The Typhoid Ward Forgeries: A Young Man's Trial Turns on Missing Drafts

The trial of Nate Young on a charge of grand larceny commenced yesterday morning in the superior court before Judge Langley. It is alleged that he stole a draft for $75 from Charles F. Heath, a drummer for a patent medicine house, on July 1 at the Hotel Stevens. The case, after much testimony was heard, went over to Monday next at 9 o'clock.

Young is a fresh, broad, boyish-looking fellow with his hair cut pompadour. His wife, who seems to be devoted to him, is a petite and handsome little brunette. She sat by her husband's side all day long and took a deep interest in the proceedings, and seemed greatly elated when a point was made in her husband's favor. The gray-haired, aged father and mother of the accused sat close to him, and showed even more concern than did the young man and his wife. The mother evidently appeared anxious; she listened with the deepest attention to every detail and was even more anxious perhaps than she herself had been on trial.

The testimony was to the effect that C. F. Heath hired Nat Young to distribute bills or circulars. Instead of going to the hotel himself he sent a young man named Charles Rivers to take his place. On that day, which was June 17, Heath became sick with typhoid fever, and on the 18th Young came to the hotel and took charge of the sick man. Heath was sick for four or five weeks, and during most of that time was delirious. When he returned to consciousness he found that a draft for $75, another one for $24 and one for $30, which had accrued while he was sick and which he had never seen, had disappeared. Nat Young told the nurse, J. N. McCormack, that he had turned the drafts over to the proprietor of the Stevens Hotel. The proprietor declared that he had never seen the drafts. It developed that the two larger drafts, duly indorsed with Heath's name, which had been forged by some one, were taken to the Northern Pacific ticket office. There Cashier H. G. Ballou gave a 3,000-mile ticket and $43 in change in return for the drafts. The other draft was cashed in Tacoma by Burns. The latter has not been seen since, but the railroad company has found out that he used up 1,500 miles of the mileage ticket in traveling over the Northern Pacific Railroad.

The state claimed that the evidence implicated Young, while his attorneys claimed that there was not one particle of evidence to connect him with it; that the evidence so far presented had been entirely circumstantial.

About twenty witnesses were examined and at 6:30 o'clock the court adjourned till Monday. The jurymen were allowed to separate, but were warned not to talk about the case to anyone.