Sidi Wirt Spreckels

The Celtic prose poem: Gavin McNab’s argument for the defendant

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A new version of the arguments is being drafted (as I write) delivered before the jury near the end of the first Arbuckle trial of November–December 1921. The first draft had been based on very detailed reportage. The trial transcripts, however, differ markedly from the paraphrased versions in published in newspapers.

Roscoe Arbuckle with his female interest throwing herself in front of him. (He wears one of his capacious bathrobes, perhaps even the one worn at his Labor Day Party. As a further aside, the more militant feminists who panned Gavin McNab’s bible readings were far outnumbered in court by young women who, not unlike this one, stood up for the comedian.)

What follows is the end of the section devoted to Gavin McNab’s defense of “Fatty” Arbuckle.[1] Its title is derived from the Rev. James Gordon, the same Rev. Gordon whom Sidi Spreckels called to Virginia Rappe’s bedside. The clergyman, writing in his new column, described McNab’s speech as a “Celtic prose poem” after McNab’s rich Highland accent, which made him sound as much like a Presbyterian divine as a lawyer.[2] The man who followed McNab, with closing argument for the People, Milton U’Ren, was not as sanguine. To him the Good Samaritan described below was a “moral leper” and inspired another kind of outburst of faith: “Thank God, he will never make the world laugh again.”[3]

Had it not been for Maude Delmont being an unreliable witness, there would be no reliance on Zey Prevost or Alice Blake. All three women, for men who remembered the Preparedness Day bombing, always posed the risk of blowing up the People’s case. Every one of the district attorneys had a hand in planting those bombs in their own case, most of all Isadore Golden, who had come up with the compromise “hurt.” Still, that is what those showgirls undersigned. And, lest anyone forget, the “unfortunate circumstances,” the “wine party” as McNab put it, that event still resulted in murder to the prosecutors. They just needed to bide their time for a little longer and weather the dated lawyerly magniloquence of the 1800s autodidact showing off for the jury.

McNab’s had a working lunch. He met with his colleagues to discuss his performance and to go over the record and what had not been covered. There had been no mention of Jesse Norgaard, whose testimony suggested that Arbuckle had been obsessed with Virginia and that he disrespected her as well, and women in general, given whatever joke he intended to play.

Nat Schmulowitz surely and tactfully expressed a concern for the way medical evidence had not been exploited thoroughly. McNab had only burnished the reputations of Dr. Shiels and Collins brighter. And he had yet to draw on the Chicago affidavits, Albert Sabath’s contributions. One had been read into the record—and three doctors the day before certified that Miss Rappe was diseased. She had cystitis, which, to these conferees who had been holding back on leaving her reputation alone, was virtually a junior venereal disease in keeping with the late junior vamp.

And so, when the trial resumed at 1:45 p.m., McNab linked the medical commission’s report to “the testimony of Dr. Rosenberg of Chicago.” This evidence revealed that the defense had been right in contending that the young woman’s bladder had “defects,” that it was not the “perfect organ” the prosecution contended. Even that realization elicited another opportunity to preach to the jury as if it were the choir. “It would be an assurance trespassing on the domain of Divine Providence for any lawyer to intrude into the mysteries of nature and say what caused that rupture,” McNab intoned.

But the disease for which we have contended had been established. Whether that contributed materially to the disorder, we do now know, nor have any of the medical men on either side who have appeared before you pretended to tell you what did. All they could say to you was that many things might have done so. This leaves it with you of any direct testimony, outside of the medical and of the surgical demonstrations, to determine what probably brought about this young woman’s demise.

McNab, of course, did not want jurors to glance knowingly at Arbuckle’s girth—the District Attorney’s murder weapon that had been turned against the comedian. And so jurors who had already made up their minds, the reporters, as well as Arbuckle and Minta who knew better, now heard McNab deliver a paean, a panegyric devoted to the exercise of impartial judgement. “We do not ask you to give him any consideration because he is a great artist,” McNab said, without being ironic again, “or because he had brought joy into the world, or because he has made a success of his life. [. . .] This man without any disfigurement in this case, because there was not the slightest testimony reflecting on his character.”

The prosecution’s case, McNab reasoned, was based entirely on “conjecture.” As for the Arbuckle’s version of events, in response to all that had been made up about him, McNab made it a special point that his side made no objections during “two hours and twenty minutes of crucial cross-examination.” That was unheard of. That only proved Arbuckle’s candidness before the people of San Francisco and the nation. Then McNab waxed into a Cross of Gold speech made of diamonds.

That is the story. And you heard the story in its simplicity of how he tried to help this woman in the distress that had come upon her, and which was a common experience in her life, as is established without a contradiction, and how actuated by the spirit of mercy, you see this picture of this man crucified before you as a wicked character, in speech but not in evidence, carrying the limp body of this injured girl down the corridor of the hotel, staggering with her weight. Was this an unkind man? Doesn’t that tell the story, open for the world there to look at what went on behind the closed but not locked doors? [. . .] And he has told you in simple words what happened, and it exactly corresponds with this great, big, warm-hearted man, this rough diamond, perhaps, but still a diamond, carrying that injured girl down thru the hall; a more pathetic and a more beautiful picture than he ever put on the screen.

“There is to my mind a beautiful thought in connection with this thought,” McNab said in afterthought, that counsel had “not asked about the pictures that this man produced, but has anybody ever suggested that anybody ever saw an unclean picture of Roscoe Arbuckle? I think sometimes that the instincts of childhood is the most accurate of all instincts of the human race.” And yes, McNab really did impress upon the jurors the notion that Arbuckle himself was a juvenile. That gave his lawyer a fitting way to end of his Celtic sermon. “I always am impressed,” McNab said sagaciously,

with that beautiful spiritual suggestion of the Savior, “Suffer little children to come unto me.” And the childhood of the world, the instinct of childhood, had been accurate from that day to this, and this man who has sweetened human existence by the laughter of millions and millions of innocent children comes before you with a story of a frank, open-heated, big American, and submits the facts of this case in your hands.

To this a bored Leo Friedman, speaking for the People, asked McNab if he were done.

[1] People vs. Arbuckle, First Trial, “Argument of Mr. McNab, on Behalf of the Defendant,” 2188ff.

[2] James Gordon, “Minister Tells Highlights in ‘Fatty’ Case,” Los Angeles Evening Herald, December 1, 1921.

[3] People vs. Arbuckle, “First Trial, Closing Argument for the People, by Mr. U’Ren,” 2269ff.

100 Years Later: Considering the missing doctor

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This piece is an open editorial to ourselves. Any serious work about Virginia Rappe and the Arbuckle case must include a medical history and that medical history was on trial in 1921–’22 and still on trial today. Unfortunately, there is not enough surviving evidence or documentation about Rappe’s medical condition and history to write authoritatively and whatever sounds good, even ex cathedra, is from the armchair. Still, the well-intentioned writer can posit what is known about Rappe’s health and medical treatment and make at least one conclusion: more than one person was responsible for her death, in which she, too, may have had a hand, albeit a small hand.

If Arbuckle wasn’t culpable for the death of Virginia Rappe, he certainly would have benefited from her going away quietly. For a moment, he had his way. Rappe, though in agony, was removed to room 1227 of the St. Francis Hotel—not the St. Francis Hospital a few blocks away. This move happened not long after the event occurred and the party then continued. A certain hubris took over any thought about her, one of “out of sight, out of mind,” and it is unlikely that any attendees seriously thought her condition was as grave as it proved to be.

The doctors who saw Rappe facilitated this hubris by acquiescing to the requests of party attendees that she be treated in a hotel room rather than be taken to a hospital. Rappe was on her own with no family members or guardian angels demanding that something be done immediately. That delay exacerbated the problem.

Arbuckle was not alone in wanting Rappe’s problem to go away. Al Semnacher and Maude Delmont remained at the party in room 1220. Though Delmont, still drinking, took the time to check on Rappe in room 1227.

The one physician who suspected a bladder rupture, Dr. Arthur Beardslee, was somewhat cowed by Delmont’s take-charge attitude. His suggestions that Rappe be taken to a proper hospital were rejected. Delmont took her directions from the people in room 1220, she was the self-assigned go-between. Rappe’s stay in Room 1227 lasted beyond the time that the party had broken up and the attendees including Arbuckle had left the city. So Delmont and Rappe were left behind in a hotel room with no means to pay. That is possibly the turn of events that triggered Delmont’s willingness to sign a murder charge. But while the party was going on, Delmont was still on the team so to speak, she still saw herself as a privileged insider, someone who could call Arbuckle “Roscoe” (she claimed to have been at Keystone in the early days), and as such reached out to an old friend, Dr. Melville Erskine Rumwell, a physician she believed would determine that Rappe’s condition wasn’t so dire.

Dr. Rumwell dialed back Rappe’s condition to “alcoholism,” which, in 1921, was approximately what alcoholic poisoning means today. He wasn’t a stupid man. This apparent misdiagnosis suggests he didn’t take much time examining her and wanted as little direct involvement as possible. As a member of San Francisco society, Dr. Rumwell was conscious of his reputation. Whatever Delmont’s friendship meant to him personally was now complicated by another woman, Virginia Rappe, and all seemed intent on wishing away the potential seriousness of the situation to avoid “notoriety.”

Whether Rumwell examined Rappe in room 1227 is moot. He did arrange for nursing care to relieve the burden on Delmont. That suggests Rappe’s care was elevated to something more than alcoholism.

When Rappe was finally transported from the St. Francis to the Wakefield Sanitarium, a private hospital, she would live for less than forty-eight hours. Rappe’s nurses were probably instrumental in convincing Delmont to allow for an ambulance. Her confidence, too, in her friend Dr. Rumwell—she called him “Rummie”—might have been shaken. But only a little. When she called two of his colleagues at Stanford’s medical school, they probably told her she was in good hands. He had assisted both men in surgeries and it’s unlikely they would have said anything to disparage his skills or diagnosis.

But Rappe’s nurses didn’t trust him anymore. The night nurse, Vera Cumberland, suspected neglect on the part of Rumwell, who had taken a break to attend a party as Rappe’s condition worsened.

Had he made a proper diagnosis the night he first saw Rappe, Rumwell could have ordered emergency surgery and she might have survived. She actually had a robust constitution. But by the time Rappe got to Wakefield, Rumwell might have realized it was too late to save her. He apparently didn’t put up a good show of bedside manners and one might speculate he was distancing himself to blur his responsibility in the matter.

According to Delmont, one of the last conscious requests that Rappe made was to summon her one known friend in San Francisco, Sidi Wirt Spreckels. Visiting Ms. Spreckels may have been a reason for Rappe’s presence in San Francisco in the first place. Newspapers reported that Spreckels was just back from France. She was also recently widowed and in a legal battle over her late husband’s estate with his first wife (now “Mrs. Wakefield”). Spreckels had also suffered the indignity of a sheriff’s auction of her furs, a pending lawsuit filed by Tiffany’s over an unpaid diamond necklace, and other woes that made headlines of their own. (Eventually, the estate lawyer, James McNab, the brother of Arbuckle lawyer Gavin McNab, informed Spreckels that her late husband was bankrupt.)

Despite the risk of additional “notoriety”, Spreckels came to see Rappe on the morning of September 9, 1921. What she saw was appalling, such that she returned to her apartment at the Palace Hotel and communicated with Rappe’s former fiance Henry Lehrman about the situation. He may have suggested or seconded Spreckel’s decision to bring her own doctor back to the Wakefield.

That Spreckels reached out to Dr. H. Edward Castle, another physician high in S.F. society, for a “second opinion” indicated the doubts she had in Rumwell’s judgment.

Dr. Castle noted the bruising on Rappe’s body but could do nothing for her. She may have already died or did so in his presence (the reporting on his first Arbuckle trial testimony is scant).

The only thing that plagued Dr. Rumwell’s conscience was the matter of an autopsy. Spreckels and Delmont urged him on and he eventually relented. But until Rappe was dead, the only care she received was palliative. In effect Dr. Rumwell was a hospice physician.

His virtual hands-off treatment played well into the hands of Gavin McNab during the three Arbuckle trials.

As far as Rumwell’s own career went after the trials, his volunteer work, and his exploits on the handball court of the Athletic Club disappeared. Indeed, his career grew strangely quiet.

Sidi Wirt Spreckels and her stepson (Newspapers.com)