A Journal-Miner editorial described the second Pioneers Home supervisor, Percy V Coldwell, as “a malodorous individual, infecting this city, [whose] loyalty long ago ceased to be a virtue and degenerated into a vice, the stench of which has caused people here to hold their hands on their noses.”
Governor Hunt was also included in the newspaper’s disgust. “Despite his acquaintance with [the Home’s] conditions, he sat in his chair at Phoenix and allowed the old pioneers to be treated worse than beasts of the lowest type by his ‘friend’ Coldwell,” the paper continued. “Articles in the newspapers of the state failed to arouse him and the tearful pleas of men who had been driven from the home by this arrogant, old public nuisance, Coldwell, had no effect…It has been said of [Hunt] that he is thick-headed and thin-skinned, but we are inclined to doubt…the latter statement. Any man with enough layers of fat on his caput to cut off 50 steaks…and where a large hat covers a small brain [must have] a hide thicker that that of a rhinoceros…”
Coldwell responded by suing the Journal-Miner for $20,000 (about $637,000 today.) The paper declared that it was “ready and eager for the fray,” and promised “there [would] be no delays in bring the suit to trial… The news that the libel suit had been filed spread like wildfire throughout the city and in less time than it takes to tell, the topic was on everyone’s tongue.”
The first sign of trouble at the Home occurred January 1913 when the Home’s first physician, Dr. WE Day resigned after Coldwell took over. Shortly thereafter, he had Coldwell arrested and fined. “In the municipal court room yesterday morning,” the Journal-Miner explained, “there prevailed for two lively hours a scene of forensic fireworks that surpassed anything that has ever been pulled off in that usually quiet and stable environment of judicial doing,” when the superintendent and doctor “went at each other with all the ferocity of two pile drivers, giving and taking blow for blow.”
“Mr. Coldwell was accused of using profane language toward Dr. Day, and for other alleged personal demonstrations of a threatening nature,” the paper explained. When the two started openly yelling at each other in the courtroom, the judge threatened both with contempt of court. “After they were quieted down, the examination went ahead, with witnesses on both sides equally divided,” the paper reported. However, during the arguments Coldwell “practically admitted his guilt along statutory lines,” and ultimately he was fined $10, or about $300 today!
The following month, the sheriff needed to be called to the Pioneers Home. A dispute broke-out between Coldwell and two residents named Bradley and Gibson. Coldwell suspended Bradley for rules violations, “whereupon Gibson took up the quarrel and both attempted an assault on Coldwell,” the Arizona Republican wrote.
Residents believed that Bradley was being expelled without any grounds, and a “small-sized mutiny occurred…in which eight members forcibly resisted the expulsion of their companion,” the Journal-Miner reported. The climax came on Gurley street, when Coldwell needed the help of the undersheriff. “A dozen or more pioneers are very earnest in their expressions, and yesterday gave vent to their feelings in this and other matters linked to the management of that institution.” Sixteen residents signed charges against Coldwell and sent it to the State Board of Control. In turn, the board sent its citizen member, Charles Osborn, to investigate.
“It seems probable a change in superintendents of the institution will be necessary,” the Journal-Miner anticipated. “Already a bill has been introduced in the Senate providing that the Superintendent of the Home need not be eligible to admission of the home.” It was hoped that this would attract a younger man for the job. Indeed the law passed easily. Another change that passed provided that “the judges of the Superior Court of the several counties shall make the certificate entitling a person to enter the Home.” Previously it was the Board of Supervisors for each county that made the decision.
As Coldwell hung on, residents took flight. “Two more [residents] have left the Pioneers’ Home,” the Journal-Miner reported. “Disgusted with the management of the institution, [they are] preferring to submit to the charity of friends rather than be imposed upon.”
One resident, who was suspended and had to live outside the Home for 30 days, told the Miner: “Since Major Doran left the Home we have had no home. [Unless there’s] a change in the management…I will starve to death before I again will enter that hell-hole. The county poor farm will be a haven to what I and other pioneers have endured for several months… [It’s] a place where despotism reigns, and where conditions are such that a…man will not and cannot endure.”
Another pioneer told that when he wrote friends in Globe about how he was being treated, they told him to “Pack up and get out.” “I have but one leg, and since being at the home have been utterly neglected and have incurred the animosity of the superintendent. Under these conditions I go never to return,” he said.
In three weeks, three more residents left.
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In early March 1914, the Journal-Miner reported that it was expected that Coldwell would resign to avoid facing an open investigation. Even if the governor accepted the resignation, the paper pledged to publish the charges regardless. “The conditions in the home…are almost beyond compression,” it wrote.
A petition to the governor included 40 prominent Prescott signatures including the mayor, the sheriff and the county attorney. A recently employed engineer publicly divulged “graft, misconduct, abuse of privileges and bulldozing of the inmates.” But as the investigation began, and testimony was taken, these were the least shocking charges that would surface against Coldwell.
The first day of the investigation produced ghastly testimony from two girls, aged 10 and 12. Agnes and Alice Coates were part of a group of five girls playing under the Granite St. bridge one day, when Coldwell came upon them “and in a very short space of time he was enjoying the company of one of the children who does not now reside in this city,” the Miner explained. “The little girl became frightened at the extreme approaches of the aged man, shouted, finally managed to break away and run together with the others in the directions of their home.”
The two girls told their father who tracked down Coldwell and told him to “‘keep [his] hands off in the future’ or be prepared to take the consequences,” the paper said. “Mr. Coates related their tales in a comprehensive, uncontradictable manner…and the testimony was not shaken on cross-examination,” the paper noted.
Another resident named Yancey testified: “Yes, I’ve seen him running around after young girls and children,” he said. Yancey then gave two examples where he had witnessed Coldwell “who is well past the three score mark in years was seen chasing after young girls.”
Coldwell, completely upset, interrupted. “Waving his arms and banging the palms of his hands together, Coldwell blurted: “Yes, I am fond of little girls. What of it?”
“What of it?!” shouted Yancey. “I’ll show you what of it! Guns or fists, I don’t care!”
“Indignation simply oozed from the pores of every pioneer who testified,” the Miner observed. “Scandalous tales blended with sensations of every hue and color [were heard.]” A total of 15 pioneers testified against Coldwell the first day.
A partial list of the the accusations included
- Coldwell was incompetent; could not keep his own accounts, and had no managerial ability.
- He cussed incessantly, and a ”spirit of discontent” at the Home was equally incessant.
- He simply sat and watched “while a husky pioneer battered down a weakened enfeebled inmate.”
- He opened a personal letter addressed to one of the pioneers from the Board of Control.
- He fired 13 men in 15 months. (His predecessor only needed to fire one.)
- Residents that weren’t favored by Coldwell were forced to depend on the goodwill of friends to purchase clothing.
A former cook “told of the awful temperament possessed by Coldwell, his eccentric actions at times and his desire at times to resort to violence.” The paper suggested that it was the cook’s love for his young family that kept him from killing Coldwell.
One resident, “Doc” Foster, stated: “There’s as much harmony existing in the Pioneer Home as in a bee hive. In fact you don’t want to do much business there, unless you want to get stung.” He went on to say “that Coldwell was not a fit person to handle the institution, didn’t know how to deliver a civil answer and that he believed him a dope fiend,” the paper revealed. (Back then, “dope” referred to opium.)
One penniless pioneer needed a new set of lower teeth. Even after Dr. McNally wrote the prescription “the superintendent would not accept the order.”
Phillip Schreiber needed a suit of clothes, but “strongly resented Coldwell’s offer to give him [one] procured from a dead man’s room.” He stated that Coldwell did not know how to handle people. “Coldwell is incompetent, uses abusive language, plays favorites, enacts the role of Czar in his attitude toward the inmates, believes the home is virtually a hotel in his possession, rules accordingly, is brutal in his nature, and uses dope.”
Schreiber was disabled and had trouble reaching the dining room the same time as the rest. In one instance Coldwell refused to let him eat “because he had failed to arrive promptly on the minute.” Once he tripped and fell flat on the floor striking his head. Coldwell just watched him, refusing to lend a hand.
Coldwell was also accused of trying to receive kickbacks from the Home’s vendors.
The chief witness for the defense was the physician who took over when Dr. Day resigned, Dr. JW McNally. “Dr. McNally painted Coldwell as a virtuous angel who was only shy of a pair of wings with which to make the trip to heaven,” the Journal-Miner wrote. McNally stated that he tended to doubt the accounts of the two young girls and their story that Coldwell was “going to extremes with a 12 year-old girl” because there would be no motive for Coldwell to do so. He also disparaged the two child witnesses, calling them “mud and street urchins” and he stated that he would have no concern if his daughters were left alone with Coldwell.
On cross, McNally stated that “the inmates of the Pioneers Home were positively upon the same plane and character of those in the poor house.” Many thought this to be the opposite of the original intention of the Home. After all, these were the pioneers who set the stage for the rest of America to arrive, settle, and raise families. “Dr. McNally was told in plain English ‘that he was a queer man,’” the paper reported.
One lady “whose name [was] withheld as a courtesy…for a noble woman who had the courage to face the trying ordeal,” the paper explained. She “declared that she had been in the city for 19 years and never before had she encountered any man bordering on depravity [worse] than Coldwell.” At one time Coldwell called her house, and when the wife informed him that her husband was not at home, Coldwell responded: “I want to see you, not [your husband.] When he is not at home, I want to come down to your house.” The witness told that “she cried and almost went into nervous prostration over the incident over the next several days.”
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Dr. Day, the Home’s first physician, was then called to testify. He called Coldwell a degenerate, and a cigarette fiend. “[Coldwell] has attempted to enter private families and make himself generally officious,” Day declared. When asked by the defense to “name one family in that category,” Day replied in a loud voice: “Mine!” When he was asked to define what he meant when he called the defendant “degenerate,” Day replied: “On a very low moral plane.”
The residents of the Home were split, those who were favored by Coldwell had no complaints, but to the rest he was a tyrant.
Coldwell testified for nearly two hours the final day of the investigation, explaining his version of the incidents in question. However his cross-examination by County Attorney PW O’Sullivan, who represented the residents, was a complete disaster. O’Sullivan set a trap for Coldwell to perjure himself, and the latter fell right into it.
When asked, Coldwell “denied ever having been an inmate of a country jail.” Then O’Sullivan had him read a letter from the office of the County Attorney of Cochise County which said in part: “With reference to Perry V Coldwell, I will say that he was committed to the county jail for ninety days…on a charge of disturbing the peace.”
Due to the negative allegations revealed in the investigation, Coldwell dropped his $20,000 suit against the Journal-Miner on April 18, 1914. But within two weeks, Coldwell Filed suit against the newspaper once again. This time the amount was $30,000 (almost $1 million today.) But the entire chapter would come to an abrupt end within three months.
For on July 14, 1914, early in the afternoon, the "cigarette fiend," Coldwell grasped his chest and fell to the floor. The Home’s physician, Dr. JB McNally “was notified and hurried immediately to the stricken man’s side. He was taken to Mercy Hospital, but survived his arrival there only a short time,” the Journal-Miner reported. The cause of death was reported as “neuralgia of the heart.” He was born May 12, 1849, and was 65. He first arrived in Tucson in 1873 and never left Arizona.
Interestingly, only two weeks before his death, Coldwell wrote a will leaving his estate (which was primarily $1100 in a bank,) to a nephew in San Francisco. The newspaper considered it a premonition of his death.
In early September 1914, Gov. Hunt appointed Judge PS Wren to take over the supervisor’s position and the Home went back to normal.
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SOURCES:
Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/11/1914; Pg. 2, Col. 2.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/18/1914; Pg. 2, Col. 2
Weekly Journal-Miner, 1/8/1913; Pg. 4, Col. 6.
Arizona Republican, 2/5/1913; Pg. 6, Col. 2
Weekly Journal-Miner, 2/5/1913; Pg. 5, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 2/12/1913; Pg. 7, Col. 3.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 4/2/1913; Pg. 5, Col. 2.
Tombstone Epitaph, 2/16/1913; Pg. 4, Col. 4.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 3/4/1914; Pg. 5, Cols. 1-2
Weekly Journal-Miner, 4/8/1914; Pg. 7.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 4/8/1914; Pg. 1, Cols. 3-4
IBID. Pg. 5.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 4/15/1914; Pg. 4, Cols. 1-4.
Tucson Citizen, 4/20/1914; Pg. 1, Cols. 3-4.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 4/29/1914; Pg. 3, Col. 6.
Arizona Republican, 7/15/1914; Pg. 1, Col. 5.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 7/22/1914; Pg. 4, Col. 1.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 8/5/1914; Pg. 4, Col. 2.
Weekly Journal-Miner, 9/9/1914; Pg. 4, Col. 3.
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