A Captain's Midnight Wrestle With an Armed Robber
Capt. W.W. Gardner loses a small sum but saves his watch after a holdup at Thirteenth and I streets—part of a burglary wave police cannot seem to stop.
Capt. W.W. Gardner was held up and robbed of a small sum near the corner of Thirteenth and I streets last evening. He grappled with the robber, who was armed, but the fellow got away with the money; he was unable to secure his victim's watch. Mr. Gardner says his assailant was a young man of medium height, with a dark mustache, fairly well dressed and wearing a slouch hat. This is the first holdup that has been reported for some time, but there have been numerous burglaries of late, and the police seem unable to get any trace of the perpetrators of the outrages.
“He grappled with the robber, who was armed, but the fellow got away.”
Street robberies were chronicled as a kind of civic weather in 1895, with police unable to trace the culprits. The detail about a slouch hat and a wrestle for a watch turns a crime brief into a small human scene—and a reminder that urban safety and policing were live issues in Bellingham's lettered streets long before the modern city.
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