Six Boys Fined for Snowball Assault
Local youths targeted a Chinese laundryman with a bone-filled snowball in a targeted act of harassment.
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.
Vernon Hogue, Edgar Anderson, Clyde Ogden, Chas. Van Schoick, Chas. Clark, and Ed. Jones, six boys from 15 to 17 years of age, were fined $25 each in Justice Kirkland's court Monday for assault on Foy Lung, a Chinese laundryman. The fines were suspended during future good behavior, but they were mulcted for $1.50 each and costs. Saturday, the laundryman was passing the crowd with a bundle of laundry. The boys began snowballing him, and when he put down his bundle to protect himself, one of them hit him in the mouth with a heavy piece of bone, causing a bad injury.
“When he put down his bundle to protect himself one of them hit him in the mouth with a heavy piece of bone, badly injuring him.”
This event highlights the local atmosphere of exclusion and hostility toward Chinese residents in the late 19th and early 20th century Pacific Northwest. While the judicial response—suspending the fines—suggests a lack of serious civic weight placed on the assault, the documentation of the incident preserves a record of the violence faced by Asian immigrants during this era.
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