A School Superintendent's Fall from Grace
J. C. Phelps of Anacortes is bound over to superior court on charges that he embezzled money from a wharf company and Western Union.
MOUNT VERNON, March 5.—Special.—At the examination of J. C. Phelps, of Anacortes, charged with embezzlement, before Justice Anible today, the accused was bound over to the superior court. In the case in which he is charged with embezzling funds of the Union Wharf Company the justice bound him over for $500, and in that in which the Western Union Telegraph Company is alleged to have lost funds Phelps was required to give $250 bonds. At the examination John T. Campion, auditor of the Oregon Improvement Company, was complaining witness.
“Charged with embezzlement … bound over to the superior court.”
A former school superintendent charged with skimming from a wharf company and a telegraph company reads like a Gilded Age white-collar case. Then as now, the first question in court was not guilt but whether the accused could post bond—and the detail that a railroad auditor was the complaining witness shows how closely private companies policed their own books.
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