Title supplied by cataloger.; Photograph was edited for publication purposes. Edward L. Doheny was born on August 10, 1856 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. After high school, he worked in mines and moved to Los Angeles in 1891. Living in near poverty, Doheny leased land and discovered oil north of Downtown Los Angeles. Doheny and his partner Charles A. Canfield soon made a fortune by drilling in the area and selling the oil to nearby factories and later by persuading railroads to switch from coal to oil as power for their trains. Doheny also became a pioneer in the Mexican oil industry. In the 1920s, Doheny was indicted in the Teapot Dome Scandal and was charged with offering a $100,000 bribe to United States Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall. He was twice acquitted of offering the bribe, but Fall was finally convicted of accepting it. Doheny was a noted philanthropist in Los Angeles, especially regarding Catholic schools and charities. He died on September 8, 1935. Photograph caption dated October 29, 1930 reads "Photo shows Ernest Perplies eating a hearty breakfast in jail today after having been captured in the mansion on the Beverly Hills estate of E. L. Doheny by police seeking to solve a mystery of phantom footsteps. Perplies, homeless and hungry, had hidden three days in the cellar, raiding the ice box at night." Perplies is shown at the Beverly Hills police station, smiling, holding a tin cup in one hand and a sandwich in the other, in a jail cell. Perplies was a 20 year-old transient from East Prussia.
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;18 x 15 cm. on 26 x 17 cm. board. Photographic prints
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