A Week of Crime in 1955

Reading old newspapers is a great way to get interesting perspectives on the past. We often imagine that things were better in the past [with] less crime. But sometimes newspapers from the past remind us that there was just as much crime, perhaps even more, when one considers that the population was smaller. I took a look at the front page of the Thursday, Nov. 10, 1955 local paper The Ledger.

The bold headline, along with nearly half the front page, covers the wrap-up of a brush fire in Tujunga and La Tuna Canyon. Below the headline is small story titled “Work of Hoodlums – Fuse Bomb Jolts Bank.” Two days earlier on Tuesday night at 10:30 a huge “boom” echoed across the La Cañada valley. Windows rattled for a mile around the epicenter of the blast at Foothill and Beulah. A bomb had gone off at the Bank of America at 858 Foothill Blvd. (what is today Citizens Business Bank), and had blown out a big window. Two-and-a-half hours later, an identical bomb blast thundered across Pasadena at the Bank of America on Colorado, again blowing out a large plate-glass window. Police determined that both bombs were homemade pipe bombs.

I think we can all easily imagine the national headlines that would be generated today from an event like this. But in 1955 it rated just four paragraphs, on the front page mind you, but sharing space with an equally electrifying story “Ask Parking Lot Completion.” There was no follow-up to the bombing story in succeeding days, and the bombing was written off, as the story’s headline proclaimed, as the “Work of Hoodlums.” Thinking perhaps our local paper was trying to downplay the seriousness of what would have been a major news story today, I checked the Los Angeles Times for that day in 1955. In the Times the story of the dual bombing rated just 100 words, and was buried on page 2.

Returning to the Ledger for Nov. 10, way down at the bottom of the page was another crime that would have been a considerably bigger deal today, an armed takeover robbery of a La Crescenta pharmacy. Below the stories of La Cañada’s fight for sewers and Leonard Wurtz becoming the president of the Chamber of Commerce was the small header “Robbers Quaff Health Drink, Rob Pharmacy.” It rated just two paragraphs before the story was continued on page 6.

In this crime, four men sat at the lunch counter of the Rogers Pharmacy on a Saturday evening. The store, located at La Crescenta and Honolulu, was busy with customers shopping and waiting for prescriptions. At 7:30 p.m., after drinking their milk and orange juice “health drinks” (remember Orange Julius? Same thing.) the four young men stood up. One pulled out a pistol while two others brandished knives. They herded the customers, plus five employees, into the kitchen at gunpoint. The robbers pulled out all the money from two cash registers and ordered the manager to open the safe, netting about $2,000. They then robbed each customer individually, getting another $200 in cash, after which they fled in a car parked outside.

Again, the news story is taken lightly; one robbed customer even bragging that he was able to hide most of his cash and only gave the gun-wielding bandits $3. Notably, one of the robbery victims was an off-duty LAPD officer who was unfortunately unarmed. Again, there was no follow-up to this buried story, a news item that would have dominated local news today.

Also at the bottom of the front page that day was a four-line mention of burglars having chopped a hole in the roof of a La Cañada pharmacy. 

These stories in this paper from over 60 years ago demonstrate that, although it’s obvious crime was just as prevalent in the past, the news media seemingly didn’t take crime very seriously. Today we worry that we have become numb to violence due to media coverage, yet in this 1955 paper, guns and bombs are no big deal. It’s an interesting perspective.

  mike lawler