The Shell Game at Myers Cannery
Two women are swindled out of $300 by a gang of con artists near the Myers Cannery, leading to a police hunt for the perpetrators of this classic 'gold brick' scam.
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.
Frank Hart and Louis Goodfriend, alias L. Jones, two of the gang that bunkoed Amanda and Aminda Anreck out of $300 near the Myers Cannery one evening last week, were bound over to the superior court for trial yesterday afternoon by Judge Glasgow of the municipal court. Their bonds were placed at $1,000 each, and in default they were compelled to undergo the mortification of riding to the county jail in the 'hurry-up wagon.' When Hart and Jones or Goodfriend went into the municipal court yesterday afternoon they were as calm as could be. Their attorney demanded separate hearings for his clients, and the court acquiesced. Amanda Anreck took the stand and told her story of the bold robbery. She was positive that Hart had the $300 of her money which the man with the shells snatched, and from the story as it unraveled any one could see that there was a conspiracy to defraud the girls. Judge Glasgow, after some deliberation, said that he was certain any man at all conversant with the ways of the world could not fail to see the part Hart played in the unrelated story of Miss Anreck, and he therefore denied the motion to dismiss.
“Any man at all conversant with the ways of the world could not fail to see the part Hart played in the unrelated story.”
The 'bunko' or 'shell game' was the quintessential street scam of late 19th-century Seattle, targeting migrants and rural workers who were new to the city's complex urban dangers. The 'hurry-up wagon'—the early police paddy wagon—remains a recognizable symbol of the era's aggressive civic policing.
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