The Safe Crackers of La Conner
In a town unaccustomed to such violence, burglars blast open a general store safe, signaling a new era of criminal sophistication.
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.
La Conner, July 24—Last night J. & G. Gaches' general merchandise store, on the corner of Front and Douglas streets, was entered by burglars, the safe blown open and about $300 in cash and quite an amount of notes, drafts and checks were taken. The entrance to the brick building, the iron shutters to each door and window of which were securely fastened, was effected through one of the back windows, which opens into the office. The iron shutter on this window was pried open by means of a crowbar and the window raised. The combination on the outside of the large safe was worked out and the doors opened, and the inside doors were drilled and blown open. They piled flour and clothing around the safe to break the sound of the blast, and it evidently did not make much noise, as one of the clerks, Mr. Leslie Silcox, who sleeps in an adjoining building not sixty feet away from the office, was not awakened. They are evidently skilled hands at the work.
“The business men are all worked up over it, as it is the first time in the history of this quiet little town that a safe has been blown open.”
The Gaches store was a pillar of early La Conner business. The shock felt by the community highlights how quickly small frontier towns grappled with the arrival of organized urban-style crime.
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