The Publisher Who Forged a Telegram
In 1892, the Morning Olympian’s publisher was accused of sending a fake dispatch under another correspondent’s name—then caught by his own handwriting.
A specimen of the cheek of Thomas Henderson Boyd, publisher of the Morning Olympian, came to light this morning, which brands Mr. Boyd as a very dangerous person in any community. He wrote a dispatch and signed another man’s name to it without his authority and sent it over the wires last night for publication elsewhere. Following is the dispatch:
“The Morning Olympian will be printed on its own power press tomorrow morning. It announces editorially in tomorrow’s paper that the first issue of its Weekly will make its appearance on Thursday week.”
It was sent to the Tacoma Ledger and the Seattle Telegraph, for both of which papers Mr. W. K. Esling is the Olympia correspondent. Mr. Esling, who was ill, sent a note to Mr. John Cain, of the Olympian, who is correspondent of the Post-Intelligencer, asking him to attend to his dispatches. Boyd evidently knew this and smuggled the dispatches into the telegraph office with Esling’s signature. Mr. Cain wants it distinctly understood that he did not send the dispatches, but this avowal of Mr. Cain was unnecessary, as the dispatch signed “Esling” is in Boyd’s handwriting.
“He wrote a dispatch and signed another man’s name to it without his authority and sent it over the wires last night for publication elsewhere.”
Local news rivalries were bare-knuckle in 1892, but the core offense—putting words in someone else’s mouth and sending them out under their name—is an early ancestor of today’s fights over impersonation and trust in the press. The handwriting evidence made it a very Olympia-sized scandal.
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