1904

DARING ESCAPES

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Catching criminals was often the easy part of law enforcement in 1904; hanging on to them proved trickier.

Convicts broke out of jail with astonishing regularity. Even at San Quentin, security was lax; in August, two men assigned to drive the garbage wagon from the prison to a nearby farm didn’t return, instead buying tickets for the train north. The fearless fugitives were last spotted in front of Von Tillow’s news stand in Santa Rosa, probably reading the latest about the rather indifferent pursuit by authorities. A few days later another convict followed (see below), also taking the train. And again, there seemed to be little surprise or upset — hey, after all, it’s only prison.

HAD HIS NERVE WITH HIM
Bert Short Boards Train at Prison Station Without Capture

City Marshal George Severson received a message at 8:15 Monday morning from warden Tompkins of San Quentin that Bert Short, an escaped convict, was northbound on the evening train. It developed later that the telegraph had been filed Sunday afternoon but had not been forwarded promptly.

On vestigation [sic] Marshal Severson found that the convict had boarded a train at Green Brae for Tiburon and on arrival at that latter place purchased a ticket for San Rafael and boarded the northbound evening train, where he took a seat on the left hand side, drew the curtain and made believe he was asleep while the run was being made to San Rafael. At this point he left the train and has not been heard of since.

The nerve of the convict astonishes the officers. He was not two miles from the prison where he escaped several days ago, at Green Brae, and not satisfied with that he doubled on his track and passed the place an hour later. Short is described as a man about 25 years of age, light complexioned and partially paralized [sic].

– Press Democrat, September 6, 1904

THE BICYCLE THIEF TURNS OUT TO BE A DESPERATE CRIMINAL
Man Who Stole Hulbert’s Wheel Broke Jail in San Jose and Is Under Sentence to Serve Five Years

MAKES DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE
At Healdsburg Sheriff Grace and City Marshal Parker Arrive In Time to Find Prisoner Sawing Down Last Bar

The man arrested in Healdsburg on Thursday, who stole a bicycle from H. E. Hulbert’s cyclery in Santa Rosa, as stated in yesterday morning’s Press Democrat, is J. Porter, alias Potter, one of the most desperate criminals, the officers say, in the state. Late Thursday evening the man’s identity was established and yesterday morning Deputy Sheriff Starrberg of Santa Clara county accompanied Sheriff Frank Grace to Healdsburg, and on the afternoon train went south with his prisoner.

Some weeks ago Porter, who plead guilty in the Superior Court in San Jose to a charge of highway robbery, and assault to murder, was sentenced to serve five years in the State’s prison at San Quentin. While awaiting transportation to the penitentiary, Porter sawed his way out of jail. He cut the iron bars of the cage in which he had been placed and left a note for the jailer saying in it among other things, that he was sorry that he had to leave in this manner, and imparting words of advice to the jailer to be a little more careful in his methods of searching prisoners. Although the country was scoured by officers Porter managed to elude them and got to Sonoma county.

Yesterday he tried to escape from the Healdsburg jail by the same route that he adopted in San Jose. When Constable Haigh arrested him on Thursday afternoon he searched him, as he thought very carefully, but somewhere about his person the convict had managed to secret his faithful saw. Shortly before train time yesterday afternoon Sheriff Grace and City Marshal Parker of Healdsburg strolled leisurely up to the jail. Deputy Sheriff Starrberg, having gone to get a vehicle to haul his prisoner to the depot. Their surprise can be imagined when they came upon the prisoner sawing away with all his might at the iron bars across the window in the room in which he had been placed. But one more obstructing bar remained to be sawed through. The others he had bent back and, as Sheriff Grace says, ten minutes more and he would have gained his liberty. Porter was in a fever of excitement when Grace and Parker came upon the scene. The perspiration was pouring and trickling down his face. When he saw that his plans had been foiled he told the officers that he wished they had stayed away for a few more minutes and then they would have had to catch him again.

[..]

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 3, 1904
ENCOUNTERED A DESPERATE MAN
Wm. Cameron Holds Up Sheriff Grace While Prisoner in Custody

William Cameron earned the distinction of being entitled a desperate man Wednesday morning, and that he is in jail on a charge of robery [sic] instead of murder is not due to the fate that failed to kill one or more of three men at whom he shot that morning.

Cameron shot twice at Sheriff Grace and then attempted to hold him up for $60 in gold which he had seen on the latter’s person and held the sheriff in subjection for many minutes at the point of a loaded rifle. William Murphy and John Underhill, two well known Santa Rosans, who had joined Sheriff Grace in an attempt to capture Cameron and a companion, were shot at, Cameron evincing a desire to exterminate all who participated in his capture. He finally surrendered when Murphy shot at him, believing that he had no more ammunition with which to carry on the encounter.

Cameron and a boy named Cormen, each of whom is about seventeen years of age, held up and robbed William Holtman at the Sportsman’s Headquarters saloon near Melitia Tuesday evening. On the morning train Wednesday Sheriff Grace went south in expectation that the youths would board the train to escape from the county. His expectations were realized, and at Kenwood both men attempted to board the train and were placed under arrest. On their persons was found a gold watch, two rifles and a quantity of money stolen from the saloon man.

In order to have Holtman identify the men arrested Sheriff Grace hired a team and drove with them to the saloon en route to this city. At that place Holtman identified the men without being questioned.

Between the saloon and the old Captain Grosse place Corman pleaded to be permitted to leave the vehicle in which they were riding momentarily and when this privilege was granted him he started to run away. Sheriff Grace ordered him to halt, but the prisoner answered by running. The officer drew his pistol and fired two shots in the air, at the same time leaping from the vehicle in pursuit. The second prisoner was left in charge of the driver of the vehicle , and he picked up one of the guns taken from him when he was captured and throwing in some shells started in pursuit of the sheriff. When the officer clambered up on the bank of Santa Rosa creek he was confronted by Cameron with a rifle. The sheriff did not believe the weapon was loaded as he had taken all the cartridges found on the prisoner and had them in his possession. Subsequent events disabused his mind in this respect, as the prisoner shot at him twice to persuade him to use more caution.

When the demand was made on the sheriff by the prisoner for money, the officer came near complying forthwith. He began to argue with the prisoner, and finally compromised by giving the latter $1.25, which he threw on the ground for the prisoner to pick up. The prisoner later demanded that the sheriff give up his revolver, but he was dissuaded from carrying out this request. All this time the official was being confronted with the rifle in the hands of the prisoner, and was himself held under subjection.

Finally the prisoner walked rapidly up the road, and when Murphy began pumping lead at him decided to surrender. He was brought to this city and lodged in jail without further trouble.

The escape of the men shot at from serious injury is due to poor marksmanship of the prisoner, as he readily admitted he intended to kill them. In leaving the wagon where he was a prisoner he swore to kill the sheriff, believing the latter had shot his companion. The experience is a new one to Sheriff Grace, that of being made prisoner by a man under arrest.

– Santa Rosa Republican, November 9, 1904

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WOMEN OBSERVED VOTING

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

A poignant reminder that rights are hard won, and history is never a sequence of inevitable events. Suffragists had been trying to gain rights in the U.S. for over a quarter century, yet had scored wins in only four states by 1904. Miss Elaine Davis, who thought the sight of women voting so novel, would have to wait eight more years before she could cast her own vote for a president in California; women in most other states would wait 16 years until the Nineteenth Amendment was finally passed in 1920.

SAW THE WOMEN CAST THEIR VOTES
MISS ELAINE DAVIS WITNESSED SPECTACLE THAT WAS A DECIDED NOVELTY TO HER
Was in Boise City on Election Day And Heard Members of the Fair Sex Discuss Politics

Miss Elaine Davis of this city, who is on her way east for an extended tour, happened in Boise, Idaho, on election day and was the guest of a friend of the Davis family, who is vice president of the Republican State Central Committee. She saw women go to the polls and vote with as much interest as the men. It was a novel sight for Miss Davis, and she was amused to hear women debating political issues among themselves. Everything passed off quietly and orderly at the polls, and the lady voters were accorded the respect due their sex.

[…]

– Press Democrat, November 15, 1904

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THE 1904 ELECTIONS

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

All that you need to know about the 1904 presidential election: Teddy Roosevelt beat the knickers off someone you’ve never heard of.

As boring and predictable as the race was nationally, it was political mortal combat in the trenches of the highly-partisan Santa Rosa newspapers. The battle began quietly enough, with each editor sniping at the presidential nominee on the opposing side. Then salvos were fired against the other party’s candidate for Congress, first raising questions about the man’s capabilities, then attacking his character and even manhood. And finally it became take-no-prisoners warfare against everyone on the opposing side, especially the editor of the other paper. By early November, it wouldn’t have been surprising to come across Press Democrat editor Finley and Republican editor Lemmon slugging away on Fourth street.

Nothing needs to be said here about Teddy Roosevelt, except that Mr. Fairbanks, named in some of the posts below, was his veep. Heading the Democratic ticket was the forgettable and dolorous duo of Judge Alton B. Parker and 80 year-old Henry G. Davis. Parker was the 3rd (or 4th) pick for a compromise candidate, nominated only because party superstar William Jennings Bryan didn’t want to make a third consecutive run, and because conservative Democrats loathed candidate William Randolph Hearst, who they viewed as a playboy with populist leanings. Octogenarian Davis was given the nod because everyone thought the wealthy industrialist would gratefully pay for the campaign (he didn’t). In the end, the Parker/Davis ticket was a 19th century throwback in a year when Americans were focused upon the promise of twentieth century progress. They ended up carrying only the 17 states of the old Confederacy, save Missouri.

The surprise in reading the local election year news was that racial discrimination was so often an underlying theme, starting with the Press Democrat’s editorial shock over an African-American child appearing onstage at the Republican Convention, warning it was a portent of dreaded racial equality. But officially, race was a non-issue for Democrats in 1904. The national party platform didn’t mention race at all, except to condemn Republican “race agitation” as a threat that could reopen wounds “now happily healed.” As such, it wasn’t a plank as much as it was a talking point to bash Republicans. (The Republican National Committee would produce a historically valuable “campaign textbook” in 1908 to counter such attacks.)

One reason that Democrats stayed clear of race issues that year was probably Bryan’s decision not to run. In each previous election campaign he had courted African-American support, arguing that Republicans had only given them “janitorships” in exchange for their vote. What Democrats offered was only Jim Crow discrimination, of course, and Bryan didn’t seem to understand that Blacks disliked being second-class citizens. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing Bryan didn’t understand.

The election of 1904 continues in four parts.

THE RACE ISSUE

The South is enthusiastic for Judge Parker and would be so if there were but one issue in the campaign. To them the all-absorbing and overpowering issue is the negro question and they are anxious for the defeat of Roosevelt on account of that issue, if for no other reason. A recent communication to the Washington Post by a negro named Henry B. Baker serves to accentuate the negro issue more than anything that has lately appeared. In that communication, he calls attention to the difference between the Republican and the Democratic National Conventions. He says that at the Republican Convention the colored man was treated as a companion, friend, and brother, that there he was made to feel as though he were not only a political but social equal; that the delegates followed the advice and example of President Roosevelt, who teaches that the colored man deserves to be treated as a social equal. He says that to emphasize this fact, he had the courage to have at his table, Prof. Booker T. Washington, and that, if Roosevelt is elected, it will so encourage the negro men that they will demand that Booker Washington shall be the Republican candidate for Vice-President in 1908. He calls attention to the scene in the Republican Convention, when a beautiful white girl was placed upon the stage and by her side a negro boy, and that they led the cheering, thus making an example of President Roosevelt’s idea of the equality of the races. He then points out that the Democratic Convention was a white man’s convention, of a white man’s party, and that in it, there was not a single negro man. Talk like that will do more to make the race question one of the leading issues of this campaign than anything else that could be suggested. There are many doubtful states in the North that will give to the Democrats sufficient Republican votes upon the negro question alone to send them into the Democratic column.

– Press Democrat, August 10, 1904

MORE on the election of 1904
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