Tacoma's Treasurer Kept City Cash in a Bank That Now Owes $60,000
A 'note-sharing and warrant-buying' institution fails, and the public money inside it has not yet been handed over.
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.
TACOMA, May 12.—[Special.]—Receiver Whitehouse, of the State Savings Bank, has been ordered by the court to prepare his inventory as soon as possible and report to the court once in every forty days. His bond has been placed at $20,000. The 'bank' was a note-sharing and warrant-buying institution, and was often spoken of as 'Boggs' bank,' for City Treasurer Boggs kept large sums of city money or warrants on deposit. The bank owes the city about $60,000, this being by far the greater part of the liabilities. The assets are supposed to be little or nothing. Boggs has not yet turned over the city funds to his successor, and he and his bondsmen are liable.
“The bank owes the city about $60,000... The assets are supposed to be little or nothing.”
Public deposits are supposed to be walled off from a bank's private risk, but this 1894 collapse shows how informal arrangements and personal networks could put a city's cash on the line. The 'Boggs bank' affair is a reminder that municipal-finance scandals often begin with loose housekeeping rather than dramatic theft.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.