100 years ago in Spokane: Two juvenile delinquents, out of custody and on the lam

Two girl delinquents, 14 and 15, escaped from the county juvenile detention rooms using a “clever ruse” on the housekeeper.

The girls had apparently talked the housekeeper into opening a window, ordinarily padlocked, to allow in some fresh air. Then they accompanied the housekeeper through the dark hallway. One of them dropped to the side and allowed the housekeeper to pass by up the stairs. Then the girls “quickly slipped through the window leading out of parlor.”

They were gone only a few minutes before their absence was noted, but it was long enough. A “search of the city was made without success,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle. The girls were still at large as of the next afternoon.

The girls had only been in the detention rooms for a few days. One had been brought in from a local hotel, “where she was passing as a married woman.”

The other was being held because her father could no longer manage her.

They both came from Spokane families, and their “parents are as anxious to have them apprehended as we are,” said the chief probation officer.

“It is my belief that confederates are hiding them until they can leave the city,” said the probation officer.

The Chronicle said that the girls were “clad only in uniform aprons,” whatever that meant.

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(From the Associated Press)

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