A Widow's Justice: The High Cost of the Saloon
After a liquor-fueled murder left a young mother destitute, a Rockford jury issued a landmark verdict holding the saloon keeper financially responsible for the tragedy.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
John Boyd, a butcher of Rockford, one morning last summer deliberately murdered A. B. Johnson. Boyd was half crazed with liquor at the time. He made no attempt to escape. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison for life, leaving a wife and four children, the youngest three days old. Annie Boyd, wife of the murderer, sued Christopher Post, a saloon keeper of Rockford, for $30,000, claiming the saloon keeper had sold her husband the liquor that led to the act. A jury rendered a verdict this morning giving the woman $9,500. The case will probably be appealed. Another case of the same character, where the woman's husband was killed in a row and the murderer acquitted, is pending.
“Annie Boyd... sued Christopher Post, a saloon keeper of Rockford, for $30,000, claiming the saloon keeper had sold her husband the liquor that led to the act.”
This 1887 legal action against a saloon keeper for the consequences of intoxicated violence mirrors modern 'dram shop' laws, which continue to hold businesses liable for over-serving patrons. It captures the fierce, populist temperance era in Washington Territory, where the personal ruin caused by alcohol was increasingly viewed as a civic and economic crisis.
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