The Roadhouse in the Woods That Kept Its Women in Debt

TACOMA, April 12.—Special.—Mrs. Rosa Slickerman and her husband, proprietors of a notorious resort at Wilkeson, were arrested today on the charge of selling liquor without a license. They waived examination and were bound over to the superior court. This was furnished at a late hour this afternoon.

The residents of Wilkeson and Carbonado have complained to the prosecuting attorney that a number of dance halls and saloons between the two towns were being conducted without a proper license. The matter was brought to the attention of the prosecuting attorney several days ago, and resulted on Thursday in the issuance of warrants for the arrest of Henry Slickerman and his wife Rosa Slickerman.

The warrants were served Thursday night by Deputy Sheriffs J. R. McArthur and Lurty, and both Mr. and Mrs. Slickerman were confined in the county jail.

Mrs. Slickerman was formerly one of the demimonde of Tacoma, where she did business under another name. Her place had been in bad repute for a long time past. Only three or four months ago she was arrested on the charge of assault and battery preferred by one of the inmates of the place. She was fined and cost by Justice McMurray, and the testimony in the case was such as to prove that assaults of a similar nature were common at the place and that the mistress of the house treated the inmates in a shameful manner. As the place had been run without a license for some weeks past, the authorities determined to suppress it.

To secure evidence against the proprietress of the resort, which is situated about midway between Wilkeson and Carbonado, two detectives and a constable were sent to Wilkeson about a week ago. They traveled under assumed names and represented themselves as sports from east of the mountains. Their purpose was, they said, ‘to get onto any loose layout there was and work it for all there was in it.’ They were received with open arms, figuratively, if not literally speaking. One of the officers told a correspondent that Mrs. Slickerman proposed to them that they bring from Tacoma gambling layouts of approved type, including the necessary ‘sure thing’ games. She also suggested that they bring ‘a bright woman apiece,’ who, she said, could make considerable money by ‘touching’ the miners when they were full. She said that in this way she had only a few days previous raked in a considerable sum from one man. She told the officers that the fellow did not know when he got through with the game whether he got out of the window or by the back door.

A Post-Intelligencer correspondent accompanied the officers of the law Thursday night in his raid on the Slickerman place. The building stands in a secluded belt of timber not far from the railroad track about half way between Wilkeson and Carbonado. It is made of rough lumber, and is divided into two parts, the dance hall and saloon in the front and the lodging house in the rear. The inmates are of the roughest type, and during pay week it is said the three places run full blast day and night. One woman had a blackened eye and bruised face, the result of a row with one of the male attaches. Another woman had just recovered from a severe beating inflicted, she said, by Mrs. Slickerman. There was the usual quota of hangers-on, gamblers and the like. The place was also equipped with the regulation gambling outfits, which, however, were not in operation. One of the inmates said that she had been continually in debt to the landlady ever since she had been there, and that when she had tried to get away the woman kept her wearing apparel because she claimed she owed her some money. In that way, the woman said, none of the inmates were able to escape the miserable existence they led. One of the male attaches told the deputy sheriff a similar story. He was paid a salary, he said, but when he figured up at the end of the month he found the old woman charged him with more than he had earned.