True story: Fraternity Elysia (1946)

Sept. 2, 1946: Police arrest more than two dozen men and women in a raid on the Fraternity Elysia nudist camp in La Tuna Canyon. (Valley Retrospective: The 1940s – LA Daily News)

In 1936, Charles and Lillian Richter moved into a small, elegant modernist house in Pasadena. It had windows up to ceiling height, which may have given their neighbours some unexpected views. For the Richters had become ardent nudists. A year earlier, in 1935, they had joined the Fraternity Elysia, located in the Los Angeles Hills on a 250-acre estate near Lake Elsinore and run by Hobart and Lura Glassey and their business partner Pete McConville. (The earth moved for him – Times Online. Report by Christopher Hudson – From The Sunday Times, October 29, 2006)

Charles Francis Richter (1900 – 1985), was an American seismologist and physicist. Richter is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale… (Charles Francis Richter – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Glassey v. State, 1947. “The facts of the case are as follows: Police officers using false names appeared at the entrance of the Fraternity Elysia, a property bounded on three sides by uninhabited hills, paid the customary visitor’s fee, and signed a registration form acknowledging acceptance of nudism as a wellspring or fountain-head of moral and health benefits. Observing a number of nude men, women, and children engaged in activities such as badminton, swimming, and sunbathing, the officers arrested a man and a woman who were acting as managers and charged them with violating an ordinance proscribing operation of facilities patronized by three or more nude persons not of the same sex. (Two nude badminton players not of the same sex would have been acceptable, it seems.) A municipal court found both guilty and the judge imposed sentences of 90 and 180 days for McConville and Glassey. The Supreme Court ruled that the appellants had not demonstrated that the ordinance unduly restricted personal liberties. The original decision stood.”

Source: Richter’s scale: measure of an earthquake, measure of a man by Susan Elizabeth Hough (Princeton University Press, 2007)

1935 nudist tea party By carbonated | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Image: 1935 nudist tea party | Flickr – Photo Sharing! (under Creative Commons license)

A Sort of Freedom

Social justice would consist in the balance between freedom and law, between rights and the duties which would affect what individuals got in the way of increased values and rights they also rendered back in the way of increased service to society. I suppose, in a general way, anyone who admitted there was any ethics to the question at all would have to admit that it would have to be found in some such equation between benefits received from society and benefits conferred to society. (John Dewey, Lectures on Ethics, 1900 – 1901)

Some Australian visitor to Berlin has mentioned that during a week’s stay in the German capital he hasn’t seen a cop. The only officer he managed to find was a parking inspector. From the article appeared in Culture column of Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster, the reader may learn that there is not many police or surveillance cameras in Berlin compared to other major cities. According to the article, England has some 4.2 million surveillance cameras – equating to one for every 14 people – and most can be found in London, while in Berlin such cameras barely exist, and not because the government can’t afford them. It seems that the locals do what they want – within limits, of course – practicing a strange sort of self-governance.

People freely drink alcohol on the streets and in the subway, successfully carry on “illegal” parties in public parks, get nude in said parks, smoke dope wherever they like, sell food and drink without a license, or open unauthorized bars in their apartments, seemingly with the tacit acceptance of the law.

Someone may be dismayed by all this liberty. It’s as if the people can be trusted.

A quiet read in the sun By canonsnapper | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Source: Berliners play by their own rules | Culture column | Deutsche Welle

Image: A quiet read in the sun | Flickr – Photo Sharing! (under Creative Commons license)

P.S. One Flickr member commented on the photo: “… Can someone sunbathe stark naked in Berlin? In what seems to be a public park? Without getting arrested? This is extraordinary…” Another answered: “This is BERLIN!”

True story: Leaving 7 Nude Women Behind (1961)

Here’s one more true story from Jet, the issue from 1961 (see the previous one here). It is from the criminal column (page 48).

Bandits Flee; Leave 7 Nude Women Behind
It wasn’t a nudist convention, but seven nude women and two naked men were found by police in a Brooklyn corset shop when the ofiicers answered a phone call reporting a holdup. The nude nine explained that the bandits forced them in to a back room and made them undress, then placed their clothes in front of the lighted shop where they would be difficult to retrieve without being seen from the street. The holdup men made off with $1,000 from the purses of the women and pockets of the two husbands who had accompanied their wives to the “corsetorium.”

It wasn’t a nudist convention. Can you imagine that?

Source: Jet, May 25, 1961

Mirante - The Pool's Bar by Paul_and_Laura | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The photo is from Paul_and_Laura’s photostream on Flickr and it is available under a Creative Commons license.