William Dryden (LAPL Digital Archives)
Melodramatic as they might be, modern courtroom TV reality shows wouldn’t hold a candle to the legal antics of 19th Century Los Angeles. Throughout the mid- to late 1800s, the town’s circus-like court system produced a parade of offbeat trials filled with colorful characters and preposterous verdicts. But for sheer entertainment value, there was probably no better courtroom to stumble into than that of Judge William G. Dryden.
Born near Richmond, Kentucky, in 1807, Dryden first made a career of trading along the Santa Fe Trail, and even served as a foreign-born captain in the Mexican Militia before eventually switching sides to become a covert Texan operative on the eve of the Mexican-American War. When the war finally erupted he assisted American forces as an interpreter. After the American victory, Dryden made his way to Los Angeles in March 1850, joining the bar and holding a variety of public offices, including city attorney (1851-1852), city clerk (1850-1860) and district court judge from 1856 until his death more than a decade later.
No Perry Mason
But Dryden’s career only underscores how easy it was for any self-proclaimed “lawyer” to hang his shingle in Los Angeles back then. There were no law schools or bar exams; simple acceptance by the town’s legal community sufficed. As an attorney he built a reputation for profanity-laced theatrics. Upon securing a seat on the bench, he took his act to even greater heights.
In 1854 the higher Court of Sessions reprimanded Dryden, then a Justice of the Peace, for holding an outdoor autopsy without a coroner then leaving the body unburied for animals to scavenge. Another prominent Angeleno of the time, Harris Newmark, characterized Dryden’s knowledge of the law as “extremely limited,” accusing him of an audacity that “frequently sustained him in positions that otherwise might have been embarrassing… [talking] with the volubility of a Gatling gun, expressing himself in a quick, nervous manner…”
(LAPL Digital Archives)
To be sure, Angeleno trials in the old Clock Tower Courthouse (pictured) were notoriously rowdy, with attorneys frequently hurling insults, inkstands and even fists at one another. To give him some credit, Dryden did at least strive for a semblance of courtly decorum. At one point he ordered that “attorneys while in attendance upon court will be required to wear a coat of some kind and will not be allowed to rest their feet on the tops of tables or whittle or spit tobacco juice on the floor or stove.”
Still, a trial before Dryden could easily descend into the sort of shoot-em-up chaos often caricatured in modern B westerns. Newmark tells us:
“On one occasion, for instance, after the angry disputants had arrived at a state of agitation which made the further use of canes, chairs, and similar objects tame and uninteresting, revolvers were drawn, notwithstanding the marshal’s repeated attempts to restore order. Judge Dryden, in the midst of the mêlée, hid behind the platform upon which his Judgeship’s bench rested; and being well out of the range of the threatening irons, yelled at the rioters: ‘Shoot away, damn you! And to hell with all of you!’”
Also an aspiring entrepreneur, Dryden was first to make a real stab at the city’s water problem. In 1858 he established the Los Angeles Water Works, the region’s first water company. Erecting a massive wooden water wheel along the Los Angeles River’s banks near Solano Canyon, he conveyed the river water via the Zanja Madre (Mother Ditch) to a central brick reservoir in the main plaza.
The fledgling venture didn’t last long, however. By the winter of 1862 flooding had demolished Dryden’s operations, and the judge suddenly found himself scrambling to resurrect his brainchild amid competition from several rivals. In the end, his efforts proved futile: the Common Council terminated his contract and awarded the franchise to Jean Louis Sainevain.
Cruel Twist of Fate
Colorful as he was, Dryden managed to court the famous Ana Josefa Juliana Dominguez. Hailing from one of Southern California’s wealthiest and most prestigious families, she was also considered one of the town’s most beautiful “Spanish Belles.” She could’ve had any man she wanted, but spurned numerous suitors well into her 40s. When at last she fixed her eyes on Mr. Right, it was the aging widower Judge William G. Dryden. Married in September 1868, the newlyweds took up residence at Fifth and Los Angeles Streets.
Unfortunately, their domestic bliss was short-lived. Just shy of their first wedding anniversary, on the evening of Sept. 10, 1869, the 70-year-old Dryden suffered an untimely heart attack and dropped dead in their parlor.