Justice Humphrey Settles a Rental Fraud
A tenant accused of forging receipts to avoid paying rent to her landlord is ordered to pay up after the court rejects her falsified documents.
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.
Alice Miller, a good-looking woman of French extraction, rented a cigar stand and the rooms above at 111 Jackson Street some time ago from a Chinaman named Wan Lee at the rate of $15 a month for the store and $30 for the rooms upstairs. When Lee went to collect his rent for February, his tenant showed him two receipts signed by Wan Lee. The original Wan Lee declared the signatures were forgeries and that he had given no one authority to collect the rent for him. Miss Miller refused to pay the rent, so the Chinaman asked the court to put her out. This was compromised pending a settlement of the difficulty, but in order to get his rent, Wan Lee brought the case before Justice Humphrey Saturday, and, upon proving that the receipts were forgeries, secured a judgment for $45.
“The original Wan Lee declared the signatures were forgeries and that he had given no one authority to collect the rent for him.”
This case offers a glimpse into the legal landscape of 1893 Chinatown, where immigrant landlords like Wan Lee had to fight to maintain their property rights against bad-faith tenants. It highlights the power imbalance and the necessity of the courts in protecting, or failing to protect, vulnerable business owners in the district.
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