Seattle Burned the Devil's Playthings in the City Furnace

At police headquarters Saturday night there was a fire—not an ordinary coal fire, but one that must have made the devil and all his imps weep tears of mortification. There has not been so much heat diffused through the old building for four years, but if poker games continue to run there will be more occurrences of the same kind. All of the Colored Pastime Club's gambling apparatus went up in smoke. Even the famous rules and regulations, including the page on which A. A. Garner's name appeared, were fed to the hungry flames. Jailer Surry acted as fireman, while Chief Rogers superintended the operation. In the old days gambling apparatus, when destroyed, furnished a bonfire. Saturday night, however, the weather was so inclement that the big furnace which throws out heat for headquarters and the city jail was used. It must have been that Jailer Surry was informed of the amount of heat gambling tools, the devil's playthings, generated, for he kept his hand on the safety valve and at the first signs of danger blew off steam. If ex-Dog Catcher Coleman could have seen the wanton destruction of that gambling apparatus, he would have shed big tears and undoubtedly declared that he was pitying the game for fun when the officers pounced down upon him and his friends. The last bonfire of gambling apparatus was made by Chief of Police Rogers in 1893, after the raiding of the Budweiser, a place on Washington street, opposite the old M.N., now known as the Eitel House. The Budweiser was conducted by Frank Hickok, who afterward went insane, and in taking charge of the building the police seized everything—taking chairs, tables, spittoons and all articles of furniture, until there was a whole wagonload of the implements and utensils. One of the largest raids on the gamblers of this city was made by 'Bill' Cochran, sheriff, in the old territorial days, the year following the noted Chinese riots, and the amount of the luggage seized is said even to have exceeded the dray load from the Budweiser. Along in 1884 the sheriff made his descent on the games, and the property having been condemned by the district court he set aside one day for the destruction of the apparatus and finally lighted it on Pioneer Place. In a short time all the costly paraphernalia and furniture had been converted into charred remains. There was a time, however, when gamblers were bolder and more open than the average man nowadays realizes, and consequently when efforts were made to suppress it, a determination that brooked no opposition was necessary. About the day when the first tide of the second stage of immigration began to roll on the shores of Puget Sound it washed against the established institutions of the hardy loggers, who represented the one industry of the infant country, and who held themselves in readiness to bear down on the law in case it interfered with them.