CAMERON E. THOM
District Attorney

1854-1857; 1869-1873; 1877-1879

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Cameron E. Thom

An immigrant from the South, Thom serves as L.A.'s District Attorney, returns to the South to fight for the Confederacy, then comes back for two terms as chief prosecutor.

Cameron Thom came to California from Virginia as a Forty-Niner. He moved to Los Angeles in 1854. One of his first cases as a defense attorney was a controversial murder charge against Dave Brown, a well-known gambler. Brown had killed a man in a livery stable on Main Street. In the heyday of the vigilantes, a crowd gathered and decided to string up Brown and be done with him. Los Angeles Mayor Stephen Foster -- not the songwriter of "Camptown Races," though they were alive at the same time -- convinced the would-be lynchers to give the courts a chance to act. Foster vowed that if justice wasn't expediently done, he would resign his office and lead a lynch mob himself. Brown was sentenced to death. But Thom and two colleagues, the high-priced defense lawyers of their day, were able to get a stay from the state Supreme Court. Foster, true to his word, resigned, led another lynch mob and Thom's client was hanged. Foster was re-elected as mayor two weeks later.

Thom was a California senator from 1859 to 1860. He returned to the South during the Civil War, fighting as a major in the Confederate army. Then he came back to Los Angeles and served two more terms as District Attorney. He was mayor of Los Angeles from 1882 to 1884 and also helped to found the city of Glendale.

Reprinted from FOR THE PEOPLE -- Inside the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office 1850-2000 by Michael Parrish. ISBN 1-883318-15-7