The 'Rocky Mountain Hustler' in the City Jail
A teenager’s father attempts to use the courts to release his son, who was arrested for holding up a local grocer.
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.
George P. Van Dyke, the father of Wildy Van Dyke, the 15-year-old dime novel reader who with another boy held up Allen B. Colegrove, a grocer, and was immediately captured by his own victim, yesterday made an attempt to release his son from the city jail by a writ of habeas corpus. Mr. Van Dyke had Judge Langley issue the writ yesterday afternoon, representing that the boy was being held by the police charged only with 'suspicion,' and that no complaint had yet been filed. Chief Willard stated he was holding the boy for highway robbery, and that the only reason a complaint had not been filed was that the father had begged him not to until the other youth, George Williamson, should be captured. Judge Langley refused to release the boy, stating, 'I am disposed to allow the police considerable latitude in such cases as this. A policeman is not a lawyer and may not know at once just what charge the evidence against a prisoner will support. If they are compelled to file a charge on too short notice there is danger of mistake and injustice.'
“A policeman is not a lawyer and may not know at once just what charge the evidence against a prisoner will support.”
This 1894 story captures the familiar moral panic over 'dime novels' influencing youth, which mirrors modern anxieties about the influence of digital media on teenagers. The tension between police discretion and constitutional rights regarding detention remains a central debate in Seattle's current criminal justice landscape.
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