Violence Erupts at Walla Walla Penitentiary Jute Mill
A violent confrontation among prisoners leaves one man hospitalized after a stabbing incident behind the walls.
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 fierce fight took place at the penitentiary jute mill Saturday evening in which one convict was stabbed in the back four times by another prisoner. The story, the particulars of which are very meager, leaked out today. The two convicts were working on a machine when they quarreled. A fight followed and one of them grabbed a knife and plunged it into the other's back four times in quick succession. Great excitement prevailed for a few moments among the large number of prisoners at work in the mill, but the guards succeeded in quelling the disturbance without further trouble. The injured man was taken to the hospital and the assailant locked in a dark cell. Officials in charge at the penitentiary refuse to talk about the affair.
“A fierce fight took place at the penitentiary jute mill Saturday evening in which one convict was stabbed in the back four times.”
Prison labor, particularly in industrial settings like jute mills, was a significant aspect of early 20th-century incarceration. Reporting on such violence was often limited by prison authorities, reflecting a lack of transparency that persists in modern criminal justice coverage.
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