by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With his Southern California Sanitary Hotel and Industrial College project apparently shuttered for good by the end of the 1870s, Frederick M. Shaw settled in on his 160-acre property in Lauren Canyon in what is now the Hollywood Hills portion of the Santa Monica Mountains and largely vanished from public attention—that is, until his neighbor, Edward W. Doss, and others in what was called the “Cahuenga district,” filed a petition at the Superior Court alleging that Shaw was insane and that he be committed to the state asylum at Napa.
The 28 April 1883 edition of the Los Angeles Herald remarked,
Mr. Shaw has been demented for several years, and has had many strange vagaries that were amusing but harmless. About a dozen years ago he went to England to obtain a colony to live in Southern California to live on a vegetable diet with himself as the leader, instructor and apostle in righteousness. In this enterprise he lost some money, and afterwards appeared still more wild in his notions than before. He became so erratic that his wife left him, and he took to the seclusion of the upper part of the Nichols cañon, in the Cahuenga mountains, nine miles west of the city. Here he made a tabernacle of sticks in a tree top . . . In this ambrosial retreat he wrote many letters for the press on the creation of the human species, how to preserve health, cure disease, and rectify the mistakes of the Almighty who had done many undesirable things without consulting Philosopher Shaw. But after years spent in this lofty nest he let himself down to earth and earthly things put up a cabin of boards with two sides wide open for ventilation and began to fall in love with some unseen, unknown woman.
The article retailed his “telegraphic marriage,” noted in part two of this post, to Margaret Wright, and it ridiculed the groom as “the first man struck to the heart by lightning in Los Angeles” as it mocked the relationship conducted in the “Acadian solitude” of his canyon home until Margaret, it was reported, “fled to the city to live under a roof and walk on floors and eat square meals,” not just raisins and walnuts.
It was then stated that “the hermit, philosopher, sage, prophet and guide of the world grew wilder still” and ranted about human immorality as well as regarding “aerial circumnavigation,” this apparently meaning human flight. The Herald wrote in lofty terms of Shaw’s “views of the weeping destinies of unbridled joy and ultimate destiny which should be carved out of the invisible altitudes,” though “these sentiments were his proud utterances but availed nothing before the mortal Judge, who voted him a crazy, or words to that effect, and thus endeth the career in Los Angeles of the great reformer who will now go to join his brother reformers in Napa Asylum.”
The paper added that two doctors and several witnesses testified before Judge Jonathan D. Hines, who came in from Ventura to hear the matter, and that, after the jurist adjudged Shaw to be insane, the sheriff took him in custody in preparation for transport to Napa. The same issue, though, contained a pair of statements from G.S. Forster and James Cummings arguing that Shaw was “sane and peaceable” and that “a great wrong is about being put upon him by his enemies.”
The Los Angeles Times of the same day opined “that Mr. Shaw is eccentric no one will attempt to deny,” but few would say he was insane. It added that “he is a hard-working, peaceably disposed old man, who if left alone will injure no one” and commented that he was quite a writer including to the paper. Moreover, the account remarked, “while the sentiments may have been oddly expressed they have been marked with good sense, at least.” Contradicting the Herald, it adjudged that the marriage to Margaret Wright was a happy and harmonious one. It also printed a statement from Shaw asserting that Doss sought his land.
The paper’s issue of the following day published a card from William R. Olden, a notable Anaheim resident who died a couple of months later and who attested that he was surprised by the “snap judgment” as Olden knew Shaw to be merely “somewhat eccentric.” It would be an “unheard-of outrage” to commit him as it appeared that those seeking this “have an object in view.” Consequently, Judge Hines presided over a rehearing on the 30th, at which Shaw was represented by a quartet of attorneys, including George C. Gibbs, one of the partners, with F.P.F. Temple and others, in the Sanitary Hotel and Industrial College Association.
Los Angeles County District Attorney (and later U.S. Senator) Stephen M. White testified that Shaw went to him to complain about Doss and that Shaw’s behavior “made White rather want to be near the door, but, when he encountered him in the office of lawyer Andrew Glassell, he drew up an affidavit while concluding “there was something indescribable about Shaw that made White think he was not exactly right.” Justice of the Peace Robert A. Ling added that Shaw “bothered him a good deal about having Doss arrested” and complained he’d spent $20,000 in the area and wanted protection.
As for Doss, he told Hines “he first thought Shaw was crazy on account of his hygienic manner of living,” saying that the “doctor” informed him he’d lived on brown bread for two years and that he overheard Shaw “laughing and talking to himself in a strange manner.” Other alleged signs of insanity were lavish in his care of his livestock and orchard while having no “proper food” in the decade Doss knew him. As to assertions of trying to get Shaw’s land, Doss claimed he was merely “trying to prove up different claims around him,” while the conflicts between them led to the drawing of weapons. Doss’ wife Martha said she knew Shaw was crazy because he admitted to her insanity ran in his family, that “he slept in a tree” and dressed indecently, and added that her husband would have killed their neighbor had he been sane.
Five others, though, including Thomas Garey, another Sanitary Hotel partner, and Horace Bell, best known for his colorful and largely fanciful memoirs of Los Angeles, attested that Shaw was sane, if eccentric. Shaw then took the stand and the Times described him as 56 years old, or ordinary height and weight, white hair with sideburns and mustache, and blue eyes. He said doctors told him he would die of tuberculosis, but that he was a physician with degrees from several colleges, while having practiced his trade in Army hospitals during the Civil War.
Gibbs asked him about family insanity and Shaw replied that an uncle had a “very mild” case and “had peculiar ideas about hygiene,” this retort drawing roars of laughter and a smile from Hines. After the jurist asked two doctors about whether there was a “homicidal disposition” evinced from Shaw and they replied in the negative, Hines ordered the release of the prisoner, upon which, “the congratulations . . . were numerous and hearty.”
Shaw returned home and continued his unorthodox ways of living and his regular letters to Los Angeles paper, including offering suggestions on the super food of lima beans and, forcefully, the need for direct elections, and the abolishment of the electoral college, just prior to the presidential election of 1884. More trouble, though, followed, including Margaret’s divorcing him in spring 1885 and a conviction that summer for battery, with the jury recommending mercy.
By the end of that year, Shaw revived one of his long-standing ideas involving an artificial harbor, with him remarking to the Times of 1 December “there is a place on our coast line where deep water and safe anchorage can be had at a merely nominal cost compared with the importance of the work.” This involved what he termed “a movable breakwater” which would provide a “still water anchorage, and wharf in water deep and calm enough at all seasons” to handle any level of trade. He stated he’d spent 11 years on surveys for such a project and provided a very simplistic drawing—notably, an artificial harbor is just what was done at San Pedro/Wilmington, though, naturally, with far more expertise and knowledge than what the eccentric could offer!
As the new year of 1886 dawned, under the heading of “Big Thing” and “Able Announcement From The Cahuenga Philosopher,” the Times of 12 January printed a short notice from Shaw that a meeting was to be held that afternoon “to reorganize the Southern California Sanitary Hotel and Industrial College Association, under whose auspices the new breakwater and tramway to connect the back country with a good harbor is projected.” The paper drily remarked that the project’s situation was “arbitrary, from the nature of the ground and financial considerations,” so Shaw and his unnamed associates were warned “to proceed with great caution and circumspection.”
“Dr. Shaw’s Big Scheme” was elucidated again in the paper’s 21 February 1886 edition and, referring to federal appropriations, small as they were to date, for the existing port, he asked, after insisting that “the only practicable harbor . . . is the one devised by myself.”
Does it not appear childish and ridiculous that this section should be an applicant for national aid in the matter of a harbor, or breakwater, when our natural resources are such as to make us, of all sections, the most able to help ourselves? Every evidence points to the fact that an artificial harbor is required in this vicinity. There is nothing to prevent building one, and on ground where it will be permanent and as beneficial as a natural harbor.
In the Times of 14 March, Shaw, with an address in the Nadeau Block in Los Angeles, intoned that, as early as 1872, he, “to advance the cause of hygienic and industrial education,” surveyed the coast to find an idea site for his harbor and a short-line railroad” and concluded that the cost for this project would be $25 million, though he asserted that due to declines in steel costs, “the work can now be done for less than $10 million,” while he claimed it was also easier to obtain loans. Therefore, he concluded, “it is now possible to obtain the means to carry out this enterprise” and “in a way to do credit to ourselves.”
The 6 May edition of the paper published another letter from Shaw dated 18 April, addressed from “Laurel Cañon,” in which he proclaimed that “it is simply time to reorganize the Southern California Sanitary Hotel Company” and that “my plans take in a hotel that will accommodate fifteen hundred persons at least,” a massive number, to be sure. He added that all but a few shares, nothing was said about how many and what value were involved in the concern were subscribed, though “those behind me in this matter are anxious to see some Angelenos that can be trusted” to join in the venture. Should this be done, he insisted, “I pledge myself to have a hotel of the capacity named ready for guests in less than one year.”
Greater Los Angeles, in fact, was primed for what became known as the Boom of the Eighties, as a direct transcontinental railroad line to the region was recently completed, and this significant growth spurt peaked during the Angel City mayoral administration of William H. Workman, spanning 1887 and 1888. Yet, nothing further could be located about the resurrected project, dating from the region’s first boom, though Shaw continued with his artificial harbor dreams.
The 29 January 1887 edition of the Times included another letter from Shaw, titled “Seasonable Suggestions,” in which he promoted terrace agriculture on northern slopes of hills as superior to that using irrigation, especially for fruits and nuts before turning to his main topic. He claimed that,
The writer has been “behind the scenes” from the first, in this wonderful drama—the planting of the Empire State of this republic—California. He foresaw her needs and her possibilities. There being no harbor between San Francisco and San Diego . . . we began our hydrographic surveys in 1849 to find a place for an artificial harbor similar to the one to Auxborg, on the coast of France [it is not known what location this is].
Shaw stated that he once constructed a 150-foot raft and, on his own, spent twenty days determining where to place cassions for his artificial harbor, while also asserting that “a harbor that needs constant dredging is of little value.” If, however, his idea could be implemented, “our vicinity would soon become a great manufacturing center,” with all manner of factories (foundries, tanneries, glass plants, watchmaking establishments, cotton mills) that “would give employment to millions of people.” Combining these with the region’s agricultural and horticultural industries “and there is hardly a limit to the numbers that can find constant employment and healthful homes here.”
As the boom intensified, so were Shaw’s ruminations on his artificial harbor, as well as longstanding interest in hygienics and his growing convictions that “the time is and has been when man is in need of wings” and literally be able to fly. For more, we’ll return tomorrow with part five, so come back and check that out!
Regardless of whether Frederic M. Shaw was truly insane or merely eccentric, I personally believe he was a real visionary, based on three key points outlined in this post: he called attention to the need for an artificial harbor along the West Coast between San Francisco and San Diego – 15 years before construction began on Los Angeles’s San Pedro harbor; he foresaw a future Los Angeles with millions of residents and thriving industrial and commercial success; and he proposed abolishing the redundant Electoral College.
Thanks, Larry and, yes, amid some truly strange ideas, there are kernels of concepts that are notable. There’s more to come about Shaw, so stay tuned!