The Hatchet-Faced Forger of the Palouse
A dapper swindler left a trail of bad checks and discarded lard across eastern Washington, fooling local business owners with a bank punch and a smile.
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.
A smooth forger has been operating successfully in eastern Washington towns during the past two weeks. He is described as a thin, hatchet-faced man of about 30 years, of pleasing address, and arrayed in a dark mackintosh and cap. At Walla Walla, he operated under the name 'Geo. E. Allen,' presenting fake checks for $12 each at saloons. In Pullman, he targeted the saloons of M. C. Hogue and John Hull, presenting $10 checks purportedly drawn by druggist Archie White. He also swindled Ferd Krenz at a meat market, where he purchased a bucket of lard with a spurious check. The forger was discovered when the checks were taken to the First National Bank, but the man had already vanished, leaving behind only the bucket of lard near the train depot.
“The bucket of lard was found near the depot, where he had thrown it away, it not even being saved to grease his track out of town.”
Small-town swindles involving local business owners remain a recurring theme, though today's digital identity theft has largely replaced the physical 'bank punch' and the stolen bucket of lard. The story highlights the reliance on social trust in local commerce, a vulnerability exploited by the era's transient grifters.
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