A False Shock of Hair, a Slouch Hat, and $10 at Maplewood Station
A Tacoma department-store clerk steps off the Puyallup car and is stopped in the dark by a masked man in a false wig, who takes her money and orders her home on foot.
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.
Having just alighted from a Puyallup car at Maplewood station and while walking rapidly toward her home, Miss Hintz, a young woman employed in a Tacoma department store, was held up late Saturday night by a masked man and robbed of $10. The highwayman was disguised with a mask and a shock of false hair. He was of slender build and wore a slouch hat.
As Miss Hintz hurried toward her home she saw the man approach. He did not speak until after passing her, when he muttered in a coarse voice, "Hold up your hands."
After he had taken her money he ordered her to walk home at once.
“He did not speak until after passing her, when he muttered in a coarse voice, "Hold up your hands."”
Then as now, the walk between the streetcar stop and the front door was the vulnerable half-mile — the part of a commute no schedule accounts for. Maplewood was a South Tacoma stop on the Puyallup line, and a lone woman coming home late from a downtown job had no one to call. The fake hair and slouch hat make the story quaint; the geography of it does not.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.