Charles E. Huber

'Charles Edward

A widower, Huber had two daughters—Mary Louisa (Lulu) Huber (Fisher) and Gertie Huber.

Vocation

He was at one time a deputy sheriff and later was in real estate, including being an agent for several downtown buildings. seeking the "return" of $1,000 he said she owed him, smashed the glass panels of the front door and all the windows on the front of the house and threatened a butler with a double-barreled shotgun. An insanity complaint was filed against him by Emeline's son-in-law, Frank S. Hicks, and, after a standoff at Huber's house, with Huber again holding the shotgun and threatening the police, he was arrested.

In April 1901, Huber sued Emeline Childs and Frank Hicks for $20,000 in damages because, Huber claimed, "the defendants, actuated through personal spite and malice toward him, falsely and unreasonably accused him of being an insane person."

Upon being tried on June 7, 1901, for disturbing the peace, Huber was found innocent after a juror asked the judge, "Has an officer the right to enter a house this way without a search warrant?" Judge Morgan responded: "very person has a right to defend his constitutional rights."

Huber was again arrested in June 1902 after he became "very wild" on a train from San Francisco to Los Angeles and "with his threats kept everybody in a constant state of apprehension." He claimed to have purchased the Palace Hotel, the Russ House and the San Francisco Chronicle. Officers met the train in Los Angeles and took Huber to the County Hospital.

During the next months, Huber's mental condition grew worse, and, as the Los Angeles Times put it, he was "reduced to a pitiable plight." The newspaper continued;

He fancies that he has $20,000,000, and goes around to all his friends promising them gifts of small fortunes and asking them to give up work and accept a salary from him. On the night of May 30 he was found on Spring Street by a policeman holding to two little flower girls to whom he wanted to give $20 apiece. They were frightened and crying. . . . Shortly after that he went to San Francisco, the eleventh time he had made the trip in thirty days. . . . He is said to have mortgaged his property here and to have squandered his money. He came from San Francisco with a . . . stenographer and an electrical expert and an aide de camp or two. He said he had a great instrument by which he could cure almost every earthly ailment. . . .

After a court hearing in June 1902, he was sent to the State Asylum for the Insane in Napa, California.

Huber died almost two years later—on June 27, 1904—at the age of fifty-nine.

Common Council

Huber was elected on December 1, 1873, to represent the 3rd Ward on the Los Angeles Common Council and was reelected twice more to end his service on the council on December 6, 1877. In 1898 he was the Democratic candidate in the 4th Ward, but he was defeated by Republican Herman Silver.