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6.
Day 1—Thursday, Nov. 24, 1892 (Lottie Bernard Checks In)
An attractive young woman stepped from the train sometime in the late morning hours of Thanksgiving Day. She was traveling alone—a fact frowned upon in Victorian times—with only a hand satchel and the clothes on her back.
The original San Diego train station was built 1887 during the same economic boom that saw the Hotel del Coronado constructed. The station was an ornate, one-story wooden Victorian structure4 with a short but imposing clock tower. It was demolished in 1915, and replaced by today's Union Station or Santa Fe Depot.
She went to the baggage office near the old train station and spoke with a clerk at a window. She told him she needed to check out her three trunks. The clerk asked her for the baggage claim checks ('checks') or tickets. She told him her 'brother'5 had them, and she had gotten separated from him. This is the 'brother' of whom we shall hear time and again. The clerk refused to turn over the luggage, and the woman left with only her hand satchel.
She did not immediately head to the ferry landing to cross over to Coronado. Instead, witnesses would later state that she walked some ten blocks east on C Street to the Hotel Brewster6. The Hotel Brewster was a large new hotel on the corner of 4th and C Streets. Created during the 1880s boom years, it was designed to be efficient, clean, and safe for traveling businessmen. The purpose of the woman's detour has remained unknown until now, but I will offer an explanation. Witnesses claimed she asked about her brother (the sometime 'doctor') and his wife. Hotel staff told her they were not known at the Brewster.
From the Hotel Brewster, she walked or rode to the Coronado ferry landing on the San Diego side. Today's ferry landing is at the foot of West Broadway (then D Street) in San Diego. At that time, the ferry landing was near the foot of H Street (today's Market Street). That was on the waterfront near what is today the area around Tuna Lane by the Aircraft Carrier Midway Museum. That's approximately one mile as the crow flies, or a walk equivalent to about fifteen city blocks. She might have walked through the Stingaree, one of the most notorious red light districts on the West Coast. More likely, she traveled back down C Street to the rail depot, and then turned left to walk south along the harbor shore some five or six blocks to the ferry landing. She was known to be in robust health at this time, and the walk would hardly have strained her.
It is possible, but not very likely, that she could have traveled to Coronado on the Belt Line7, which circled the Bay from San Diego to Coronado, via National City and what are today Chula Vista and Imperial Beach. The ferry ride was the shortest way to cross the Bay, and one is inclined to think she used this route. She boarded one of the large metal ferries then operating, collectively known as the 'Nickel Snatcher' because the fare was five cents. These vessels were large enough to carry horses and buggies—unlike today's ferry, which is moderate in size, and can accommodate bicycles. She may well have ridden on the sidewheeler Coronado, 208 tons and built of steel, commissioned 1886. Another ferry boat in service was the large steamer Ramona.8
The crossing was about a quarter mile. She disembarked some fifteen minutes later at the Coronado ferry terminal, a few hundred feet north (at today's Centennial Park) of today's Ferry Landing Marketplace in the City of Coronado. Bits of the old concrete wharf are still visible along the Centennial Park shoreline.
Coronado (incorporated as a city in 1891) sits on a portion of the Peninsula of San Diego9. As with much of the background detail given here, it is helpful information in understanding the Lottie Bernard saga.
From the ferry landing, she walked three or four minutes to First and Orange, where she boarded the little Coronado trolley for the 1.3 mile ride to the Hotel del Coronado.
So it came to be that the 'Beautiful Stranger' checked into the lobby of the Hotel del Coronado, using the name Lottie A. Bernard. It was early to mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 24, 1892.10 She immediately attracted attention, not only because of her charm and beauty, but because she was traveling alone and without any luggage except her small handbag. Clerks thought her ‘peculiar.’11 Victorians felt it reflected badly on a woman’s moral character to travel alone, without her husband, a male family member, or an older female chaperone.
She stepped up to the dark wood counter (at a special side window reserved for women) and asked the clerk to sign her in. Most people signed the guest register themselves, but it was not unheard-of for a clerk to provide that courtesy. She gave her name as Mrs. Lottie A. Bernard of Detroit, Michigan.
A few things are notable about the guest register, whose page has come down to us as a historical artifact12. It appears that twelve persons signed in that day (there is a termination line at the bottom of the page, and there are various check marks that suggest the page was proofed by the chief clerk or an auditor, as a matter of daily routine). A nicely rounded dot above the scrawled word 'Mrs.' on her line suggests that she may have first said "Miss" and then changed it to 'Mrs.' In fact, a close examination suggests the confused clerk perhaps wrote 'Mis.' In the upper left hand corner, the name 'E. S. Babcock, Manager' is given. That was Elisha Babcock, who conceived and executed a breathtaking plan to develop a magnificent resort across the bay from San Diego, on a section of the barren Peninsula of San Diego known as South Island (also known as Coronado Island, no relationship to the Coronado Islands some miles off shore that are owned by the municipality of Tijuana, Mexico). Together with his friend, Chicago piano fortune heir Hampton Story, and Jacob Gruendike, president of the First National Bank of San Diego, Babcock founded the Coronado Beach Company and developed what would soon become the City of Coronado. With the proceeds from the land sales, Babcock built the sprawling sugar-baker palace of white walls and brick-red turrets called the Hotel del Coronado in 1887. It opened February 1888 to receive its first guest. In the meantime, San Francisco sugar fortune heir John Spreckels (1853-1926), who had discovered the beauty and mild climate of San Diego during an 1887 yacht visit, bought out Story and Gruendike’s interests in the Coronado Beach Company, and thus became co-owner of the Del with Elisha Babcock. In 1889, the worst economic collapse in San Diego history caused the population to plummet from (an estimated) 44,000 to about 16,000 people—roughly the population before the boom. During the economic downturn, Babcock had to borrow money to keep the operation afloat, and he turned to John Spreckels.
John Spreckels was one of the sons of a remarkable, self-made man named Claus Spreckels (1828-1908), a German immigrant who arrived penniless in the U.S. in the 1840s and built several fortunes involving groceries. Claus Spreckels had several sons, of whom oldest son John appears to have been his right-hand man. Claus Spreckels became known as the Sugar Baron, because he owned huge cane sugar plantations in Hawai’i, and, along with a small group of cronies, virtually controlled the islands’ economy and much of the Pacific sugar trade. He also shaped the Hawai'ian political landscape by controlling appointments to the king’s cabinet. This was bitterly resented by a group of primarily conservative U.S. Protestant missionaries who had tried to ban Hawai'ian traditions they found offensive, like hula dancing, singing, and scant clothing. The missionary faction was allied with a coterie of armed Whites known as the Honolulu Rifles, and with U.S. corporations led by a cousin (James Ballard Dole) of the soon to be 'Pineapple King,' Sanford Dole. Together, they formed a secret society called the Hawai'ian League, which strongly militated toward Hawai'i's annexation by the United States. This faction held a near-coup in 1887, imposing the so-called Bayonet Constitution. They removed most of the king's powers, and took voting and property rights from nearly all Asians in favor of wealthy U.S. and European whites. After the overthrow of the monarchy (January 17, 1893, just seven weeks after Lottie A. Bernard's death), James Dole was on his way to become president of a republic.
By the time Lottie Bernard checked in at the Hotel del Coronado, the balance of powers in Hawai’i had become very shaky. At that very moment, John Spreckels, owner of the Hotel del Coronado, was in Washington lobbying President Benjamin Harrison and the Congress to prevent a takeover of Hawai’i. At the same time, the elder Claus Spreckels was en route to Honolulu for desperate, last-minute shuttle diplomacy to try and save the dynasty of Queen Lili'uokalani. By this time, John Spreckels’ financial holdings in San Diego were already vast. He owned most of Coronado, much of downtown San Diego, the local newspaper, the utilities, the light rails, the telegraph, and just about anything else. When Elisha Babcock was deep in debt, John Spreckels called his loans. Babcock was unable to produce payment, so Spreckels offered him a deal in lieu of foreclosure. Spreckels became the sole owner of the Hotel. He forgave Babcock’s debts, paid him a large sum of money, and kept him on as General Manager. Hence, the heading at top left in the guest register, which identified Babcock as General Manager.
I believe here lies the key to the entire mystery: John Spreckels was the target of Kate Morgan's blackmail plot, using a gullible, naïve, and very attractive young girl from Detroit—Lizzie Wyllie, pregnant, in love, in trouble, and increasingly desperate as she began to realize she was being betrayed by the very two persons she needed and trusted most: Kate Morgan, and Lizzie's lover John G. Longfield.
Lottie appears to have paid on a day by day basis, the only one checking in that day who did. This is judging by the notation in the rightmost column of the guest register13, where a "D" is written on her line. The other guests are either indicated by an "S" (presumably short term, or weekly) or an "L" (long term, or monthly). Lottie took Room 302, on the third floor, a reasonably spacious room (about 12 by 15 feet) with three windows in an angled or curved configuration, overlooking the intersection of Orange Avenue (Coronado’s main street) and Richard Henry Dana Place. From that intersection, a half a block south along Dana Place takes you to the beach and Ocean Boulevard.
If one stands in that room today (now Room 3327), one looks kitty-corner across a parking lot toward the intersection, with Orange Avenue on the right, and R. H. Dana Place coming into view on the left as an extension of Ocean Boulevard (not visible). In other words, the room faces away from the sea. As one drives along the Pacific shore on Ocean Boulevard, the boulevard turns into R. H. Dana Place along the western side of the hotel, crosses Orange Avenue, and turns into tiny Adella Avenue. This is today probably Coronado’s busiest pedestrian intersection, with heavy foot traffic coming from the beach and the Hotel del Coronado, and many little shops along either side of Orange Avenue.
During Lottie Bernard’s day, the Coronado Beach Rail Road trolley line ran between the Hotel Del and the Ferry Landing, and Lottie took that trolley several times, including on her final, deadly errand to buy the gun that killed her. The trolley was at that time a two-car affair, the one being a little steam engine (or ‘steam dummy’) disguised as a trolley car to avoid scaring horses, and the driver sat in there; the other car was a light rail platform with four completely open bays, each containing two wooden seats capable of holding about three persons, so that the trailer could probably hold two dozen people when full. Orange Avenue is so called because, when the trolley was eliminated, a long stand of orange trees was planted where the tracks had been. The oranges, however, were a favorite food of the jack rabbits that still infested the peninsula, so the orange trees were removed in favor of a manicured grassy strip running the entire 1.3 mile distance of Orange Avenue from the Hotel Del on the Pacific coast side (south, because the beach there runs east-west). Orange Avenue briefly runs west, then curves northeastward through Spreckels Park in the center of Coronado, to Centennial Park and the Ferry Landing and Market Place overlooking the beautiful San Diego skyline on the Bay side in a northeasterly direction.
Looking out from Lottie’s room toward the intersection of Dana/Orange/Adella, one sees a low, Spanish-style building (now the Hotel El Cordoba and various shops and restaurants, built in 1902 as a mansion for Elisha Babcock). Moving one’s eyes toward the right along Orange Avenue, one sees several hotels, including the upscale Glorietta Bay Inn, named after the street and the bay east of there. This white mansion was constructed after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake disaster, when John Spreckels permanently moved his family to San Diego and ensconced them in this palatial estate overlooking Glorietta Bay (now housing the Coronado Yacht Club) on the east, and Spreckels’ grand hotel across the street looking south.
When Lottie took up residence in Room 302, third floor rooms were traditionally cheapest. The best rooms were on the ground floor, in this age before widespread elevators because wealthy guests did not expect to walk up and down flights of stairs. The Hotel actually has one of the oldest functioning elevators anywhere—Otis Number 61, dating from at or around the Hotel’s opening in 1888. Each room had its own little fireplace, with a vent to the roof. During renovations over the years, the fireplaces were removed and replaced with central heating. When the Cabanas and Ocean Towers were constructed in the late 20th Century, men digging along the beach property east of the original hotel uncovered a mass of brick wreckage where the old fireplaces had been buried. Today’s Room 3327 has a full bath where the fireplace was at one time. In her day, Lottie used a communal bathroom (and tub for bathing) down the hall.
Lottie befriended a bellman (or 'bellboy') named Harry West on her first evening.14 She told Harry she suffered from neuralgia—not today's more specific neurological disorder by the same name, but a vague nervous ailment commonly diagnosed in that era, covering all sorts of psychological and neurological disorders (and no small amount of hypochondria). She also told Harry that she was waiting for her ‘brother,’ who by now had acquired a name—Dr. M. C. Anderson of Indianapolis. This is now the second 'man' in her life. She would want us to assume the first 'man' was a putative 'husband' (since she signed in as Mrs. Lottie A. Bernard)—the presumed Mr. Bernard, for whom police across the country searched vainly after her death. Like Lottie herself, both of the men were fictions.
She was vigorous and healthy when she checked in. A young fellow employed by Star Stables, Charlie Stevens, took her on a long ride around town15, and he later told people that she seemed in good health, though he implied she seemed a bit preoccupied or sad.
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