When do you smile your way through a drunk driving arrest? When you’re too rich to care. Mary Spreckels was a former dancer who had married John D. Spreckels III, a scion of the Spreckels Sugar empire. By August 1952, when the above photo was taken, she had divorced her husband but had gotten a tidy settlement, and like all self-respecting rich women still went by his last name lest she be mistaken for a mere commoner. The photo below shows Spreckels in court two months after her arrest. We figure there are only two possible reasons she’s being administered a field sobriety test in court—one, she showed up reeking of mimosas, or two, she’s contesting the drunk driving charge by demonstrating that she can’t walk a straight line even when sober. The images come from the University of Southern California’s digital archive of Los Angeles photos. Oh, and did we forget to mention why Mary Spreckels sued her husband for divorce? Because he was an alcoholic.
1962—Canada Has Last Execution
The last executions in Canada occur when Arthur Lucas and Ronald Turpin, both of whom are Americans who had been extradited north after committing separate murders in Canada, are hanged at Don Jail in Toronto. When Turpin is told that he and Lucas will probably be the last people hanged in Canada, he replies, “Some consolation.â€