The Prank Gone Wrong
A festive church fair collection turns into a masked highway robbery—or does it?
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.
Friday night the proceeds of the Episcopal fair were turned over to one of our prominent young men for safe keeping, and he started for home with $140 of trust funds in his pocket. He had gotten as far as the 'Bethune,' on Wishkah street, when a party of five masked men pounced upon him from its shadow. One, a tall thin man, stuck the cold muzzle of a revolver in the trustee's face and tried to rifle his pockets. But such a kicking and yelling! The echoes woke clear back to the Olympic mountains. In his struggles with the chief of the bandits, the unterrified trustee tore off his mask, and disclosed the familiar face of—well you know who. The five bandits turned out to be five of 'the boys' who had put up a joke on 'one of our prominent young men.'
“Such a kicking and yelling! The echoes woke clear back to the Olympic mountains.”
While this was framed as a 'boys will be boys' prank in 1892, holding a revolver to someone's face is a terrifying escalation that reminds us how thin the line between social fraternity and violence could be in frontier boomtowns. Today, Wishkah Street remains central to Aberdeen's civic life, though the 'Bethune' is long gone.
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