Gambling Debt and Ceiling Signals
A high-stakes poker cheat gets caught when his victim shoots through the floor.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In 1864-5 there were numerous places where the tenderfoot was beguiled and robbed of his all. The most notorious place was the room run by Bill and Hy Ford. They didn't run anything but poker rooms, but many a poor devil with a taste for the game was enticed in there and robbed. Jerry Lewis was a gambler who had his cappers around town gathering up the unwary. Jerry had a system: he had his confederate stationed in the loft immediately above the table. There was a small hole in the ceiling, where the fellow could see the sucker's hand, and an ingenious system of wires arranged by which signals could be given to Jerry’s foot through a hole in the floor. A Southerner named Reid lost $40,000, but suspected cheating. He sat down for another game, and when he got a full hand, he drew a revolver and laid it on the table. He told Jerry, 'If everything is square, you won't object to my shooting through the ceiling.' He fired his pistol and a fall was heard in the next room. Reid forced Jerry to hand back every cent he had won.
“There was a small hole in the ceiling, where the fellow could see the sucker's hand, and an ingenious system of wires arranged, by which signals could be given.”
This account of frontier-era 'card sharps' highlights the lawless, hyper-competitive atmosphere of early Seattle, where fortunes were often won through elaborate street theater and exploitation. It serves as a reminder that the city's 'boom' era was as much defined by high-stakes grift as by legitimate industry.
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