The Drunk Who Paid the Price: Jessie Johnson’s Fine in Early Wenatchee
A local woman is fined $10 and costs for being drunk and disorderly on the streets last Friday night.
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.
Judge Palmer fined Jessie Johnson $10 and costs this morning.
Johnson had been charged with being drunk and disorderly on the streets last Friday night.
While a $10 fine in 1905 might seem trivial, it represents a significant portion of daily wages for working-class women at the time. This brief legal entry highlights the strict moral policing of public behavior in early frontier towns, where 'disorderly conduct' was a common catch-all for women who stepped outside social norms.
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