The Kangaroo Court of the Seattle Jail
A young man from Pomeroy, arrested for seduction, faces a brutal initiation into the 'kangaroo court' of Seattle's 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.
Bert R. Wood, a young man from Pomeroy, was arrested on a dispatch from Garfield County charging him with seduction. He was found at the home of his brother-in-law on Williamson Street and immediately locked in the county jail. Wood claims he never promised to marry Nellie E. Hull, despite her father's threats. Upon his arrival at the jail, he was subjected to a 'kangaroo court'—an informal, abusive tribunal run by the prisoners. The court 'fined' him $3 for being captured. When he claimed he had no money, prisoners seized him and threatened him with ropes from the cell hammocks until he signed an order for tobacco using his name. Wood expressed such disgust for his fellow prisoners that he claimed he would rather face a hungry lion or a tribe of cannibals than endure their association.
“Wood says that rather than associate with the members of the kangaroo court he would face anything, a hungry lion, the wronged girl's irate father, or a tribe of cannibals.”
This account captures the grim reality of the 'kangaroo court,' a system of extra-legal violence and extortion once common in American jails. While these specific internal prison hierarchies have largely faded, the struggle for inmate safety and the critique of carceral conditions remain central to modern Seattle's discourse on public safety and equity.
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