The Jailhouse Drinker of Tenino
A clever prisoner manages to steal a gallon of whiskey while locked in a closet by using a funnel and his own fingers.
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.
From Constable Kribbs we learn that the prisoner whom he arrested for burglary at Tenino continued the thieving business after he was arrested, stealing a razor from Mr. William Johnson, the hotel keeper at Tenino, where he was kept Friday night. He was locked up in a kind of closet with no entrance or exit but the door, and left there till morning. Mr. Johnson keeps his liquors in this apartment, but he took the precaution to remove the measures and cups and thought the prisoner would not be able to get at the liquor. But in most cases, it is said, 'where there's a will, there's a way.' The 'prisoner at the bar' found a funnel, the small end of which he stopped up with one of his nimble fingers, and drank, it is estimated, about a gallon of whisky, before he was taken out. When he was asked to rise and explain it was found that he was 'too full for utterance,' and Constable Kribbs was not troubled by any refractoriness from that prisoner on the rest of the trip to the Steilacoom jail.
“The 'prisoner at the bar' found a funnel, the small end of which he stopped up with one of his nimble fingers, and drank, it is estimated, about a gallon of whisky.”
While jail conditions have significantly evolved since the late 19th century, the interplay between addiction, minor property crimes, and the judicial system remains a recurring, systemic challenge in Washington’s modern municipal courts.
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