Font ResizeMEMORY IS a tough thing to lose, especially when you forget the name of your wife, and you're in court accused of bigamy.
Consider the case of Claude Monckton, arrested in 1920 when his wife "" Violet Olson of Chino (actually his third wife) "" discovered a letter from wife No. 1, according to the newspaper account,
When he came to trial in May 1921, Monckton told Judge Rex B. Goodcell in San Bernardino that he was a victim of amnesia. He had married a woman in Edmonton, Alberta in 1912, and two years later went to war in Europe.
Apparently forgetting about his Canadian bride, he married wife No. 2 in Los Angeles in 1919, but, he told the judge, he didn't remember much about her except her first name was Madge or something,
After these two apparently less-than-memorable nuptials, he wed Violet, 19, in June 1920.
It wasn't until several months later that his memory miraculously returned. Three doctors who had examined him told the judge it was possible that Monckton did have amnesia considering the savage battles he fought in during World War I.
The judge ordered Monckton to undergo medical observation at the county hospital for 60 days. He had that long to convince doctors he really couldn't remember his first two brides,
For No, 3, Violet, there was no doubt about Monckton's future.
"He ought to be put where he couldn't fool any more girls," she told the judge.
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Before cell phones, power windows and hair dryers, people just had a lot simplier ways of solving problems. Ontario's Marshal W.O. Hardy claimed in late summer 1924 that he never felt hot no matter how warm it got.
"Marshal Hardy discovered (a) way of keeping cool several years ago when a friend of his looked at a thermometer . . . and began perspiring fiercely the next minute. "
He told the newspaper his solution to staying cool: Don't look at the thermometer.
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Just before Thanksgiving 1912, an article indicated the elimination of girls' basketball in the Citrus Belt League as Pomona was the only high school willing to field a team for the coming season.
The reason for not funding or a lack of players but rather the fact that in those pre-women's liberation times a young lady was judged far more on decorum and grace than being able to sink a 20-footer.
"Chino (High) decided that basketball was too unladylike as a regular game and dropped it," said the newspaper. "Now Chaffey won't play it because the keen competition makes the game too strenuous. "
And it might take them away from home economics studies, perhaps?
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Jeff F. Sawyer was one tough hombre when he served as Upland's marshal and later police chief, from the city's incorporation in 1906 until his death in 1935. He has to be strong-willed because he had only one arm, the result of an industrial accident in his youth.
One day in 1912, Sawyer arrested Wong Ching, alias Yee Hop, who mistakenly believed he was dealing with an ordinary cop.
The "Clever Celestial" (a newspaper headline term for Chinese in those most unpolitically correct times) had been arrested with more than $100 in opium, the newspaper wrote on Nov. 22.
Hop offered Sawyer a $100 bribe, no small sum in those days.
"Sawyer laughed at him," reported the newspaper. "Hop started a regular auction bidder's line, running the price up to $310. When Sawyer refused to fall, Hop gave up in disgust. "
Before he was sent to federal authorities in Los Angeles, Hop gave the Upland lawman a real compliment: "Sawyer, him no make good New York policeman. "
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On April 13, 1921, a Superior Court jury in San Bernardino made a somewhat suspicious decision in an auto theft case.
Ontario's Jack Pettus had come out of the movies in San Bernardino a few days earlier and found his car missing. It was later found near Riverside with Manuel Grana behind the wheel.
Grana proclaimed his innocence, claiming a stranger gave him $3 to drive the car from San Bernardino to March Field.
The jury ultimately accepted the accused's explanation, though with tongue in cheek.
"The jury believed Grana's story and returned a verdict of 'We, the jury, find the defendant not guiltv' " wrote the newspaper the next day. But the foreman then turned to Grana and said, "But don't do it again. "
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Valley history. He can be reached at 909-483-9382 or joe.blackstock@inlandnewspapers.com
