264 HISTORY OF PASADENA. 



Gorthy was proved to be a liar, a slanderer and a perjurer — and he left the 

 city forthwith. The same paper which contained Gorthy's drunken im- 

 aginings, sworn to as fact, contained also a lot of falsehoods about the Carlton 

 hotel case, in which the committee had been the means of detecting its lessees 

 in selling whisky by the bottle and sent to private rooms, besides other out- 

 lawry going on there. The lessee had given a bond agreeing to get all his 

 liquors out of town within three days, and riot sell any more liquors during 

 ♦ the life of this bond (six months), under penalty of five hundred dollars. 

 The city attorney had granted him his own free choice, to sign this bond, or 

 go on trial and take the chances of what the court and j ury would give him ; 

 and he chose the bond. The committee was thus prevented ironi making 

 public its evidence, and this left the field open for the most unconscionable 

 falsehoods to be put forth about the case. This open field was industriously 

 worked for months afterwards ; and these falsehoods were publicly repeated 

 on the liquor side in the city campaign of 1890 — nineteen months later. 

 But at that time, in a public meeting in Williams Hall, April 8, 1890, A. R. 

 Metcalfe, Esq., being called out, made an able speech defending the city 

 council then in office, in reply to false accusations against them ; and in- 

 cidentally he alluded to this Carlton hotel case. The lyos Angeles Tribune 

 and the Pasadena Star both reported his speech, and I quote from them the 

 passage referring to this particular case. Tribune' s report : 



" The trouble is not with the law. I understand that great stress 

 has been laid on the fact that the Carlton hotel was closed under the 

 provisions of this ordinance. I say boldly, the Carlton hotel should have 

 been closed. It would cause the blush of shame to mount the cheek of any 

 gentleman in this room if he knew all that went on there ; and if the Web- 

 ster or Acme should have such scenes enacted in them, I would favor closing 

 them also." 



Star's report: " The prosecution of the Carlton hotel proprietors was 

 referred to as having been one of the best things ever done in the city, for it wotild 

 bring the blush oj shame to any man's cheek to know what scandalous tlmigs 

 went 071 ill that hotel." 



This was the first recognition or acknowledgement ever made in a 

 public way of the good work done by the enforcement committee in that 

 case ; while on the other hand they had borne for nineteen months the 

 grossest misrepresentation and most vindictive contumely both at home 

 and abroad, on account of it. And the lives of members of the detective 

 agency were so virulently threatened that they had to leave town. One very 

 prominent citizen said, " They ought to have been tarred and feathered ! " 

 Another said of the chairman, " O, we'll make it so d — d red hot for that 

 fellow that he can't stay in this country ! "* Another, shaking a fist in his 

 face, said, " We can put up ten thousand dollars to beat you! We have 

 plenty of backing in Los Angeles and San Francisco ! ' ' Another said, 



*This man was a foreigner ; had then been only six years naturalized. 



