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10.
Day 5—Monday, Nov. 28, 1892
During the morning on the fifth day, Lottie had Harry West bring her a glass of wine from the bar, and later a whiskey cocktail. Harry prepared a bath for her (down the hall from her room), and brought her a pitcher of ice water she requested. She told him she would be in the bath for an hour or two.
Around noon, Lottie returned to her room and rang for Harry West. He would later testify that he found her suffering and groaning a great deal, and sleeping much of the day. She told him she had fallen in the tub and gotten her hair wet, and she asked him to dry it for her. It appears that she fell because she was weak, that she felt her wet hair would worsen her illness, and that she was too weak to dry it. Harry toweled her hair dry. He would later tell investigators that she seemed to sleep a while, wake up, spend time groaning in pain, and then fall back to sleep. He said she again mentioned that Dr. Anderson, who would soon join her.
Between noon and 1:00 p.m., Harry told Gomer, his superior, that he had brought Lottie a whiskey. Gomer testified that he had suggested, through a female housekeeper, that Lottie have a doctor see her.
Gomer went to the room to inquire about her health, and also about her finances. Apparently she was paying her room charge daily, but she was running up an expense tab on the side, which a guest would customarily pay when checking out. Gomer was keeping a worried eye on this tab.
It was a cold, dreary, gloomy day—a huge sea storm was approaching, which would lash the region fiercely all night, and then subside by morning. Barometric pressure was falling, and there was a growing air of dreadful anticipation as the violent storm approached. This storm would set the mood for events that followed. Gomer found her as Harry had described her—sick, in bed, suffering. Gomer suggested she light a fire in her fireplace, but she refused. She then told him a story that she was near death from stomach cancer (which Dr. Mertzmann would later deride as virtually impossible). Whereas before she had said Dr. Anderson would take care of her when he arrived, now she said the doctors had given up on her and death was just around the corner. It sounds as though she was simply trying to get rid of Gomer, who appears to have been a somewhat fussy and inquisitive man, concerned about guests and goings-on at the hotel where he held some responsibility.
Gomer—no doubt because of her ‘peculiarity’ and alarming condition—was concerned whether she would be able to pay her tab. Lottie urged Gomer to telegraph a Mr. G. L. Allen in Hamburg, Iowa, who would wire the needed funds.
During the afternoon, Lottie rang for some matches. Harry West offered to bring a whole box, but she said she only needed a few matches (he had some in his pocket, which he gave her) to burn a stack of papers (possibly including letters) in the fireplace. Neither Gomer nor Harry got a good look at what these papers might be. From notes she wrote, which the coroner found in her room, it seems she had much on her mind.
That afternoon, Lottie went downstairs to the pharmacy. Real estate agent T. J Fisher described her as walking very slowly, and appearing to be in great pain. During their conversation, she indicated she planned to go across the Bay to San Diego, and he warned her against doing so, because of her condition, and the coming storm. Lottie replied that she had to go, and then made a statement that appears somewhat unfocused and out of kilter with already established facts (or fibs).16 From what Fisher quoted at the Coroner’s Inquest, she said that she must make the trip. She said that she forgot her baggage 'checks' [claim tickets], and that she must go across the Bay "to identify my trunks, personally."
Between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. (there is confusion about whether she was in San Diego as early as 3:00 p.m., or later) Lottie journeyed to downtown San Diego. She rode the little Coronado Beach R.R. trolley mentioned earlier, with its steam dummy and trailer, to the ferry landing. Witnesses said she appeared so weak that, as she left the Hotel del Coronado, she had to be helped onto the little streetcar by the conductor.
She took the ferry across the bay, a 15 minute ride to cross a quarter mile of water. She stepped ashore near G Street in the City of San Diego, and walked several blocks to Fifth Avenue (in the heart of today's Gaslamp Quarter). She probably skirted the violent, noisy Stingaree district at the southern end of Fifth Street (today's Fifth Avenue near the baseball stadium).
She walked into a store called the Ship Chandlery at 624 Fifth Street17, and asked clerk Frank Heath if he sold revolver cartridges. He testified she seemed ‘nervous or excited.’ She spoke in a very low (or soft) voice and appeared to be sick. She walked slowly and looked ‘very bad.’ Heath, who noted she was very well dressed, told her he did not sell cartridges, and directed her to Chick’s Gun Shop at 1663 Sixth Street.
M. Chick testified that Lottie walked into the store and asked if he had a gun she could buy for a friend as a Christmas present. He sold her a revolver and cartridges, and showed her how to load and fire the weapon. A witness, W. P. Walters, observed this, and remarked to another bystander that that woman was going to "hurt herself with that pistol."
Lottie left Chick’s Gun Shop and walked south on Fifth Street toward the store of Schiller & Murtha’s at Fifth Street and D Avenue18. Her movements from there are unknowns, but the general direction seems to have been toward the ferry landing.
At 6:30 p.m., says bellman Harry West at the inquest, he saw Lottie on a hotel veranda overlooking the ocean. It was dark by then, and an air of dread and excitement hung in the air as the atmospheric monster approached. It was the last time Harry would see Lottie alive.
Lottie made one more stop at the front desk to ask Gomer if there was any word from Dr. Anderson. That was between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m., and Gomer said there was not yet any word from her ‘brother.’ This was the last time anyone saw her alive.
People stood on balconies all around the Hotel, looking south and west over the Pacific Ocean. They watched in awe as the black clouds of the storm rolled closer, and raged and thundered. It is likely that some guests may have requested relocation to the landward side of the Hotel, because nobody heard a gunshot fired during the night, on the beach just behind the hotel.
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