Chapter 10

It’s a Gas!

Edna Fuller—San Francisco

The 1920s have been mythologized as the Jazz Age, a time of prosperity and cultural experimentation. If you believe F. Scott Fitzgerald, the cities were full of speakeasies where women in short skirts and men wearing makeup danced to wild jazz music. Everyone drove slick roadsters and had a great time.

Not everyone in the twenties lived the Jazz Age fantasy, of course, and certainly not the Fuller family. Otto Fuller was trying to support his family of seven as a night watchman, earning sixty-five dollars a month. The rent on the Fullers’ tiny basement flat at 1376 3rd Avenue in San Francisco was thirty-five dollars a month. Otto and his twenty-nine-year-old wife Edna had moved their brood from Oakland early in 1926, possibly so Otto could be closer to his job.

Five starving children in a basement apartment can make for a very noisy place. Their landlord, who lived above them, regretted renting to the Fullers and called the police on a noise complaint. Otto was arrested because his crying children were disturbing the peace. The couple was ordered to appear in court with their children on August 31, 1926. It was the first step to make the children wards of the state. To make matters worse, the landlord raised the Fuller’s rent by fifteen dollars a month.

As Otto left for work on the evening of August 30, 1926, Edna told him, “Don’t you worry. Otto. I’ve found a place for myself and the children.”

Otto went to work and did his job just like any other night, and returned home as the rest of San Francisco was just waking up or, in the case of the more freewheeling residents, going to bed. Before Otto even got to his front door, he could smell the strong odor of natural gas. What he found inside made police officers cry. Edna had sealed up the few windows in the three-room apartment after the children were asleep and turned on the gas oven.

The panic-stricken Otto had the mind to telephone the police, and patrolman Fred Krache responded in seconds. The heroic policeman carried all five of the emaciated children down the street to the University of California emergency hospital.

Ten-year-old Georgette, nine-year-old Glenwood, four-year-old Norma, and two-year-old Eniston, along with Edna, were all pronounced dead on arrival. Winfield, Otto’s son from a previous marriage, was barely alive. He was put on oxygen and given blood transfusions. Otto himself gave blood for the eleven-year-old, but the boy died the next day.

The entire city of San Francisco was shocked over the tragedy. Police captain John J. O’Meara told the press that he had sought to obtain aid from charity associations for the family two weeks earlier, but the investigator who had visited the home reported that their case did not come within the jurisdiction of his association.

San Francisco morticians donated coffins for the family and one funeral home provided the viewing and services free of charge; thousands of mourners and curiosity seekers went to view the bodies. Otto’s family was laid to rest in Cypress Lawn Cemetery in a plot donated by the cemetery.

Otto was too distressed and weak from giving too much blood for transfusions to be able to attend the funeral.