The Puyallup Sunday Debauch
A weekend of drunken chaos led to the arrest of three saloon keepers for selling liquor to minors and ignoring Sunday closing laws.
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.
Warrants were issued this morning for the arrest of Charles Fulmer, Peter Belles and Potter, three saloonmen of Puyallup, charging them with selling liquor to minors and also with violating the ordinance against keeping saloons open on Sunday. The complaints were sworn to by C. O. Poland and B. Gainsford of Puyallup. All three of the saloonmen are charged with keeping their places of business open on Sunday, September 18, and with selling intoxicating liquors on that day. Potter is also charged with dispensing liquor to William Maynard, a minor, on the same day, and Belles and Fulmer allegedly sold intoxicants to M. W. Morse, a minor, on September 4. The action taken against the liquor men came as a sequel to a wholesale drunken revel indulged in by hundreds of hop pickers in Puyallup on Sunday. It is said that the streets swarmed with the debauchers throughout the day, and at one time the capacity of the jail was taxed to the limit, whereupon the marshal ordered the saloons to close. The order was obeyed for two hours, but when they were opened again, the celebration continued until midnight. Respectable people were compelled to draw their curtains and remain indoors while the debauchers ran riot, and about 50 members of the Tacoma underworld even joined the scene. A crowd of drunken Indians entered a church where a religious revival was going on, forcing the preacher to call upon members of his congregation to assist him in carrying several maudlin squaws from the place.
“Respectable people were compelled to draw their curtains and remain indoors while the debauchers ran riot.”
Puyallup's 1904 Sunday liquor crackdown highlights a perennial civic tension between rowdy seasonal labor populations and established town morals. Today, the debate over local control and the enforcement of business hours often resurfaces in arguments over noise, public safety, and neighborhood character in downtown districts.
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