Walter Scott Moore

Walter Scott Moore (December 23, 1853 – March 30, 1919) was the president of the Los Angeles, California, Common Council in 1883–84 and chief engineer of the city's Fire Department at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. He was ousted during an investigation into fraud in the department. He was the Republican candidate for California Secretary of State in 1886 and also ran for the state Senate.

Biography Moore was born December 23, 1853, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Isaac Walker Moore of Pennsylvania and Margaret Harvey Hughes of Maryland. His father died in the year of Walter's birth.

Public office

Federal

Moore served for four years as a deputy collector of internal revenue, and in December 1885 he and A. E. Sepulveda, another deputy, were acquitted by a United States Commissioner of "unlawfully obtaining money for carriage hire from the government."

State

In 1886, Moore, who was then the chief engineer of the city Fire Department, was the Republican candidate for California Secretary of State. He lost the November election to the Democratic William C. Hendricks, 45.8% against 48.8% after the Los Angeles Times printed a graphic story concerning a November 1885 night that Moore had allegedly spent in the company of three other "gilded young men" and four prostitutes:

. . . the unsavory apartments over Bob Eckert's saloon on Court Street were the scene of an orgie such as even the most salacious pen of ancient Rome never dared describe. . . . The four drunken male brutes and three of the four drunken female brutes were sprawled, almost nude, all in the most atrocious attitudes, about the front room. . . . The negro waiter was stretched stupid upon the floor, surrounded with a halo of the fifty-eight champagne bottles which the party had emptied, while the man who now asks your suffrage for Secretary of State, almost stark nude, was endeavoring to arouse the waiter to go and get a photographer for an obscene purpose.

In 1892 he was Republican candidate for the 37th State Senate District, but lost to the Democrat John H. Matthews, 2,957 to 3,287.

City

Common Council

Moore was elected as a 5th Ward representative on the Los Angeles Common Council and served for four years, from December 6, 1880, to December 10, 1884.

Fire

Moore was named the first chief engineer of the city's volunteer fire department in December 1883 and served until December 1884, and he served another term in 1886–87. He is credited with organizing the volunteers into a trained unit for fire-fighting[,] with such success that it was afterwards placed on the city payroll. He served that term until 1893, was off the board for two years and returned for a final term of five years from 1895 to 1900. He was succeeded by former chief Strohm.

Freeholders

In 1888, Moore was elected to a Board of Freeholders that wrote the first city charter for Los Angeles and was chosen as the board's secretary.

References and notes

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