The Flight of 'Japanese Tommy'
A notorious 'bunko' con artist evades justice after the supreme court upholds his conviction for swindling a farmer.
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.
News was received in this city last evening that the state supreme court had affirmed the decision of the superior court in the case of Matt Ries and Tommy Rauschman, who were convicted and sentenced to three years in the penitentiary for bunkoing Farmer Joseph R. Bunce out of $102 on the steamer Sehome on January 25, 1892. The story of Matt Ries' sudden departure from Seattle about the time his case was to be argued in the supreme court was told in these columns three weeks ago. Rauschman, or, as he was commonly known, 'Japanese Tommy,' is supposed to be in Texas, near enough to the Mexican border so that he can cross in time to evade any attempt of the Washington authorities to bring him back. Although there is little chance of seeing the convicted bunko men behind the bars, the police have some satisfaction in knowing that the city is freed of two dangerous men.
“Rauschman, or, as he was commonly known, 'Japanese Tommy,' is supposed to be in Texas, near enough to the Mexican border so that he can cross in time to evade any attempt of the Washington authorities to bring him back.”
Bunko schemes—confidence games designed to extract cash from travelers—were a scourge of the waterfront during Seattle's rapid expansion. The story captures a moment where the frontier justice of the Pacific Northwest was beginning to give way to centralized state oversight, even as criminals utilized the porous nature of the American West to flee jurisdiction.
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