The 1910 Los Angeles Times Bombing
At 1:07 a.m. on 1 October 1910, dynamite exploded beside the Los Angeles Times building. The blast and fast-moving fire killed twenty-one people working on the morning edition. James B. McNamara later pleaded guilty to murder, while his brother John J. McNamara admitted another bombing in a nationwide campaign tied to an ironworkers' union.
- When
- 1 October 1910Exact day
- Where
- Former Los Angeles Times Building at First Street and BroadwayUnited States · Exact site
- Evidence
- VerifiedSources reviewed below
- Sensitivity
- Highly sensitive subjectPresented with care
The place
Before
What existed before
Los Angeles employers promoted an aggressively nonunion 'open shop,' and Times publisher Harrison Gray Otis used the paper against organized labor. Across the country, structural ironworkers were conducting a clandestine dynamite campaign against nonunion projects. That context explains the target without making the newspaper workers responsible for it.
Cause
Trigger and conditions
James McNamara placed a timed suitcase bomb in Ink Alley beside the Times building, near printing supplies and gas lines. Its explosion tore through the structure and ignited a fire. Workers were trapped by smoke, flames, an elevator shaft, and inadequate escape routes.
Sequence
Timeline
Bomb and fire destroy the Times building
The blast kills twenty-one night-shift employees and devastates the First and Broadway site.
McNamaras and McManigal arrested
A multistate investigation connects the Los Angeles attack to a broader dynamite campaign.
Brothers enter guilty pleas
James admits the Times murder and John admits bombing the Llewellyn Iron Works.
Federal dynamite-conspiracy convictions
Thirty-eight union officials are convicted of offenses involving interstate explosives.
After
Aftermath
The Times immediately blamed unions, while labor organizations initially argued that gas had caused the blast. Detective William Burns traced dynamite operations to the McNamaras and Ortie McManigal. Defense attorney Clarence Darrow negotiated guilty pleas after the evidence strengthened and was later tried, but acquitted, on one jury-bribery charge.
Long-term consequences
The confessions devastated a national labor defense campaign and hardened Los Angeles's antiunion political culture. Federal prosecutions exposed more than one hundred bombings. The disaster also became an early example of how political violence, workplace conditions, media power, and a sensational criminal case can become inseparable.
Significance
The essential question
Why this still matters
The twenty-one victims were workers killed at their jobs, even though the target was an antiunion institution. Remembering that distinction resists both anti-labor propaganda and any romantic account of a bombing that predictably placed ordinary people in mortal danger.
What remains today
The 1910 building is gone and the intersection has been repeatedly rebuilt. Library of Congress newspaper collections, Los Angeles planning studies, photographs, court papers, and the names of those killed preserve the evidence at a site with little visible fabric.
Evidence
Sources
Sources support specific claims; inclusion does not imply that every source is equally authoritative on every question.
- 01Los Angeles Times Bombing (1910): Topics in Chronicling America
Library of Congress
Institutional overview and primary-newspaper guide for the exact time, location, deaths, arrests, pleas, and federal conspiracy case.Open source - 02SurveyLA Citywide Historic Context Statement: Labor History, 1870–1980
Los Angeles Department of City Planning
City historic context for open-shop Los Angeles, the bombing, McNamara confessions, and effects on organized labor.Open source - 03Times Mirror Square Historic-Cultural Monument staff report
Los Angeles Department of City Planning
Municipal landmark documentation confirming the historic Times site, 1 a.m. blast, fire, and twenty-one deaths.Open source
Community
Discuss this Chaos File
Start a focused topic or join an existing conversation about evidence, context, the location, or what this record leaves unresolved.
Be the first person to give this file a conversation of its own.
The record keeps moving
Continue tracing
Move into a connected subject, place, or turning point. You choose the thread.