A Violent Custody Struggle
A mother fighting to keep her child is pinned to the floor by an officer enforcing a divorce decree.
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.
Armed with a decree of the court, Deputy Sheriff McCulloh and George Kemp proceeded to 1137 South X street to take possession of a little child which the judge of the divorce court had given to its father. When the two arrived at the house where Mrs. Randi Kemp is employed, she was washing dishes. She declared that the child should not be taken from her, and when the attempt was made to remove it, she is accused of attacking the officer with a dishcloth. So violent was her fight that Deputy McCulloh had to throw her to the floor and pinion her there until the father could take the little girl and board the interurban train. After the train had gone, the woman was released. The couple were divorced in King County; infidelity and bad temper were the allegations in the suit.
“She declared that the child should not be taken from her, and when the attempt was made to remove it she is accused of attacking the officer with the dishcloth.”
This incident highlights the harsh, often brutal reality of early 20th-century family law, where gendered power dynamics and court mandates frequently stripped mothers of custody with little regard for the trauma inflicted on both parent and child.
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