The Millionaire's Son and the 'Sweat Box'
A wealthy merchant's son is detained in the city's 'sweat box' after a drunken theft of a diamond bracelet, revealing the rough-and-tumble nature of frontier justice.
Boyd Cobb, the son of a millionaire merchant from Stockton, California, is in jail charged with the grand larceny of a diamond bracelet. Cobb, not yet of age, had been on a drinking spree in Seattle. While a woman named Mrs. Eimer Mayberry was at a dentist's office in the Sullivan block, Cobb stole her diamond pin from her purse. He later handed the bracelet to a saloon keeper and intended to return it. Despite the owner wanting only the bracelet back, the boy was arrested. Chief Jackson held him in a 'sweat box' for hours without allowing his attorney to see him, eventually demanding $500 bail.
“He was kept there from 8:30 to 1:30 o'clock before Dr. Henderson or Attorney H. G. McClure were allowed to see him. While they had him in the 'sweat box' they secured affidavits.”
The reporter's use of the term 'sweat box' to describe police interrogation tactics highlights the brutal, often extrajudicial nature of law enforcement in the late 19th-century West, long before modern due process protections.
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