The Steamboat Swindle
A local laundry foreman is hoodwinked out of his steamboat by two men who used a deed to worthless Tacoma property as bait.
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.
H. F. Hurlbut, formerly a foreman in the Puget Sound Steam Laundry, claims to have been swindled out of his steam launch, the 'Clara', by two men he identifies as Louis McAdams and N. H. McLean. Hurlbut, who intended to sell the four-ton boat to raise funds to bring his family back from the World's Fair, was approached by the pair on Yesler Avenue. They offered to trade him a deed to property in Tacoma for his boat. After the exchange, Hurlbut discovered McLean had no title to the land and that McAdams had already sold off the boat to third parties. Despite his efforts to pursue the matter through the prosecutor's office, Hurlbut was initially denied a warrant, leading him to hire an attorney to chase the property records and attempt to recover the vessel.
“Hurlbut has been trying to get his boat back for several days, but so far he has not succeeded.”
This 1891 property scam shows that Seattle's reputation for 'get-rich-quick' schemes involving real estate and asset manipulation is as old as the city itself. Much like today's digital scams, Hurlbut found himself in a legal gray area where standard law enforcement was slow to recognize the technicalities of the fraud.
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