Smith Estate (Los Angeles, California) - Occupants of The Home - Judge Hatch

Judge Hatch

The house was built for Judge David Patterson Hatch (1846–1912). While the National Register indicates the house was built in 1890, a newspaper article from July 1887 reported that the house was already under construction:

"The frame of Judge Hatch's $10,000 residence, which is to overlook the beautiful Highland Park when completed, has now been raised and the owner is pressing the workmen to their greatest endeavors to get it completed."

Hatch became a judge in 1880 and gained fame presiding over the Perkins-Baldwin case—a breach of marriage promise case against Lucky Baldwin, a gold prospector who became one of the wealthiest men in Los Angeles and founded Santa Anita Park on his estate. The jury awarded the plaintiff $75,000—at the time "the highest amount of damages in the history of the bar of California." (The case was followed daily by the press, and a search of the Los Angeles Times archives reveals more than 50 articles reporting on the contents of Lucky Baldwin's love letters and every other detail of the case. Some of the more colorful and breathless headlines from the case are included below.) In 1886, Hatch left the bench and became the senior member of the Los Angeles law firm of Hatch, Lloyd & Hunt. Hatch also became known nationally as a writer on philosophy and the occult, with works including "Scientific Occultism", "The Twentieth Century Christ", "The Blood of the Gods", "Text Book of Christian Hermit Philosophers" and the novel "El Reschid" (one of a series of books written under "the Hindoo name of Karishka"). When he died in 1912, the Times called him "a remarkable man" who was "exceptionally versed in the deep philosophies of life" and who had "obtained a deep knowledge of universal laws, which, although natural to himself, appeared as mysticism to those who had not followed his great mental strides."