In the early evening of August 26, 1924, James R. Armantrout, a ship's carpenter living in Bay Point, (about 5 miles south of Milton), along with his 12-year-old son J.R., Jr. walked into the store near the L&N Depot owned by S.G. Collins, and shot Roland MacArthy four times killing him on the spot.
Armantrout then went directly to Sheriff Henry Clay Mitchell and handing him the murder weapon, surrendered peacefully. Sheriff Mitchell called a Coroner’s Jury and visited the site. Armantrout retained Milton Lawyer W.W. Clark to be his attorney, and bail was eventually set at $5000.
Armantrout said he killed MacArthy due to “Domestic Trouble”, claiming he was defending his home. Armantrout married Daisy Anderson from the Holley area back in 1909. They had five boys at the time of the killing. One of the boys, Vernon, who was born in 1919, was apparently fathered by MacArthy. Maybe Armantrout had just found out that a 5-year-old son that he was raising, was a product of an affair between his wife and MacArthy. Vernon was listed as an Armantrout in census records, but later used MacArthy as his surname. So, Armantrout claimed MacArthy had “improper relations” with his wife.
He was found guilty of 2nd Degree murder, and his lawyer appealed the sentence. I haven’t been able to find out what his sentence was, or how the appeal turned out. He and Daisy divorced in 1931, and in August of 1934 he married Billie Hollingshead in Santa Rosa County. In 1935 he was living in Okaloosa County. James Armantrout died in Ft. Walton Beach in 1948, and was buried in the Whitmire Cemetery in Pensacola.
Roland MacArthy was buried in the Bagdad Cemetery
The Five boys in the Armantrout home were James Roscoe, Jr. born in 1912,
Victor Hugo, (Hughey) Born 24 March 1915.
Lonnie Eugene, born 13 Feb 1917
Floyd, and Lloyd were twins born 9 July 1922.
In 1935, Daisy Armantrout was arrested in Pensacola during a series of Liquor raids. I could not find out anything more. She was probably released and not charged.
In May 1941, Daisy Armantrout was the proprietor of the Bay Hotel, and Bar on South Palafox. On the evening of the 16th, the hotel was raided by the Escambia County Sheriff’s Department and nine people were arrested. Solicitor Forsyth Caro petitioned for a restraining order to close the establishment saying that it would be “manifestly injurious to morale, manners, and the health of our community,” and created a nuisance. The petition also stated, “ The defendants will continue to operate said business and to carry on the illegal acts unless restrained by order of the court.” The petition was directed at Daisy, Lloyd, Floyd Armantrout, Billie Armantrout Soto, (former daughter-in-law of Daisy), and Eva Mitchell who were arrested on a charge of operating a “House of Ill Fame.” Five additional females were being held on vagrancy with the possibility of facing additional charges after further investigation.
In the 17th century references can be found about Houses of Ill Fame. The next century saw the usage of “House of Ill Repute”. It’s funny that in the mid-twentieth century, such archaic terms were still being used.
The hearing for the Restraining order was before the Judge of the Court of Record, R. Pope Reese. Judge Reese was the son of a Confederate Veteran and was born in Smith Co., Texas in 1868. After his father’s death the family moved to Auburn, Alabama where his mother’s family was from. By 1888 he was living in Pensacola. Reese was admitted to the bar in February 1896, and was appointed to his present position in 1938. He had also been elected to the Florida Legislature in 1907, and was well-known, and respected throughout the Panhandle. Judge Reese would pass away a little over two months after this hearing, and be buried at St. John’s Cemetery.
At the hearing, John M. Coe, who in a short time would be a pallbearer at Judge Reese’s funeral, would be representing the Armantrouts.
On May 22nd Judge Reese would not have a hearing after he noted that the defendants were in jail and Solicitor Forsyth Caro made no effort to have them brought to court. He also referred to the absence of Herbert Latham, attorney originally retained by Mrs. Armantrout, and suggested that the State Bar Association, “Look into a few things.” Latham has not represented the Armantrouts in court. Hobart Villar, attorney for Mrs. Soto, was associated with Coe in cross examination of witnesses.
On the 23rd all were present in the courtroom and the hearing proceeded.
Chief Deputy Guy Harvey, called as the first witness testified that the establishment had the “general reputation” of a “house of ill fame.” Judge Reese insisted that the witness deal separately with the Bar and the Hotel in his testimony. “What I would suggest, is that Mrs. Armantrout is not connected with all this. This woman, indicating Mrs. Soto, (I assume the defendants had been brought to the hearing), runs the rooms, or has a room there...we’ve got to make a line of demarcation...now they’re separate” he concluded.
No Sir, they’re not,” Harvey insisted, “the stairway that leads upstairs runs right down into the bar rooms.” “Yes Sir, the Merchants Hotel, and the San Carlos Hotel stairs lead right down into the bar, yet how are you going to tell?” Judge Reese demanded.
Harvey said, “Mrs. Armantrout, her twin sons, the Mitchell woman, and Daisy Hudson were downstairs, and Mrs. Soto ran upstairs when we entered the Barroom to make the arrest.” He also said Mrs. Armantrout told him she was in charge of the place. “In charge of the whole building from top to bottom?” inquired the Judge.
When Defense attorney Coe asked Harvey if he knew of any other houses of prostitution, Caro objected. Judge Reese overruled him saying, “Everybody knows those things go on at the Plaza, the Manhattan, and the Merchants. I do!” Coe asked Deputy Harvey as to whether four other hotels had “call girls” but Harvey would not give an opinion on their reputations, insisting that if he had that information he would arrest the proprietors.
Harvey said the Sheriff’s Department had received its first complaint on Mrs. Armantrout’s place from a man who had, “filled a date” down there. “What’s his name?” the Judge demanded. Deputy Harvey sent someone to get the name from the records. “He was a Piker if he did come in and make a complaint like that. He was worse than a piker. I’ll tell the world!” The Judge was clearly upset. (Piker: One who does things in a small way. Tightwad, cheapskate.)
Dr. W.T. Sowder, the U.S. Public Health official liaison officer for the local army/navy and local officials, said the Health Department treated 13 women for “social diseases” who gave the Bay Hotel as their address. Coe objected to that statement as hearsay, and Judge Reese sustained him.
Sowder said he followed up many of the cases and had found that a “substantial number” of them did live there. He later named three girls and said the Health Department had administered 11 treatments to one of them.
“Did you hang a sign on the place?” Reese asked. Sowder said he told Mrs. Armantrout to tell the girls that they “shouldn’t operate anymore”, and would have to leave town. “Did you tell her that in the presence of the girls?” the Judge asked. Sowder replied that Mrs. Armantrout was in his office and the girls were outside the door. Judge Reese said, “I’m going to rule that out. Not proper testimony.” He then said to Coe, “You better get up here and make some objections.”
Twenty-year-old Daisy Hudson testified that Mrs. Armantrout and two other people came to her house in Holley to get her to “work the floor.” She said she worked for commissions from the “Jook organ”, and sale of wines and that “the guys pay for the rooms and we go to them.” She said she objected to “filling the first date”, but Mrs. Soto, who made the date for her, told her “it would be alright.” She said Soto got dates for her several times during the week she was there, but denied Mrs. Armantrout had ever suggested that she fill any dates.
Mrs. Armantrout, described as a “plump, bare-legged, middle aged woman wearing a blue waitress uniform”, testified that she was the proprietor of the Bay Hotel and Bar, and denied she ever kept girls there for “immoral purposes”. She said she told all the girls she employed, “All you got to do is get money for the Victrola, and serve drinks.” Asked if she either knowingly, or unknowingly permitted girls to “fill dates” in the upstairs rooms, “Mama Daisy” as she was called by the girls, said “No Sir, I told them, they did not have to do that.”
On cross, Solicitor Caro, asked her about two girls named Nellie Smith, and Mary Riley. She said a man known to her as Jack Kirkland, (actually his name was Daniel Washington Kirkland), had offered to go to Dothan, Alabama and get his wife and sister to work for her after she complained that, “All the girls had left town.” She described how he returned one morning with two girls and she was surprised by their youth but did not learn until later that they were not his wife and sister. Kirkland was later arrested in a fight with some sailors in which he was allegedly defending the two girls, she testified.
Mrs. Armantrout’s son Hughey had accompanied Kirkland on the trip to Dothan to pick up the girls. “He went because I had been up all night, or I guess I would have gone,” she said. She also testified that part of her establishment’s licenses were in the name of her son, J.R. whom she had bought out. “Is that the boy that’s at sea?” the Judge asked, “Yes”, she said.
Daisy denied Mrs. Soto had anything to do with her establishment, or with renting out of rooms upstairs. She said Soto was formerly married to her son and was here on a visit from her home in Texas. Judge Reese asked, “You weren’t running any house of prostitution, were you?” “No sir! I made my living downstairs.” she said. She also stated that she had a sign posted saying, “Furnished rooms for Men Only”, but sometimes took couples who registered as man and wife. She admitted telling the girls they “can make $9, or $10 a week if they try.”
Nellie Smith, 19, and Mary Riley, 17, were brought to Pensacola Kirkland, and “Mama Daisy’s” son Hughey and that Mrs. Armantrout greeted them by saying, “Well you got two pretty ones this time.” “You can make plenty of money if you use your head.” She claimed she had request to fill dates but none of them came from Mrs. Armantrout.
After hearing the testimony, Judge Reese denied the petition on his opinion that there was insufficient proof of prostitution. He did enter an injunction restraining Mrs. Billie Soto from remaining in the hotel or doing business there. About Mrs. Armantrout, the Judge said, “I knew her father, old-man Anderson, lived up there in Holley, and they were the best people I ever knew in my life. That’s why I went into this case the way I did.” (Does that fully explain his obvious favoritism and bias for the fate of the Bay Hotel, and Bar? It makes you wonder.)
Judge Reese reduced Daisy’s bond to $100. “Can you make that bond, Mrs. Armantrout?” “No sir, I can’t,” she replied. “If you can’t I’ll cut it down more. I’ve always found you to be a square woman and I don’t want to keep you in jail where your business is going to rack and ruin.”
After this hearing, Daisy Armantrout was held on a Mann Act violation by U.S. Commissioner E. W. Eggart, Jr. Her bond was set at $350.
The Mann Act was also known as the White-Slave Act of 1910. The Long Title: An Act to Further Regulate Interstate and Foreign Commerce by Prohibiting the Transportation therein for Immoral Purposes of Women, and Girls, and for other Purposes.
A hearing was conducted in Federal court in which five witnesses were examined and sufficient evidence was found to hold defendants, (Daisy, her son Hughey, and Kirkland), to the next term of Federal Court, (November). The five witnesses heard were:
Mrs. Daisy Armantrout
Nellie Smith
Mary Riley
Deputy Eugene Forsyth
J.D. Colglazier, FBI Special Agent
It was only necessary to prove that the two girls were entered “into conditions which would tend to lead to debauchery.”
Mrs. Armantrout admitted her car was used to make the trip to Dothan to pick up the two girls. She also supplied a full tank of gas, and $8 for the trip. She was down to only one girl for “hustling money on the Victrola”, and getting men to buy drinks. She spent the previous night in a cell in the U.S. Marshal’s office after being picked up on a complaint signed by Colglazier. (She must have been detained after the previously described hearing in the Court of Judge Reese.)
Daisy was serving a one-year sentence at hard labor in the Escambia County jail when the November term in the Federal Court started. She, her son Hughey, and Jack Kirkland were to be tried for violating the Mann Act. This time she was in Federal Court and had no friends on the bench.
On May 8, 1942, Judge A.V. Long sentenced Daisy Armantrout to serve two years in the Federal Industrial Institute for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, upon conviction of violating the Mann Act. Daniel Washington Kirkland, (alias Jack), was also convicted on the white slave charge and received two years. Victor Hugo (Hughey) Armantrout was found not guilty.
Assistant U.S. Attorney William B. Watson handled the prosecution and the defendants were represented by J.M. Coe, and John Lewis Reese. Reese was the son of the late Judge R. Pope Reese, and Coe was a pallbearer at the Judge’s funeral.
After Daisy finished her prison sentence she and her family moved to the Galveston, Texas area. She passed away there on 21 Jan 1968 of Chronic Hypostatic Pneumonia.
Both J.R. Armantrout, Jr. and his brother Lonnie Eugene had long careers as Merchant Mariners. J.R. died in Texas in 1976, and Lonnie died in King Co., Washington in 1987.
Hughey died in Los Angeles in 1979. Lloyd passed away in Jan 2000.
Floyd Armantrout committed suicide in January 1972.
Daisy, Lloyd, Floyd, and J.R. are buried in Harris Co. Texas at the Forest Park East Cemetery.
The location of the Bay Hotel, and Bar is not clear. It seems it was located next to the San Carlos Hotel and shared a stairway going to the bar.
Daisy was the daughter of Johann Victor Anderson, and Caroline Frances Harvell of the East Bay/ Holley area in Santa Rosa Co., FL.
This material was heavily plagiarized from the Pensacola News Journal articles from May 1941, and others.
