Los Angeles County
Biographies
WALTER LINDLEY
LINDLEY, WALTER,
Physician and Surgeon, Los Angeles, California,
was born in Monrovia, Indiana,
January 13, 1852. His father was Milton
Lindley, distinguished in the history of Los Angeles,
and his mother, Mary Elizabeth (Banta) Lindley.
He is of Quaker stock. His father
was for several years Treasurer of Los Angeles County and at his death was a
member of the Board of Supervisors of the County. On his mother’s side his ancestors fought in
the Revolutionary, Indian, Mexican and Civil Wars, four of his mother’s
brothers being United States
officers in the latter.
He is a graduate
of Minneapolis High School, Keen’s School of Anatomy, Philadelphia; Long Island
College Hospital, Brooklyn, New York, leaving the latter in 1875. After graduation he went to Los
Angeles to practice medicine and since that time has
been one of the greatest constructive factors in the modernizing of that city.
As Health Officer
of Los Angeles, member of the Board
of Education and Superintendent of the County Hospital of Los Angeles in the
days when the city was emerging from the conditions of a Mexican pueblo, Dr.
Lindley did much for the future of the place.
Dr. Lindley was
one of the founders of the Los Angeles Orphans’ Home, the Los Angeles Humane
Society and the College of Medicine
of the University of Southern
California, the latter one of the foremost institutions of the
kind in the United States.
He also founded the Whittier State School of California, a reformatory
institution for the youth of both sexes, which has been of inestimable penologic and educative value. He is President of the Board of Trustees.
His greatest
work, however, is the California Hospital,
undoubtedly one of the finest private hospitals in the world. He founded the institution and is Secretary
and Medical Director. Following the
founding of the hospital, he organized the College
Training School for Nurses, the first of its
kind established in Southern California.
He is President
of the California State Board of Medical Examiners, ex-President of the State
Medical Society, former Vice President of the National Conference on Charities
and Correction, and was appointed by President Grover Cleveland as Pacific
Coast Delegate to the great International Prison Congress held in Paris
in the year 1895. He was given the
degree of LL.D. by St. Vincent’s College.
He is a director
of the Farmers and Merchants’ Bank of Los Angeles, and holds a position of
solid financial integrity. As a member
of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and Chairman
of the Committee on Publications and Statistics he is doing much toward the
advancement of Southern California. His learned and facile pen has found valuable
employment in the Southern California Practitioner, a publication which he
created a quarter of a century ago and which is now the recognized medical
journal of the State. This magazine he
still edits and publishes
His literary
works include: “California of the
South” (in third edition); “Shakespeare’s Traducers: an
Historical Sketch”; numerous papers and pamphlets on medical, social and climatological subjects.
Dr. Lindley is a
member of the California,
University and Union League Clubs, the Los Angeles Humane Society and the Historical
Society of Los Angeles.
Transcribed 6-11-08
Marilyn R. Pankey.
Source: Press
Reference Library, Western Edition Notables of the West, Vol. I, Page 59,
International News Service, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
Boston, Atlanta. 1913.
© 2008 Marilyn R. Pankey.
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