A Gun Under His Nose: The North Seattle Highwaymen Go on Trial
John Murphy and two alleged accomplices are identified by the laborer they robbed at Front and Clay, while a second sandbagging case ends in a sealed verdict.
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.
Highwaymen had the criminal department of the superior court to themselves yesterday so far as criminal trials were concerned. Judge Ballinger, who presided, was to have heard the explanations of four alleged “gentlemen of the road,” but a trio who were charged with the same crime having demanded separate hearings only two cases were called, those of J. W. Tollman and John Murphy. The jury is considering the former’s case and the latter’s trial will go on again today.
Murphy is one of the three men, John Murphy, Martin Murphy and Tom Davis, who are charged with robbing John Smith, a laborer, at the corner of Front and Clay streets in North Seattle on the evening of February 15, and who are suspected of several other holdups. They were arrested on the Ocean dock only four hours later, after a desperate effort to escape. All three were identified by Smith, who also identified a ring found in Davis’s clothes.
They having demanded separate trials, John Murphy’s case alone was called. Smith, the first witness, swore positively that Murphy was the man who held a gun under his nose while the other two went through his pockets. He was still on the stand when the case was continued to today and court adjourned. There is but little doubt that the man now on trial at least will be convicted.
The evidence in the case of Tollman, in which the jury has not yet found a verdict, was not very strong. Tollman was charged with having on February 11 sandbagged Ferdinand Tapfert in the second-story stairway of the Hinckley block. He was arrested early the next morning by Officer Mike Powers on a charge of drunkenness, but at the police station Tapfert’s watch and knife were found in his pockets and identified by Clerk Flamming on the spot and by Tapfert himself the next day. When on the stand yesterday Tollman denied the sandbagging and said that he and Tapfert were drunk together that night and were roaming around the town. He borrowed the knife from Tapfert to cut some tobacco and, when a short time later Tapfert’s watch fell out of his pocket, he took that also and kept both for safekeeping until Tapfert should sober up. The jury could not agree at once and was allowed to bring in a sealed verdict.
“Smith swore positively that Murphy was the man who held a gun under his nose while the other two went through his pockets.”
In 1894, North Seattle was a patchwork of docks, cheap lodging and new streets, and violent street robberies were local front-page news. The corner named in the trial—Front and Clay, now First Avenue and Clay—sits in today’s Belltown, where public safety and downtown policing remain live civic arguments.
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