The Warden Fights Back: Grain-Sack Graft and Cruelty Charges at the State Penitentiary
Accused of skimming from grain-sack sales and mistreating prisoners, Walla Walla's warden dares the state to investigate — and the Post-Intelligencer says it should.
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.
Elsewhere in this issue will be found an open letter addressed to the Seattle Telegraph by J. H. Coblentz, warden of the state penitentiary, in answer to the charges made by the Telegraph against the management of that institution.
The charge which is apparently regarded by the Telegraph as most important is that of peculation in the sale of grain sacks. It is charged that sacks are sold to merchants who resell them to citizens of Oregon, in defiance of the law which requires that they be sold to grain producers of Washington only, and that they are not sold for spot cash as the law requires.
Other charges of peculation of less importance are made against Warden Coblentz, and the indictment winds up with the charge of cruelty to prisoners and other extravagances in the management of the penitentiary.
Warden Coblentz flatly denies the Telegraph's charges and states that he courts a full investigation of the institution under his control. In justice to him, as well as to the people of the state, such an investigation should be made, and we have no doubt that it will be made. If it should develop that the charges against Mr. Coblentz, or any of them, are true, the people may rest assured that prompt removal of the guilty parties by the governor will follow, as they have followed such developments in similar cases in the past. Gov. McGraw may be relied upon to ascertain the true facts in the case and to do his full duty.
“Warden Coblentz flatly denies the Telegraph's charges and states that he courts a full investigation of the institution under his control.”
A publicly funded institution accused of diverting its own product for private gain, its prisoners allegedly mistreated, and an official demanding a hearing rather than quietly deflecting — the shape of this 1894 scandal is familiar to anyone who follows the oversight of Washington's prisons and public agencies today. Then as now, the question was less whether a charge had been made than whether anyone with power would actually look.
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