The Jail-Breaking Charlatan of Seattle
A notorious criminal uses a fake pardon and a religious disguise to walk right out of the county jail.
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 Dryden, alias William Hawthorn, alias O'Neill, who escaped from the county jail Sunday afternoon owing to carelessness on the part of Acting Jailer Jim Wells, is still at large. Sheriff Woolery is very anxious to recapture the notorious criminal and yesterday offered $100 reward for his arrest. It transpired yesterday that Dryden is the most successful jail breaker in the Pacific Northwest. After he was sentenced to the penitentiary by Judge Burke several years ago, he deceived the authorities at Walla Walla into believing he was insane. It took him five weeks to do it, but he finally succeeded and was transferred to Steilacoom, from which place he escaped in three days. When the evangelists, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, visited the jail, Dryden immediately accosted them, saying that he had just received information of his pardon and was going to leave when they went out. Prayers were said over him, and with a solemn voice Dryden would come in at the close with 'amen.' At the time of going out, Dryden picked up a religious paper and walked past Acting Jailer Wells. Once outside the courthouse he went his own way, and no one seems to know where.
“Prayers were said over him, and with a solemn voice Dryden would come in at the close with 'amen.'”
Jail breaks were a recurring embarrassment in 1890s Seattle, often blamed on poor oversight by the city’s political appointees. Dryden’s escape highlights the vulnerability of the old county jail systems before the professionalization of the correctional system.
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