Come to Long Beach for Your Health

(An excerpt from my book Died in Long Beach - Cemetery Tales) 

Seeking Health
  Many who find obituaries of loved ones who died in Long Beach often wonder why they came to Long Beach in the first place.  A number of the obits list the person only having been in town a short while before they found their eternal resting place in either Long Beach Municipal Cemetery or Sunnyside Cemetery.  Many of us living now, take the medical marvels that science has discovered within the last fifty years for granted.  However, back at the turn of the 20th century you were considered "old" if you lived to be 50 years of age.  Diseases that we now have inoculations for were prevalent then.  Smallpox, infantile paralysis and tuberculosis were common medical problems.  Often there was nothing doctors could do and the only  hope was prayer.  However, science was advancing.  Physicians discovered that patients with tuberculosis improved if they moved to a dry climate.  Sea air and a regulated diet were also considered valuable in combating the disease.  Long Beach had the sea air and a relatively mild climate year round.  It was the perfect place to build a sanitarium.

Long Beach Sanitarium
  A pretty flowered walk led the way to the Long Beach Sanitarium at Tenth and Linden.  The $60,000 sanitarium, which was also known as the Long Beach Hospital, opened in June 1906.  Though it wasn't quite finished, patients flocked to its doors.  All were impressed.  There was a great electric fan in the basement, run by an electric motor.  It took only three minutes to change the temperature in a room by the mere push of a button.  The hospital was on the list of "must see" stops for tourists.  Several times a day tour companies brought visitors to view the marvels the sanitarium offered.  They gawked at the treatment rooms, where clients took invigorating baths and received massage therapies, and were amazed at the static room where electricity was used in treatments.  Many families lived at the sanitarium for months at a time while one, or several, members regained their health.  To accommodate the religious education  of the young, there was a Sunday school and various devotional exercises practiced throughout the day.  During evenings residents were treated to lectures, such as "The Evil Effects of Stimulants and Narcotics."
  The Long Beach Sanitarium used the "Battle Creek" idea, practiced by John H. Kellogg.  At his Michigan sanitarium, Kellogg advocated total abstinence from alcoholic beverages, tea, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, and condiments.  He preached a meat free diet and believed milk, cheese, eggs, and refined sugars should be used sparingly, if at all.  Man's natural foods, Kellogg claimed, were nuts, fruits, legumes and whole grains.
  There were about a hundred stockholders in the association running the sanitarium, among them twenty-two local physicians.  There was no resident physician, each patient called in his or her own doctor.
  Dr. W. Harriman Jones, whose Harriman Jones Medical Group continues to this day, was one of the driving forces behind this new sanitarium and later became one of the most prominent physicians in Long Beach.  Born in Battle Creek, Michigan, February 22, 1876, Jones came to California when he was three.  He attended Cooper Medical College, now Stanford University School of Medicine, and received his medical degree in 1899.  Dr. Jones started his practice in Long Beach in 1902 and became the city's first health officer, instituting sewers, garbage collection and sanitary inspections. In 1930 he opened his own clinic---the Harriman Jones Clinic on Cherry and Broadway in Long Beach.  On June 17, 1956, he died in the hospital that had once been the Long Beach Sanitarium---St. Mary's Hospital.

Seaside Hospital
       Shortly after the Long Beach Sanitarium opened in 1906, local physicians decided it was time for a real hospital.  Dr. Jones had used a small house at 327 Daisy as a hospital, but something larger was needed.  Area doctors first considered the old Porterfield home at 519 Cedar, but when neighbors protested they were forced to look elsewhere.  In 1908 they rented the H.L. Enloe home at Broadway and Junipero for $60 a month.  Each physician contributed $200 and elected Dr. Lewis A. Perce chairman of the board.  Perce's wife suggested the name Seaside Hospital and Perce donated a sign with the hospital's name.  By 1912, the doctors' needs had outgrown the capacity of the house.  A new hospital was needed.
     The new facility at 1401 Chestnut was something to be proud of.  Sitting atop Magnolia Hill, on Fourteenth Street, the hospital had polished hardwood floors made sound proof by cork covering.  Rooms of restful brown tints, each equipped with an electric call button nurses had to come into the room to turn off, greeted patients.  Front rooms on the second floor had private baths and doors large enough to roll beds out upon the broad balcony on nice days.  There were four private wards able to accommodate sixteen patients, and a maternity ward for 40 new mothers.  An operating, dining room and morgue (accessible from the driveway, but discreetly out of sight) were outfitted with state of the art equipment such as huge electric fans, gas ranges and an elevator. In 1935 the original 16-bed hospital was increased to 275 beds and in 1960 Seaside Hospital became the Memorial Hospital we know today.

Empire Day Disaster

May 24, 1913 - Long Beach, California

38 people die, 200 injured

     It was supposed to be the greatest British celebration ever held on foreign soil but turned into the greatest tragedy to strike California up to that time.  On May 24, 1913, the first "Empire Day" in Southern California was celebrated.  Ever since she started her reign in 1838 May 24th was a national British holiday celebrating Queen Victoria's birthday, but after her death in 1901 her subjects still wanted to continue the celebration, establishing "Empire Day" to commemorate the expansion of the British Empire duing her reign.

     Twenty thousand British and former British subjects gathered in Long Beach that day for a festive celebration which was to include a parade, athletic conpetitions, games, music and speeches at the Municipal Auditorium.  It was just at the close of the parade when disaster struck.  The marchers, and those in vehicles, marched up the ramp leading to the double decked pier and auditorium where the program was to begin.  However, the main entrance to the auditorium became blocked by the crowd and those in the rear pressed forward in such large numbers that they caused a rotten 4 x 14 foot girder to break.  Masses of people fell through or on top of another crowd packing the lower deck; then the floor of the lower deck also gave way, tumbling people to the sand and water below.

     The Long Beach Press reported the day of the tragedy:

     What must go down in history as the most terrible disaster in the annals of Southern California, made gruesome history this morning when a four foot square section of the Municipal Auditorium fell to the sand below.  Heart rending scenes, never before equaled in the history of Long Beach were enacted on the beach as the dead and living were carried out and tenderly laid on the beach.  Many begged piteously to die.  A lad of ten yers was seen to pass away in his mother's arms, as she was raising a glass of brandy to his lips.  A broken-hearted father carried the limp and almost lifeless form of his fourteen-month-old baby to the steps to hunt for a doctor.  His wife lay on the beach with her life crushed out.  A mother saw her little boy smile and die at Seaside Hospital, a half hour after he had stood with her and cheered as a parade disbanded for the auditorium ceremonies. 

     It took a full ten minutes for the crowds on the pier, only a few hundred feet away from the disaster, to realize what had happened.  When the fire chief's auto came dashing up to assist in the relief work, many thought the fire department was giving an exhibition as part of the festivities.

     The Daily Telegram reported on the aftermath:

     Most of the wearing apparel and valuables dropped by the visitors of Saturday are on display at the Council chambers awaiting identifiction by the owners or relatives.  There are nearly 200 men's and boys' hats and caps of every shape, size and style generally in a battered and mashed condition.  There are bows, gloves and numerous hair switches of every shade of color, most looking as if they had been torn roughly from the head which it adorned.  Perhaps the most valuable article is a solid gold watch, the case of which is made of three kinds of the yellow metal, collected by the owner in America, Australia and South Africa, the three colors forming a curious combination set off by a half caret blue white diamond.  A heavy gold chain is attached to the watch.  It was the property of Thomas Beck, whose body is on a slab in one of the morgues.....

     Long Beach felt responsible for the tragedy.  Doctors donated their services free of charge.  $10,000 ($234,000 today's money) was quickly raised to aid the victims.  The following statement was issued in the Daily Telegram on May 26, 1913:

     The citizens of Long Beach will courageously and promptly meet every responsibility and humane demand growing out of Saturday's awful tragedy.  The dead will be given proper burial and the wounds of the injured will be cared for by the best obtainable medical and nursing skill.  The needs of every surviving victim will be promptly and heartily supplied.  There will be no red tape to handicap our people in demonstrating to the world, that we entertain a full understanding of our obligations to suffering humanity and propose to meet them with decision and sympathic candor.

     The Citizen's Relief Committee was true to their word.  Arthur Lett, a former conductor on the Pacific Electric who lost his wife and two of his three children, was one example.  his slender savings could not cover funeral expenses nor buy lots in the cemetery.  The Committee provided money to cover the burials and purchased cemetery plots.

       As a result of this tragedy many State and Federal laws had to be examined and changed as a result of the Long Beach Empire Day Disaster.  The city also instituted stringent building codes which few people today realize helped prevent greater tragedy during the 1933 Long Beach earthquake.

     If you're interested in learning more about this tragedy and its aftermath please read my book Murderous Intent.  To learn more about what was happening 100 years ago check out my Author's Blog at www.claudineburnettbooks.com



Long Beach, CA. cemeteries

(An excerpt from my book Died in Long Beach - Cemetery Tales)

Long Beach Municipal Cemetery

     No one knows for sure how old the cemetery on the northwest corner of Orange and Willow is.  The oldest marked grave is that of a Milton F. Neece who was buried in 1878 at the age of 17, but old timers back in the 1950s remembered a man who used to visit the cemetery in the 1930s who told the sexton that his father had been buried there years ago when the man was just a boy.  Since the man appeared to be in his 80s, it could push the date of the cemetery as far back as the 1850s.
     Even the old record books aren't of any help, they were kept so poorly that there is even doubt about who is buried in the graves.  When the city took over the cemetery in 1906 from the Long Beach Cemetery Association, they found that the record books were a mess.  The early caretakers thought that all they were responsible for was appointing a sexton to look after the property, but many of the sextons could not read or write and their attempt at bookkeeping and posting records was amusing, at best.  Many lots had been sold, but there was no record of the owners.  When the Department of the City Clerk took over the record keeping in 1906, they discovered one instance where five bodies had been buried in one grave and several lots sold three or four times.
     In his spare time Deputy City Clerk Paine would get out the old map of the cemetery and devote a few hours to untangling the bookkeeping nightmare.  At one time, according to the records, one man was buried in eight different lots!  Paine swore that he would not rest until he finally allotted each corpse to its proper grave.  So all we really have to go on is Deputy City Clerk Paine, and hope that the work he did is correct.
     By 1906 the old municipal cemetery (also called the Signal Hill Cemetery since it was on Signal Hill) was a blot on the landscape.  The 5 acre graveyard was owned by the City, but administered by the Long Beach Cemetery Association, which had passed into oblivion sometime between 1893, when they incorporated, and 1906.  The municipal authorities had not given the graveyard any attention, despite constant petitions filed with the City Trustees, asking them to spend a few hundred dollars on cleaning it up.  Finally, in 1906, Long Beach's latest city fathers considered the matter and appointed a cemetery commission, who hired someone to tend the grounds and clean it up.  But the size of the cemetery was limited, in fact there was hardly enough space left to care for the average dead in Long Beach for one year.  Besides improving the present grounds, something needed to be done to secure more land for the "City of the Dead."

Sunnyside (Willow Street)

     A company of businessmen purchased 15 acres adjoining the municipal cemetery in May 1906, resurrecting the name "Long Beach Cemetery Association." They planned to organize the cemetery association on the land north of Willow and offer "perpetual" care.  It would be a private concern and offer the best in landscaping, parking and care.
     By June 1907, Long Beach had a new cemetery---Sunnyside.  There were 3,500 lots in the new burying grounds with ample room for five graves a lot, giving the Silent City (as they referred to it in early newspapers) a capacity of housing 17,500 persons.  The drives in the grounds were called Myrtle, Fern, Magnolia, Ivy and Lotus.  On both sides of these drives date palms were planted along with flowers and greenery.  The association guaranteed that they had a first class water system available throughout the grounds so survivors would not have to worry about dead shrubbery and grass disgracing the graves of the departed.
      In 1915, it was decided that a mausoleum was needed.  Sidney Lovell, architect of the famous Rose Hill mausoleum in Chicago, was hired to design the Sunnyside Cemetery Memorial Mausoleum, which was to be of Grecian-Doric design, approximately 50 by 175 feet.  A "view to die for"--- a stunning panorama of Long Beach and the Pacific---was to grace the front portico. In addition, only granite, re-enforced concrete, marble and bronze would be used in the construction of the building.  The inside was to be finished entirely in marble, bronze and art glass with ceiling decorations tinted to match.
     The cost of single crypts was to be about the same as earth burial, but because of the number of individual crypts and the large amount of money needed to build the mausoleum, all of the crypts had to be sold in advance of construction, and only those who purchased them ahead of time could be "accommodated."
     On May 23, 1921, oil was discovered at Temple and Hill on Signal Hill.  By 1922, with producing oil wells on three sides, Sunnyside and the Municipal cemetery were perhaps the most valuable burial grounds in the world.  The hallowed earth was beginning to attract the covetous glances of prospective oil promoters.  Soon the Long Beach Cemetery Wars (described in "Died in Long Beach  - Cemetery Tales") began!
     Though a compromise on where to build a mausoleum was reached in 1923, the Long Beach Cemetery Association continued to run the original Sunnyside until 1989 when it was sold to an individual who neglected the site and embezzled more than a half million dollars from the endowment fund.  The state Department of Consumer Affairs took the property into conservatorship and a group of volunteers made arrangement to keep the cemetery open and continue burials.  The volunteer group formed a not-for-profit corporation to own and operate the facility.  On December 29, 1998, the Department of Consumer Affairs and the Los Angeles Superior Court ended the conservatorship and turned the title and deed over to Sunnyside Cemetery, inc.  The State Department of Consumer Affairs has publicly stated the reorganization and management by the non-profit group is a classic example of what can be done when the community works together.

Sunnyside Mausoleum & Memorial Garden (Forest Lawn)

     In 1923, amid all the fighting over oil and a place for a mausoleum, a new "model" cemetery was established with an entrance off Cherry Avenue at 1500 E. San Antonio Drive.  It really wasn't a "new" cemetery, since it incorporated the earlier Palm Cemetery, donated by Jotham Bixby.  Long Beach, rich with oil money, was the largest city in California without a mausoleum.  Now, in order to "cool down" tempers, building of the mausoleum continued.  A new design, drawn up by Cecil E. Bryan inc., Chicago engineers, was selected to build and design the structure which would contain 3000 crypts, with family rooms priced as high as  $50,000.

     Constructed with a Spanish theme, the roof of the mausoleum was of red Spanish tile, while the chapel itself was decorated with imported art glass.  Heavy bronze doors and Italian marble for the interior trim was designed to make this a virtual "Palace of the Dead."  In 1935, gardens were added to the grounds, in 1945 two decorative pools, and in 1980 the mosaic of Raphael's fresco "Paradise," composed of 2.8 million pieces of Venetian glass and standing 45 feet high by 32 feet across, was constructed.

     Three small chapels (the chapel of the Palms, Wilton St. and Grand Avenue) as well as a crematory and mortuary were purchased by the Forest Lawn company in August 1960.  The mortuary was renamed Forest Lawn Mortuary - Long Beach.  The rest of the 38-acre cemetery was purchased by the Glendale based funeral giant in 1979.  In 1987, after eight years and 200,000 man-hours of renovation, the former Sunnyside Memorial Garden took on a new look as well as a new name---Forest Lawn Memorial Park - Sunnyside.  The renovation included transforming the smallest of the three chapels into an expanded reception area, relocating the mortuary entrance, adding dozens of statues, and consolidating two narrow drives into one wide road leading to the grounds.


Today people from around the world are drawn to the Mausoleum to not only the impressive architecture, but to see the Foucault Pendulum.  It is one of the largest of its kind in existence. It keeps accurate time as it makes one complete revolution every 42 hours and 48 minutes.

     If you want to find any relatives buried in the mausoleum, best to check at the Administrative office and ask for a guide.  It's easy to get lost in the cavern of passages, and some of the names etched in marble are hard to make out.  All in all, it's a beautiful, marvelous place,  this "City of the Dead." 


All Souls Cemetery

     There's one more Long Beach cemetery I haven't mentioned: All Souls Catholic Cemetery at  4400 Cherry Avenue, almost across from Forest Lawn - Sunnyside.  It opened in June 1950.  They advertise:

• Over 19,000 square feet of enclosed space
• Three (3) large visitation rooms
• A chapel with seating for 220 people with vestibule to accommodate larger gatherings
• Seven (7) private arrangement rooms
• After-service reception area with kitchen amenities to accommodate 80 people
• Large parking lot
• Full-service flower shop
• Mortuary and cemetery administrative offices in one convenient location
• Fully handicapped-accessible amenities
• Several large public areas, including a comfortable visitor lounge and a large, private family meditation room
• Two (2) courtyards with lush greenery

More about All Souls and the other cemeteries will be found in  Died in Long Beach - Cemetery Tales  (published July 2016).  The book is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.