Street Sharks and Baggage Swindles
Seattle's waterfront 'sure thing' men are preying on innocent travelers and hard-working ranchers.
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 Vashon Island rancher was recently swindled out of $20 at a Seattle wharf. A man with a cold blue eye approached him, asking him to watch baggage while he attended to business, then requested a loan of $20. The rancher complied, but the stranger disappeared, and the baggage was soon claimed by someone else. Fortunately, a local detective managed to retrieve the money later that day. Another recent victim, an Irish immigrant, lost $80 to a rigged knife-betting scheme near Lake Washington and left the city in shame.
“He left his friend at the corner of Yesler and South Second street, with instructions to wait until he returned.”
Street scams and 'confidence games' were a staple of early urban growth. The 'sure thing' men of 1893 reflect the same grifting pressures that newcomers to rapidly growing cities have faced for over a century.
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