Location: 336 South Flower Street
Date: January 28, 1932

Raymond Seccord, a 15-year-old Vancouver runaway, flipped out in City Hall's juvenile court today after being busted in front of the above address. Refusing to answer any questions, he upended tables, lobbed an inkwell out the window and bit and scratched four detectives as they tried to tackle him. Seccord sneered "I'm plenty tough. I'll probably hang for killing a copper." Suitably impressed, Judge Blake sent him to County Jail instead of Juvenile Hall, and we will hear no more of this plucky fellow.

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: February 26, 1938

Police investigating the bold slaying of Hollywood nightclub proprietor Harold A. Thompson, shot and robbed of $105 while behind his crowded bar at 1015 Western Avenue two nights ago, scared up some of the usual suspects, including Anthony Smith, 23, and Edward Burns, 36, both of this address. But after thorough questioning the pair was released, and in October ex-cons Joseph Lariscy and Lyle Woollomes would be convicted of the killing.

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: September 21, 1937

Arrested on charges of stabbing J.T. Murray, 27-year-old laborer, as he stepped from a cafe at 234 East Fifth Street, was Charles Parsons, 19, of this address, captured with Victor Burk, 20, at Fifth and Spring Streets. Earlier, Murray had argued with two beggars who dunned him for a nickel, and a fistfight broke out. One of the beggars pulled a knife and stabbed Murray, who was taken to General Hospital with a belly wound that was expected to prove fatal. When frisked, Parsons' pockets revealed a bloody knife.

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: September 1, 1930

A young woman named Natalie residing at 1212 Wilshire Boulevard was menaced by a masher who followed her for several blocks in the early morning hours before finally succumbing to his urges and making a grab. Natalie defended herself, bashing her assailant over the head with a sack of grapes and then slashing his face with her keys. Hearing screams (it's unclear who was screaming), neighbors called police, and at the above address they found Roy Roberts, 24, a transient, with bloody scratches all over his puss. He was arrested on suspicion, not of mashery, but of robbery. Perhaps he snatched the grapes?

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: January 26, 1907

Baby stealing? That, and spousal cruelty, are the charges leveled against labor organizer Edward W. Kent, arrested while in the act of packing to flee Los Angeles. His wife, residing at this address, says she has been confined to her bed for months, and a week ago Kent gave their son to a Mrs. F. Borgel, who came to Mrs. Kent's bed and tore the babe from her arms. It was at this point that the mother filed charges. She claims that her husband, a member of the Musicians Union and one-time candidate for San Francisco Supervisor, had become unkind to her around the time she learned that his reputation in their former home, Chicago, was less than pristine. He had hit her, pulled her hair and ears, made fiendish faces and screamed that he hoped she would die until she checked into a sanitarium on Hill Street. It was at which point her son was taken. An investigation is being opened, and when Mrs. Kent is well enough to appear in court, charges may be pursued against her husband at her discretion.

Location: 330 South Flower Street
Date: December 22, 1904

Arrested at this lodging house in the act of burgling was the dapper, notorious Hoyt Brown (aka Frank Carlson), recently sprung from the Reform School at Whittier, but still rotten.

He was about 17 or 18 when, two Augusts back, while working as a bellboy at the Hotel Lillie at 534 Hill Street, Brown he was charged with having liberated valuables from rooms there, earning notice from detectives as "a sneak thief a grade above amateur at least" and "bearing the unenviable reputation of having made the biggest hauls of any local boy burglar in years."

July 10, 1917

A resident of Bunker Hill was arrested today as part of a secret indictment issued by the Federal grand jury in San Francisco.  Ladel P. Varna, aka L. Percy Ram Chandra of 318 S. Flower Street was charged with violating the President's neutrality proclamation.  He was suspected of being involved in the recent Annie Larsen affair, part of a "wholesale plot to assist the Hindus in an effort to throw off the British yoke."

The affair, and the trial that followed is too hopelessly confusing to relate here in any detail, but involved "German spies," the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and India's Ghadar Party.  The Annie Larsen, a barely seaworthy vessel, was loaded up with approximately 4 million round of ammunition, 3758 cases of small arms ammunition, 10,000 Springfield rifles, 10,000 bayonets, and 10,000 cartridge belts, and sent out to rendezvous with the Maverick, and transfer the cargo to the larger ship, which would then head for Southeast Asia.

But back to Bunker Hill for now...

May 22, 1919
317 S. Flower Street, Saratoga Hotel

A building permit for a 3-story brick lodging house that would become the Saratoga Hotel was issued to W.W. Paden and Louis Nordlinger in the summer of 1914. A year later, the hotel was offered for sale, exchange, or lease, offering "long lease, good furniture, and cheap rent."

By 1919, the hotel had already acquired something of a reputation, and was home to many show business types. On May 22, A.W. Gifford, head of the City's Purity Squad led a raid on the hotel and arrested 32 people on charges of living in a house of prostitution. Members of the Purity Squad had taken rooms at the Saratoga during the week prior to the raid, and gathered evidence during that time.

309 S. Flower Street

January 21, 1940

Following his breakfast at the little cafe at 309 S. Flower Street, 25-year-old James D. Bland was full of bacon, eggs, and bad intentions.

He was not armed, but pantomimed a weapon under his coat, and threatened to shoot the waitress, Heide Ogawa, unless she emptied the register. Bland also herded three other cafe employees into a back storage room.

Ogawa handed over the restaurant's $18 take, and then, for reasons known perhaps only to himself, Bland decided to free the other employees before making his departure.

There are two versions of what happened next, but both make for pretty good stories.

According to police, a Negro dishwasher named Arthur Sanders bashed Bland over the head with the handle of a meat cleaver when he was on his way out the door. Then, while Bland was unconscious, the cafe employees tied him up with cords from a laundry bag, and waited for help.

a container for the 300 block of Flower street.