Jailer's Rounds Foil Burglars Digging Through Cell Wall
Two burglars nearly tunneled out of the King County Jail, thwarted only by a sharp-eared jailer and an unfortunate musical choice.
Morgan and Snow, two burglars awaiting transport to the state prison at Walla Walla, were foiled in an attempt to escape from the county jail at 6 p.m. yesterday. Jailer W.T. Monroe, while making his rounds, heard a scraping sound coming from the wall of the hall leading from the main entrance of the courthouse to the jail. He quickly entered the cell and caught the men kneeling in the corner, using the sheet-iron handle of a dipper to remove bricks from the wall. They had managed to remove three bricks. Had they succeeded, they would have faced only a flimsy cedar wainscot between them and liberty. Night jailer Smith noted that the men had been singing loudly—specifically the hymn 'Yield Not to Temptation'—to drown out the sound of their digging. Monroe confiscated the tool, placed the men in heavy irons, and moved them to a dark cell.
“One of the tunes they were singing was, 'Yield Not to Temptation.'”
The King County Courthouse mentioned here was located in downtown Seattle, a site that has seen successive iterations of civic justice. The struggle to keep secure facilities during the city's early, volatile period captures a time when the 'sound of digging' was a common anxiety for wardens.
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