The Jailbreaker Who Couldn't Leave Town
After escaping the county jail, a determined prisoner hid in a shack on the Duwamish riverbank for four days, only to be found huddled under a bed.
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.
After enjoying his liberty for four days, Whipper Dryden is again behind bars in the county jail. He was harbored in a floating shack at the head of the bay, where he was harbored by a man known as 'Liverpool Jack.' Detective George Cava and Officer J. McCorey sailed five miles to where the shack was tied up in a slough near the mouth of the Duwamish river. After searching several shacks, they found Dryden in one, mending an old buck saw. The owner of the shack expressed surprise at seeing the officers and declared that there was no one present except himself and his wife. Detective Cava removed the bed and pulled back a rag, revealing the thin, gaunt form of Dryden; he was lying on the floor. Dryden is under sentence of five years for burglary, and the sheriff says that nothing less than a train wreck will keep him from going to the penitentiary.
“I don't blame you. It was your duty to catch me if you could, and it was my duty to get away when I had a chance.”
Dryden's attempt to hide in plain sight along the Duwamish waterway highlights the long history of the riverbank as a liminal space for those seeking refuge from Seattle's civic reach. Today, the industrial landscape of the Duwamish is vastly transformed, but the tension between the city's growth and the hidden lives on its edges remains a constant in Seattle's narrative.
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