The Midnight Feed Store Hold-Up
A Spokane night watchman is tied up by intruders using a sledgehammer and miner's drill in a tense room robbery.
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 masked thugs tied Alfred Christianson, watchman for the Morrison Feed company at the corner of Sheridan Street and Front Avenue, hand and foot early this morning and robbed him of $13 before escaping. Christianson was sleeping in a rear room when he was awakened by a resounding crash of breaking glass. He saw two men forcing their way through a window with a sledgehammer. One man held Christianson at gunpoint, ordering him to lie on the bed while the other used a rope to bind his feet and hands. The robbers cut the telephone wires before searching the room and finding $9 in gold and $4 in silver in the watchman’s trousers. When Christianson complained of the cold, one robber tossed a quilt over him; under the cover, the watchman managed to work his feet loose. After the thieves left, Christianson freed his hands, dressed, and alerted the police. Officers found a sledgehammer, a miner's drill, and a piece of flour sacking left behind at the scene.
“One of the men covered Christianson with a revolver and ordered him to lay down on the bed.”
While Spokane has transformed into a major city, the vulnerability of solitary workers in commercial districts remains a consistent urban concern. This story highlights the era's economic anxiety, as police immediately linked the suspects to the influx of transient labor following mine closures in Butte, Montana.
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