alcohol

DON’T CLOBBER THAT COP

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, particularly when a skulker tries to conk him with a bottle, or a pair of drunks engage in tag-team wrestling with the officer to prevent themselves from being dragged off to the pokey. And then there was the young chicken rancher who required four strong men to restrain him, crazed from his addiction to “fifty cigarettes a day, smoking day and night, with a little morphine thrown in.”

OFFICE HAD SOME TROUBLE
Officer Yeager Arrests Obstreperous Prisoners

Monday night was a night of fights for Officer N. G. Yeager. Every person he attempted to arrest put up a stiff fight and he was compelled to use force to land them in the jail, where they became sadder and wiser people.

The first fight occurred when Officer Yeager attempted to arrest Stella Dixon, a woman of the under world. She had been drinking and was roaming about aimlessly. When the officer took her into custody her friend, Jim Campion, attempted to prevent her being arrested. He took a strenuous hand in the affair and as a result he was placed under arrest also, charged with drunkenness. Officer Yeager was game, but he had the time of his life landing his prisoners, because both offered such stubborn resistance. The Dixon woman came here on a hop picking special during the summer and has since remained.

Later in the night Officer Yeager undertook to arrest George Woods, who was on a rampage from drink. Woods, who is considered somewhat of a scrapper, put up a fight the minute Yeager undertook to arrest him. It was a merry time the officer had in attempting to get the handcuffs on the prisoner. He finally landed his man, however. The patrol wagon was needed for the Dixon-Campion pair.

Officer Yeager believes it was the dampness of the weather that caused the fighting spirit to be aroused in these persons.

– Santa Rosa Republican, December 10, 1907

FOUGHT WILDLY TO MAKE ESCAPE
Fifty Cigarettes Daily and Morphine Part of Diet That Drove Henry Anderson Insane

In lucid moments, after he had almost torn his cell in the county jail to pieces and made his escape by wrenching boards and tin from the walls. Henry Concord Anderson, a young chicken rancher from down Sonoma way, told a Press Democrat reporter that fifty cigarettes a day, smoking day and night, with a little morphine thrown in, were responsible for his condition.

Anderson for a time on Wednesday was one of the most wildly insane men that has ever occupied the padded cell in the grim building on Third street. It took Sheriff Smith and Deputies McIntosh, Reynolds and La Point to handle him, and finally strap him hand and foot to a stretcher. Then he became tranquil for a time. In order to secure him without using much force a little strategy was used. He was induced to thrust his hand through the peephole in the door and did so, and then the wicket was opened and the straps were put on him. Judge Denny and the Lunacy Commission convened at the county jail in the afternoon and Anderson was adjudged a fit subject for the asylum at Ukiah.

– Press Democrat, May 2, 1907
ASSAULTED IN THE DARKNESS
Coward Under Cover Hurls Bottles at Policeman Who is Patrolling a Tenderloin Beat at Night

Shortly after nine o’clock on Wednesday night a dastardly attempted assault was made upon Police Officer P. L. Wilson while he was patrolling his beat on First street, between D and E streets. Four beer bottles were hurled with considerable force at him by unknown cowards hiding in the darkness. Two of the bottles fell at his feet and smashed. One of them almost grazed his helmet. If it had hit him on the head the chances are it would have killed him.

The officer was walking along the center of the street. The first he knew that something was happening was when one of the missiles whizzed by his head. The next moment a bottle smashed at his feet and the splinters of glass showered over him. Two more bottles were thrown. He pulled his gun and speaking in the direction from which the bottles were thrown, said: “Whoever you are you can’t run fast enough for me.” There was no move. If there had been the officer was ready. An investigation was immediately made, but the bottle thrower were not to be found, undoubtedly having sneaked away down the creek bank under shelter of the darkness. The officer has two of the empty bottles that were not broken and the necks of the two that were broken.

The bottles were not hurled at Policeman Wilson in jest. He says they were thrown with too much vehemence for that. The aim was deliberate. The bottles were not thrown from any house. The throwers were in hiding near a big tree. The policeman has no idea as to their identity. Inquiry was made at houses on the street, and the people denied that they kept the brand of beer the labels indicated.

– Press Democrat, September 12, 1907

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THE EDITOR’S DRUNKEN MUSE

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Press Democrat editor Ernest Finley loved drunks, and if the tippler was also a hobo, so much the better.

Finley could write prose worthy of Mark Twain when the spirit moved him, and could sketch a memorable little portrait from just a routine court appearance (while likely inventing all the dialog in the scene). But Finley’s favorite muse was “Tennessee Bill,” a hobo with a window-rattling yell who also had a penchant for tearing off his clothes and setting fire to them. More of Finley’s poetics over the skunk-drunk can be found in the 1906 papers.

WAS WELL OFF BUT FORGOT

“Look here, Judge,” You let me go this time and I promise you I will not take a single drink. If I do and am brought before you again, you just give me the limit, six months, and I will not blame anybody but myself.”

So said Joe Fenton, an old offender to Judge Bagley on Tuesday morning shortly after his release from jail, where he had been doing time for over indulgence in liquor, when he was again presented before the magistrate.

“Very well,” said the magistrate. “Now, remember, you have made a bargain.”

Wednesday morning Fenton was picked up again, drunk and incapable. He was hauled before the police judge again, having been brought to court in the patrol wagon. Asked to explain the why and the wherefore, he said:

“Judge, I just took one drink.”

“That’s one more than you said you would. You told me to give you the limit. But sixty days.”

“All right sir.”

And Joe was taken over once more.

– Press Democrat, September 5, 1907
OLD JOKE THAT DID NOT WORK
“Tennessee Bill” Jailed in a Northern Calaboose, Burns His Clothes–Widely Known Specimen of Genus Hobo

William Cornelius Tennessee Goforth, familiarly known to all the officers of California from San Diego to Siskiyou and from the Sierras to the sea as “Tennessee Bill,” will probably drop into town in a day or two.

This noted specie of the genus hobo has been spending a few days of enforced retirement in the jail at Ukiah. The other day the people of that quiet Mendocino town were terrified by a series of most ungodly yells, and when the town marshal and the available police force investigated they found that the possessor of the powerful lung blast was none other than “Tennessee Bill.”

Bill was quickly gathered in and when taken before the magistrate was given a term in jail. It was necessary to prescribe a bath for Bill at Bastille soon after his arrival there. Then he tried on the same old joke he worked when he was last a guest at the county jail on Third street in this city. He watched an opportunity while the bath was being prepared and shoved all the old clothes he was wearing through the [illegible microfilm] as the flames preyed upon them. He reckoned without a realization that two can play a joke. Consequently instead of being passed out a brand new suit of overalls he was ordered at the conclusion of his ablutions to proceed to his cell and remain there wrapped in the folds of a blanket. Bill had to submit with all the grace he could commit under the circumstances in the long run, however he will win only when he is liberated he will get the clothes all right.

– Press Democrat, September 7, 1907
BUSY DAY IN THE POLICE CIRCLES
Hop Pickers Indulge Too Freely– “Tennessee Bill” Once More an Inhabitant of County Jail

There was something doing in police circles yesterday afternoon and Fourth street was kept alive with the jingle of the bell of the patrol wagon.

Half a dozen men, from the hop yards, celebrating the fact that they had been paid off, took a little too much hop brew aboard, and were overcome. Three of them required the assistance of the patrol wagon to reach a cool spot in the police station. Three of them were walked there. Police Officer Lindley was the arresting officer in each case.

Some time during the afternoon there was a lusty use of lung power and in response Constable Sam Gilliam hurried to Third street. Some how or other, the shouts seemed sort of familiar to the officer. It was none other than William Cornelius Tennessee Goforth, more familiarly known as “Tennessee Bill.” Bill went over to the county jail for fifteen days and thanked Justice Atchinson for the rest given. Bill finds the jails throughout the state the best homes he knows. He has been there often enough.

– Press Democrat, September 21, 1907

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THE CRIME IS THE SWEARING, NOT THE STARVING

Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

The old Santa Rosa papers apparently reported every incident of juvenile crime on the police blotter (and 1907 was a banner year for our hometown hoodlums), but articles about domestic abuse were few, and rarer still were accounts of child neglect. For both newspapers to write about the tragic Cline family was unprecedented.

Although the four little Clines were allegedly reduced to begging for food, it’s interesting that the most serious charge made against the parents was using “profane and vulgar language in the presence of children.” And given the seriousness of the neglect, it’s absolutely amazing that the court released the parents on just thirty days probation.

UNKIND PARENTS REBUKED

Officers Boyes and Lindley were called to Madison street Wednesday night to quell a family disturbance. They found a man and woman drunk, with several children, living in filth and poverty seldom seen in this city. There was nothing but bread and wine on the table for supper and the neighbors declare that the children have had to beg food to keep from starvation. Both husband and wife were using the coarsest and most vulgar language toward one another in the presence of the young children. The man was given a stern rebuke and warning that unless he provided for the children and maintained a more respectable place both he and his wife would be locked up as common vagrants.

– Press Democrat, June 13, 1907
MOTHER IS UNDER ARREST
She And Husband Used Too Much Intoxicants

Mrs. Frances Cline was arrested by Officer John M. Boyes and Deputy Sheriff Don McIntosh Friday afternoon. She and her husband are jointly charged with being drunk and using profane and vulgar language in the presence of children under their control. The husband was not captured and the woman and her daughter made an ineffectual attempt to hide from the officers.

The parents were given a warning by the police several nights since, when they were carousing and there was nothing for their four children to eat except dry bread, while an abundance of wine was being consumed by the parents. The neighbors complain bitterly of the treatment accorded the children. The family live down on Boyce street.

When the officers called Friday they were not given admission, and Officer Boyes finally crawled in through a window and then admitted McIntosh. A search of the premises failed to reveal them until McIntosh struck a match and looked beneath a rude bed standing on boxes. There he saw a piece of a calico wrapper and called Boyes’ attention to the same. Boyes took hold of the woman and shook her, commanding her to come from beneath the bed, which she did. Following her was her daughter, who was taken in charge by a neighbor, while the mother was carted off to jail in the patrol wagon. The woman shed bitter tears en route to the jail and after her arrival there. She showed she had been imbibing. When the husband is taken into custody the pair will be given a hearing before Justice A. J. Atchinson.

– Santa Rosa Republican, June 21, 1907
PARENTS ARE GIVEN LIBERTY
Pleas Of Children Save Them From The Jail

Mr. and Mrs. Cline, who reside in the northwestern portion of the city. and who were arrested Friday for neglecting their children and using profane language in their presence, entered please of guilty to the charge before Justice Atchinson. The pleas of the children saved the parents from incarceration and the sentence was suspended for thirty days and they were permitted to go on probation.

– Santa Rosa Republican, June 22, 1907

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