Bakersfield's Curfew Bell, 1891-1988 - Gilbertgia.com

night and to public drunkenness and open prostitution, as suggested in
this letter to the Bakersfield Morning Echo. A Maricopa mother wrote,
“A short time ago a number of our young boys were on the street
at night and were arrested for disturbing the peace. The justice
turned them loose and laughed and said they were not bad boys, as
they hadn’t killed anyone yet. And one of the boys’ mother has
pleaded with the boy and with an officer to take him in charge. 33
Who is to blame—the parents or the officers? We have asked for a
curfew bell. Oh, yes, we could have it; no reason in the world why
we couldn’t. I think it was rung a dozen times and [with] no one to
enforce the law. Are the parents wholly to blame?” 34
Bakersfield’s Board of Trustees voted in 1915 to stop ringing a
curfew bell but otherwise preserve the ordinance and keep it “entirely
effective as before, and all minors are called upon to observe it or
meet up with reproof from the night officers.” 35 It made it a
misdemeanor for parents to allow their children under 16 to be on the
streets after 9:00 pm, and the ordinance provided a fine or jail
sentence for violation. 36
Nine months after that, City Manager Benson stood before the
city council and attested that the curfew ordinance had been ignored
or forgotten by the police. The council turned to Chief of Police E.
Porter Munsey and instructed him that the ordinance was a “live
ordinance” and he was expected to enforce it. 37 The effect was
probably immediate because the Kern County Grand Jury report of
33 Arrest him
34 Morning Echo, Feb 2, 1915
35 Bakersfield Californian, Nov 17, 1915
36 Bakersfield Californian, Aug 14, 1917. “Unless accompanied by their parents or
guardians, or on errands or engaged in some work which calls them out on the
streets after that hour.”
37 Bakersfield Californian, Aug 14, 1917
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