupying and enjoying the comforts and health such residences insure to those who live otherwise hygienically.”
Five days later, another letter was printed in the Express on “Industrial Education,” and which started with the comment that “if the imbeciles do not cease to obstruct the car of progress they will be ground under its wheels” and that “education will not always be subservient to profit-mongers or those who persist in thriving at the expense of others.” Therefore, Shaw insisted, “the time is at hand when liberty must have a habitation, local and tangible” because “the absorbing desire for gain . . . is a tyrant that must meet the fate of all tyrants!”
He went on to observe that, because “knowledge is the power of emancipation” and that there was a danger of allowing “the liberty-loving races whose blood and labor have sanctified the West” to become “ignorant creatures” like eastern European serfs who were at the mercy of those who would “bind the chains of an ignoble servitude upon the people.” With this, therefore,
Therefore, here in California, is as good a place as I know of to inaugurate a system of industrial hygienic education that may be a nucleus for such institutes, and take the place of the old system of apprenticeships in preparing skilled artisans and scholars to build our temple of liberty upon a sure foundation.
Shaw was sure, however, to distance himself from the utopian colonies that were popular throughout the country during the 19th century as he commented, “utopias, for the dreamers, may be pleasant, but I for one, have no time for their elaboration.” Instead, he concluded, “it is my most earnest desire to contribute my share to increase the welfare and happiness of my species.” The best way to accomplish this goal was “by demonstrating some of the problems of a hygienic life” and “by the construction of proper dwellings and supplying wholesome food.”
A year later, there were another pair of letters from Shaw about his concept, but a tremendous change took place as California’s economy cratered in the summer of 1875 with the crash including the failure of Temple and Workman and the loss of Temple’s substantial fortune. The first appeared in the Los Angeles Herald of 27 February 1876 under the heading of “Cities to be Abandoned” with the writer commenting that “a people, to be happy and successful, must be healthy” and that “hygiene takes precedence of aesthetics,” though it was important to have a combination of beauty and utility.
To foster societal cohesion in which all citizens were to be “self-sustaining, but sound in body, mind and morals” as well, and “the surest mode of achieving this result is to insist upon each member receiving a thorough industrial training” in which there was “the actual performance of the manual exercise attending productive labor.” What was needed was “a variety of employments” such as were more likely to be derived from rural, not city, schools, because, Shaw claimed, “the city is an after-thought” that, in the future, “cities will come to be the exceptions” because “rural life is the normal condition of mankind and the best informed” and he asserted,
[Cities] contaminate, and this contamination reaches all, whether urban, suburban or rustic, none can escape. The vices and disorders that afflict humanity originate in cities, and to obtain a respite and cessation from these afflictions, cities must be abandoned . . . To teach these truths and the way to avoid disorders of every name and nature, is one of the primary objects of the organization of the Southern California Sanitary Hotel and Industrial College Association.
Shaw added that “land enough has been secured for the inception of the work within nine miles of Los Angeles and six miles from ocean,” west of town, and at an altitude high enough “where pure water and air contribute to make the location desirable,” while also fertile for the growing of fruit and idea for “industrial works of various kinds.” He simply concluded, “we invite co-operation.”
The 28 July edition of the Express contained what was stated as an advertisement from Shaw, in which he proclaimed that for those who provided him financial credit and to others abroad who supported him in “advancing the interests of our section “justice . . . calls for an equitable adjustment of my obligations.” He referred back three years when “some of the leading landholders” in Los Angeles hired him as an “unofficial representative” to the Eastern states and Europe, tasked with “calling public attention to this section as a desirable place for the investment of capital and as a resort for health.”
Determined to pursue the “carrying out [of] a cherished plan for the relief of sufferers . . . I organized an institute” and, with $450 given him by his Association cohorts, including Temple, Shaw went to Europe “with an unflinching and self-sacrificing spirit” married with “indomitable energy, and an entire abnegation of all selfish considerations.” He claimed that there was, in consequence an “appreciation of real estate in this section” so that “the real estate owners have reaped the full benefit of my labors long since,” though “obligations were incurred that should have been paid long since.” He expressed confidence that this would happen as this was “as sure as that my life will be spared to a sufficient length.”
If he could only receive the money he was owed, as reflected in his October 1874 reported noted in part one, Shaw told his fellow Angelenos “I hold myself in readiness to return to Europe and fully complete my partially executed mission.” One aspect of this was a scheme for direct chartered steamships from Europe to Los Angeles and he insisted that he would have secured this arrangement but for the lack of further financial support. Moreover, if he could have lured immigrants to the area through the scheme, at least $500,000 would have been brought to the area.
So, Shaw ended,
Now the time and circumstances are propitious for a renewal of that enterprise, and as before mentioned, if the means are raised to pay the indebtedness incurred on that trip, I am ready to return and complete the work so well begun.
The economic environment was anything but propitious, however, and, even if the financial picture was bright, Shaw’s ability to talk a good game was certainly not going to be followed through with success. An interesting tangent to the short-lived and ill-fated Association is that, when he was heading to Europe from Los Angeles with some dried fruit, along with lemons and limes, he met one of the Wolfskill brothers, whose father, William, planted California’s first commercial orange grove in 1841, and was asked if he wanted to take some fruit with him.
Shaw stated, in a letter published in the Herald of 30 October 1874 that he laughed off the idea of the citrus staying anywhere near fresh on the long trip, but took a couple of boxes. After a month and arriving in New York City, Shaw took the fruit to the New York Tribune, “eliciting a handsome editorial in regard to the fruit, and the place of its production,” though a cursory search of the paper did not locate such a piece. In any case, it was asserted that, after arrival in Europe after 49 days, the remaining oranges were such that “the flavor [proved] to be equal, if not superior, to any of the best in the world.”
The Association superintendent concluded that “it was almost incredible” to folks in the United Kingdom, purportedly in Ireland and Scotland, “that the delicate and luscious samples had come nine thousand miles, and been seven weeks in transit, but the authenticity of the fact was indisputable.” Shaw sent this news to Thomas A. Garey, one of the Association officers and proprietor of the Semi-Tropical Nursery in Los Angeles (as well as a founder of Artesia and Pomona), who responded “these facts are encouraging in an eminent degree” and that “the question of the success of orange culture in Los Angeles county I consider fully settled.”
The next day’s edition of the paper pronounced,
The Herald has maintained heretofore and now reiterates that with railroad communication with the East it will be as impossible for Los Angeles valley to overstock the orange market as it is for the gold and silver mines of the Pacific Coast to depreciate the value of the precious metals. That we shall have the much needed railroad communication is as certain as that the demand for it is great. Our orange growers need not fear that they will grow too many oranges.
Just as Shaw was prefiguring the health-seekers boom that led to many sanitariums and other facilities dotting greater Los Angeles, these statements about oranges and citrus culture also were prescient about what would happen when transcontinental rail shipments (especially with refrigerated box cars) took place in later years.
Shaw largely disappeared from the local press for a few years, though, and it was not until August 1879 that he popped up in an unusual manner. The Herald of 2 August noted that the New York Sun reported on a “telegraphic marriage” between him and Margaret Wright in Newark, New Jersey as a Methodist minister performed the ceremony at a Western Union office.
While the pastor demurred as he wondered about its legality, Wright prevailed upon him and received his blessing so long as she and Shaw were married by clergy in California. At 9 p.m. one evening, the strange service was conducted and a few days later Wright headed to Los Angeles to join her spouse. Notably, five months prior, Shaw conveyed to his fiancée, an undivided half interest in land and 10 shares in Association stock, perhaps as a demonstration of his financial fitness.
The location, identified as section 6, Township 1 South, Range 14 West, is the Laurel Canyon area in the Hollywood Hills, the earliest located mention of the canyon is from spring 1874 and it appears that Shaw acquired 160 acres of former public land in that area of the Santa Monica Mountains and looked to have practiced what he preached about the purported fact that “rural life is the native condition of mankind.”
After 1874, the next mention of the canyon came nine years later when Shaw was hauled into court on the complaint of neighbor Edward W. Doss (the two are shown in adjoining households in the 1880 census in the Ballona township, with Shaw listed as a “lumberman,” perhaps dealing with trees in the Canyon). The charge was that Shaw, especially after the failed Association project, became demented and the petition was that the court adjudge him insane and send him to the state asylum at Napa.
With that, we’ll return tomorrow with the next part of this post and carry Shaw’s story from that point and beyond, so be sure to check back for that!
It’s fascinating to learn that 150 years ago in California, the most ideal household sewage system relied on self-operating composting, as introduced by Frederick M. Shaw and noted in this post – made possible by large residential lots with ample soil to cover waste.
This reminds me of my visit to the Underground Museum in Manchester, housed in an abandoned red-brick aqueduct and renowned for its exhibits on the evolution of water and sanitation systems. The setting not only evoked scenes from a Dickens novel, but also surprised visitors with life-sized displays showing how chamber pots and manure carts remained a common sight in major UK cities well into the late 19th century.
A quick search reveals that the U.S. followed a similar timeline – flush toilets didn’t become widespread until the 20th century, when plumbing, water infrastructure, and sanitation practices had significantly advanced.
Wow – it’s not that long ago!