The Opium Smuggler of Whatcom
A man is caught at the border with a valise full of illicit opium, implicating a Seattle contact.
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.
WHATCOM, Oct. 28.—The man arrested here a few days ago with eighteen five-tael cans of opium in a valise was examined before United States Commissioner Williams yesterday and bound over in the sum of $500. He gave his name as Harry Hall and said he was bringing the opium down from British Columbia for a friend of his in Seattle named Albert Hanson. Hanson met him near New Westminster and asked him to take the valise to Seattle for him. Hall says that he recently came from east of the mountains, but is a native of Minnesota.
“Hanson met him near New Westminster and asked him to take the valise to Seattle for him.”
This arrest highlights the tense border economy and the policing of contraband between British Columbia and Washington in the late 19th century. While the substances and the scale of the trade have shifted, the jurisdictional friction between US and Canadian border authorities persists as a modern political theme.
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