The naming of Gay Alley as a restricted district may have been premature. The city council may not have followed all the rules.
From the Arizona Daily Star, June 20, 1916:
No emergency Clause to Redlight Measure
Ordinance No Good, Says Hilzinger; Referendum Is Discussed
If the city council intended by hurrying the passage of the ordinance setting aside Gay Alley as a restricted district, to forestall proceedings to be instituted by County Attorney Hilzinger to have the district removed from its present location, or to legalize the district before proceedings could be instituted, they overlooked something, according to the county attorney, who pointed out yesterday that the ordinance passed by the council Saturday night failed to carry an emergency clause. Such a clause would have had the effect of putting the ordinance into effect at once. Without it, the ordinance will not become effective for thirty days.
If at first you don't succeed ...
In other news of the day, whooping cough was a scourge at the best of times. In one particular household, the parents of six children likely felt the best of times would never come again because they could not be shared with three of their children.
Editor's note: Mr. Allamariano's first name was spelled two different ways in this article. Not knowing which is correct, both are shown here.
Death Angel Guest at Humble Mexican Home
Three Children Die in One Week; Three Others Are Ill
There is no crepe on the door of the home of Lemon Allamariano, on the outskirts of this city. Lamon has no money with which to buy crepe, but there is not enough crepe in the world to symbolize the awful sorrow that pervades the humble home. A month ago children romped and played and laughed in the little home—six of them. Today three of them sleep in Holy Hope and the laughter of the other three is stilled. They lie on blankets on the earth floor, their little forms doubled, their little faces drawn as in a spasm—victims of a malignant form of whooping cough, which has carried away the other three children in the short space of ten days.
Saturday morning Allamariano headed a procession that went out Stone avenue to the cemetery and he carried on his lap a little casket which contained the body of a little girl. A week prior to that the first had died, a victim of the whooping cough. When he returned Saturday from the funeral of the second victim, to the home where his remaining children lay ill, as he thought, his wife met him at the door and informed him that the death angel had claimed another, a 13-year-old girl. Yesterday another little procession went out Stone avenue to Holy Hope.
The other three children are ill of the same disease, one of them seriously ill.
One hundred years later, such news still hurts.
