The Skeleton Key Gang
A trio of young boys is arrested for a string of lodging-house thefts using stolen keys.
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.
Three boys, who gave their names as I. W. Lord, F. E. Tatro and H. Gleason, were arrested yesterday suspected of burglarizing rooms in the Simonelli lodging-house on Third street, near Columbia. It is claimed that the boys are in the habit of renting rooms in various lodging-houses, and when other lodgers are away, they enter rooms by means of skeleton keys. It is suspected that the leader is Fred Kelton, a young man who was previously involved in local burglaries.
“It is claimed that the boys are in the habit of renting rooms in various lodging-houses... and steal whatever they can find.”
The vulnerability of lodging-house residents, then as now, highlights the precarious nature of low-cost housing in Seattle, where transient populations are often targets for both exploitation and crime.
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