The Girls Locked in the Walla Walla Jail
Two young women who went missing were briefly detained by police, much to their dismay.
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.
Two young Walla Walla girls, giving the names of Dent and Thompson, spent a few hours in the city jail this morning. Parents of the girls notified the police to hunt them as they had been missing from home for a day or so. The girls took the matter as a huge joke until Chief Brown locked them in separate cells, when a wail of anguish went up and entreaties for liberty were in order. After much pleading, the girls were released on a promise that they would remain at home hereafter.
“The girls took the matter as a huge joke until Chief Brown locked them in separate cells when a wail of anguish went up.”
While framed here as a parent-police intervention, the episode reflects the rigid social monitoring of youth in early 20th-century Walla Walla. Today, local social services would approach a similar situation with trauma-informed care rather than the punitive 'scared straight' tactic of locking minors in jail cells.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.