The Sheriff’s Shabby Costume: A Prisoner’s Trick to Escape the Penitentiary
In a bizarre twist of early Washington Territory justice, a sheriff attempted to smuggle a prisoner into the territorial penitentiary by disguising him in shabby clothes. The trick failed, but not before the warden made a memorable quip.
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.
The sheriff of Dalles County, wearing shabby clothes and acting like a maniac, took a prisoner to the penitentiary. The son [likely 'son' is an OCR error for 'man' or part of the description] came into the warden's office, coolly remarked, "Here's a man for you," and stood on the other side to shed [likely 'shed' is an OCR error for 'show' or similar] the trick. The trick was not unsuccessful; yet the sheriff had to submit to detention until his identity could be established.
[Note: The text contains significant garbling in the middle paragraph regarding a German impersonator and Mediterranean ports, which appears to be a separate, fragmented wire story about a male/female impersonator or similar oddity that got merged into this column. However, the primary coherent local event is the sheriff's failed smuggling attempt.]
This bizarre incident highlights the chaotic and often under-resourced nature of law enforcement in the early Washington Territory (1882). The 'shabby clothes' disguise suggests a desperate or comedic attempt to bypass bureaucratic checks, a far cry from the strict ID protocols of modern corrections. It serves as a reminder that even in the frontier era, the line between justice and farce was often thin.
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