On December 2, 1927, a car driven by Mrs. Hope Phillips, a 20-year-old actress from San Francisco, struck and killed Miss Ethel Knudson as the young woman alighted from a street car.

The car belonged to San Pedro resident John Schultz, 33, who was in the passenger seat at the time. Another man, who refused to divulge his name, was in the back seat.

Police responded to the scene of the accident in a residential area of Los Angeles at the corner of Vermont Avenue and West 83rd Street. Mrs. Phillips told police that the group was drinking at a road house as they made their way to Los Angeles, and officers found an empty bottle about half a block away they believed the group had discarded after striking Miss Knudson. At the inquest, police estimated Mrs. Phillips was driving at an estimated speed of 60 mph when the accident occurred.

Later, Mrs. Phillips claimed the unnamed man in the back seat had actually been the driver but nobody bought it. She was convicted on a charge of manslaughter.

In February of 1928, Hope was due to appear in the courtroom of Judge Carlos Hardy, where her attorney would plead her case to be placed on probation instead of going to prison.

It had already been an eventful morning in the court. Two hours before Hope’s case called, another convicted felon had attempted to escape the courtroom.

The Fresno Bee explained what happened next.

“Mrs. Hope Phillips of San Francisco caused a second sensation in Judge Carlos Hardy’s courtroom this morning by screaming and fighting desperately against officers who tried to drag her back to jail after Judge Hardy had denied her probation and sentenced her to San Quentin for from one to ten years for running down and killing Ethel Knudson last December as she was alighting from a street car,” the Bee reported. “Mrs. Phillips denied she was the pilot of the car which ran down and killed the Knudson woman, maintaining that a man companion who has since disappeared, was driving.”

“When Judge Hardy passed sentence committing Mrs. Phillips to the penitentiary she shrieked and threw herself against Bailiff George Perdue, pounding and punching him as she attempted to prevent him from taking her back to the jail.

Slipping from the officer’s grasp, the woman rolled on the floor, yelling and screaming. Mrs. Phillips was finally subdued and placed in charge of Probation Officer Ellen Ladigo and was taken back to the women’s quarters in jail.”

Hope didn’t spend much time in prison. She was paroled a little over a year later, but she did something that caused her to be sent back to San Quentin for a short period of time. She was paroled a second time in December 1931.

I read a novel a few years ago where one of the characters said every woman he knew that was named for a virtue turned out to be the opposite. Charity was a miser, Grace was clumsy, and Faith was plagued with indecisiveness. Hope Phillips might be further evidence of his theory!