The Blackmailer of the Bird's Nest
A husband is convicted of attempting to blackmail a police commissioner, exposing his wife's past life in the Everett underworld.
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 serio-comic blackmail case came to an end yesterday. Joe Young now stands convicted of attempting to blackmail Police Commissioner W. S. Relfe. Though the testimony seemed stale, the courtroom was crowded with spectators. The prosecution called seven witnesses, while the defense called two. W. H. B. McMartin, prosecuting attorney of Snohomish County, and L. K. Koonz, of Everett, testified to the character of Mrs. Young, stating she was a prostitute and had operated the 'Bird’s Nest,' a house of bad repute in Everett, under the name Minnie Snow. Young, who managed his own defense, asked absurd questions about novels he claimed were given to his wife to corrupt her morals, drawing a guffaw from the crowd. After only seven minutes of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Young now faces up to ten years in prison.
“Are you trying to prove those novels were given your wife for the purpose of corrupting her morals?”
This trial highlights the era's tendency to use a woman's sexual history and past profession as a weapon in criminal court, a practice that defined many public scandals in late 19th-century Seattle. While the legal system has since evolved to exclude such character assassination, the sensationalism of 'vice' remains a fixture of local civic discourse.
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