by Logan Camporeale

Category: Stories (Page 2 of 3)

“Baby Face” Bobby Landis

-Bobby Landis killed a cop, an inmate, and attempted multiple prison escapes.

Bobby Landis was a scoundrel. Before he set foot in Spokane at sixteen years of age, he was an accomplished thief, who had shot and nearly killed a druggist. His crimes had earned him a fourteen month stay at a reformatory for young boys, and when released he violated the terms of his parole. This was just the prologue of Landis’ wrap sheet, once he arrived in the Inland Northwest he became an infamous criminal and an uncontrollable prisoner.

Detective Roy Fordyce, Image Courtesy of Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture

On November 13, 1929, Spokane Police Detectives witnessed two boys buying a handgun from a pawn shop on West Main Avenue. The detectives, Roy Fordyce and George Bradley, confronted the suspicious pair as they left the shop. The detectives questioned the boys and, after learning they were staying across the street at the dodgy Spokoma Hotel, asked to search their room. The boys agreed and the group headed up to the third floor of the building. It is unclear exactly what transpired after they entered the room, but moments later the unmistakable sound of gunshots poured from the hotel.

The Daily Tribune, 11/23/1929, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin

When the firing came to a stop, the boys were apprehended but both officers had been shot, and Detective Roy Fordyce lay dead on the floor. The suspects were arrested and one of the boys, “Baby Face” Bobby Landis, took responsibility for the murder and confessed to shooting his weapon first. After a dramatic trial, the jury convicted Landis of murder of a police officer. The young murderer was spared the death penalty, in part due to his age and his questionable mental stability, and he was sentenced to life in prison at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, Washington.

Landis took the life sentence in stride. Less than a year after he arrived, he made his first escape attempt. The convict made it over the first prison wall but he gave up when guards started shooting at him. Landis was not discouraged though. Eighteen months later, he sprinted across the yard and pole-vaulted over the west prison wall. This time he made it out, but he was recaptured later that day and returned to the prison. In another daring escape attempt, Landis, with a group of fellow inmates, hijacked a prison truck and led guards on a chase through downtown Walla Walla ending in a gunfight that left Landis wounded.

Before he faded from the public eye, Landis added one more dark line to his already extensive wrap sheet. He and another prisoner from Spokane County, Joe McWilliams, had been bumping heads. At some point, Landis had enough of McWilliams antics. One morning, while the two were in the exercise area together, Landis drew a handmade knife and stabbed McWilliams twice, once in the stomach and again in the chest. McWilliams spent the next three months in the prison hospital before succumbing to his wounds. He was not tried for the crime, but “Baby Face” Bobby Landis had killed again.

In just over three years at the penitentiary, Landis nearly escaped three times and killed a fellow inmate. But, despite his turbulent start, the convict settled in to prison life and never committed another major violation. Although he was handed a life sentence, after serving nearly twenty-two years Robert Landis was paroled from the penitentiary in 1951. “One of the prison’s all-time worst headaches had,” according to the Spokesman-Review, “mellowed and matured with manhood.”

This article was originally published in Nostalgia Magazine as part of my bi-monthly column “Heroes and Scoundrels.”

The Carl Maxey Bridge

This was a letter to the editor of the Spokesman-Review on March 8, 2018. The letter was published on March 20, 2018.

 

Spokane is building a bridge that connects East Central with the University District. The names under consideration range from uncreative to downright boring, so I would like to offer another suggestion: Carl Maxey Bridge.

In the first half of the 20th century, when blacks moved to Spokane, they were steered to East Central—the black neighborhood.

Carl Maxey

It was Carl Maxey, more than any other single person, who desegregated Spokane. Despite growing up in an orphanage, Maxey attended Gonzaga where he graduated with a law degree. As Spokane’s first black attorney, Maxey was eager to defend those impacted by racist policies and to challenge the structures that perpetrated them.

He took on the school district for refusing to hire black teachers, and he won. He took on barber shops that would not serve black customers, and he won. He took on important social clubs that denied blacks membership, and he won. He took on racist housing policies that had segregated Spokane, and he won.

The New York Times credited Maxey with “virtually singlehandedly desegregating much of the inland Northwest.” Although he did not work alone, this claim is hardly an overstatement.

The new bridge should be named Carl Maxey Bridge.

Thanksgiving in Spokane: A Tradition of Volunteerism

Volunteers will make 400 happy tomorrow

Tom’s Turkey Drive has been feeding Spokane’s less fortunate for the past seventeen Thanksgiving holidays. The food drive, a collaborative community effort, collected and distributed over 11,000 Thanksgiving meals in 2016. Countless business and individuals donated to the cause and over 7,000 volunteers gave their time. Participating in Tom’s Turkey Drive is a tradition for Spokanites, a tradition building on over 110 years of charity and volunteerism surrounding Turkey Day.  

Feeding the poor on Thanksgiving has been an annual tradition in Spokane since it’s early years. "The newsboys, messenger boys, poor women and children of the city, will eat turkey and cranberry sauce tomorrow,” The Spokane Press proclaimed in late November 1904. The Volunteers of America, a national organization with a Spokane chapter, took on the huge task of feeding the city’s needy. A large group of volunteers prepared endless stacks of meals, set tables and chairs in the banquet room of city hall, and fed nearly a thousand people a festive Thanksgiving dinner—and they did it every year.

Maud Booth, along with her husband, founded the Volunteers of America in 1896. The Spokane chapter, one of the first, opened that same year.

Much as it is today, the effort was a collaborative one. Local markets and stores donated meat, and the organizers encouraged community members to contribute. But not everyone was generous, and The Spokane Press, a worker’s newspaper, was critical of the greedy: “The cost of feeding 1000 poor will not exceed what one rich man of Spokane would expend in entertaining 50 of his friends at his house. Yet the rich man sits in his elegant home, bounteously provided for amid magnificent surroundings, and gives no thought to his less fortunate fellow man.”

Although the paper was critical of the overindulged, it also engaged in poor shaming. The paper referred to the poor as “street urchins,” a “hungry mob,” and the “lowliest walks of life.” The paper and it’s readership hated bosses and big business owners, but it also disdained folks surviving on the backs of donors.

The newspaper, however, is clear about its stance on those that volunteer:

"The Volunteers do it lovingly, cheerfully and without thanks in many cases. The busy world looks on, remarks it is a good thing, but lend no helping hand.
God Bless The Volunteers.
I wish that there were more of them.”


Let me take this opportunity to thank all of the wonderful volunteers with whom I have worked. You make the world a better place.





#GreatFire1889

Spokane Daily Chronicle Tent After Great Fire

A few weeks ago a local history buff shared a fun idea. He proposed to live-tweet Spokane’s Great Fire of 1889. It was a brilliant thought, but unfortunately it surfaced just three days before the 128th anniversary of the tragic event. Knowing that time was working against us, I reached out to some potential partners and called for a meeting the next day to brainstorm and to do the work of writing the tweets. Fortunately, quite a few folks were compelled by the idea and a handful of us convened in the archives reading room at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, where I work as the Volunteer Coordinator. Creating the tweets was a blast and it was exciting to see the project come together on such short notice, so exciting that my former professor and fellow historian blogged about it.

Despite our rushed timeline to make the event happen, it was wildly successful. Before any of the tweets were even published, the event was featured on the front page, above-the-fold, in our local newspaper. (It must be expensive to advertise on the front page of the paper, eh?) The event only got more successful, drawing increased engagement and interest over the next 48 hours. (Including an additional newspaper article prompted by a #GreatFire1889 tweet.)

From an observational point of view, the #GreatFire1889 Tweet event was the most engaging social media interaction the museum has ever done. The tweets drew over thirty replies with a variety of different responses.

Some tweeters shared additional historical knowledge that they had on the fire. Some tweeters asked questions hoping to clarify historical details. And my favorite tweeters took on the persona of an individual living in early Spokane, and responded as if they were experiencing the Great Fire live.

These replies show the level and type of engagement that the event encouraged. It is important to recognize that people were experiencing a deeper level of interaction with these tweets. 

They weren’t just tapping like or retweet, or asking what time the galleries open, they were thinking critically about this historic event. Live-tweeting historic events reminds us that, when given the opportunity, the community has input to add to important discussions about the past.

But, most marketing folks and social media managers are interested in the numbers—like how many engagements were made and how many new followers gained? I have done my best to capture that data and I am happy to share it, with the the hope that it will inspire more institutions to live-tweet historic events—not only because it is fun and engaging, but because it drives interest to your institution, current exhibit, or collections. Below is a brief rundown of some of the numbers, and here is a spreadsheet with the data that twitter makes available.

Twitter data for all tweets posted by @NorthwestMuseum in 72 hours from 8/4/2017-8/7/2017:

  • Total impressions:  98,449
  • Total engagements:  4,026
  • Total replies: 38
  • Total likes: 686
  • Total retweets: 275
  • Total museum profile clicks from a Great Fire tweet: 453
  • Total new followers: Approximately 150
    (Twitter does not allow you to query how many new followers over a certain date range, so this was for August 1-8, 2017.)

For comparison, here are the numbers for all 41 tweets the museum tweeted during the entire month of July, 2017:

  • Total impressions: 43,501
  • Total engagements: 1,207
  • Total replies: 12
  • Total likes: 296
  • Total retweets: 95
  • Total museum profile clicks from all tweets: 58
  • Total new followers: 30

The @NorthwestMuseum is planning to live-tweet some other historic events, and I will continue to make observations and collect data that I look forward to sharing with you in the future. Shoutout and a big thank you to Tom McArthur, Anna Harbine, Jaymee Donelson, Katie Enders, Larry Cebula, and John Webster.





Myrtle Tipton: “I Never Did Any Homework”

One hundred years ago, growing up on a farm in Eastern Washington was demanding, even for young children. Being the youngest of nine siblings was hard work, and Myrtle Tipton knew that. Since she could remember she had been working the land, doing the tasks often reserved for men — and doing them well. “I never did any homework, and don't know how. From the time I was old enough to do anything I did the work of a boy on the farm, driving the horses and doing the chores.”

Mughsot of Myrtle Tipton

Photo of Myrtle Tipton, Washington State Archives

In rural America young ladies were trained by their mother to care for the home — but not all girls were interested in housework (and not all homes had mothers). “I never cooked a meat in my life, but know lots more about horses, plows and farmwork,” Myrtle said. A life of hard labor on the windy Palouse left her preferring to dress in men’s clothes. “I like to wear men’s clothing, for it is more comfortable than dresses.” She explained her decisions with a smile — like confessing to a girlish prank — as if there was no social stigma reserved for girls who liked to dress as boys.

When she was sixteen years old — or maybe eighteen years old, the details are unclear, as is often the case with this sort of thing — she stole a team of three horses from a Coeur d’Alene Indian that employed her father. She made off with the horses and headed to the small town of St. John, Washington where she sold her plundered goods. She tried to maintain a low profile after the crime but authorities quickly caught up with her, and newspapers ran her name in the headlines.

“I read in the papers all about them looking for me, but I did not try to get away when the constable came after me: they had guns and handcuffs. They pulled the guns on me and tried to make me throw up my hands. I wouldn’t do it, and bluffed them both out.”

Her courageous display had little impact. Myrtle was arrested and placed in the Whitman County Jail while she awaited trial. She speculated her fate while she passed the time. “You can’t send me to the reform school; I’m too old for that. The only place you can send me is the penitentiary. Send me as quick as possible; I am lonesome in this old jail.”

Walla Walla Penitentiary circa 1900

Walla Walla Penitentiary circa 1900, Washington State Archives

She got her wish on November, 1905 when she was convicted of bringing stolen property into Washington State and was sentenced to two years in the Walla Walla State Penitentiary. After stealing from her father’s employer, he was not eager to defend her. But after six months in prison, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, one of the largest women’s organizations in the world, began advocating for Myrtle — using their political sway to demand a pardon from the governor.

The Temperance Union, along with churches in Walla Walla, drafted a petition arguing that Myrtle’s “bringing up consisted in being worked as a farm-hand without a mother’s training or a father’s proper counsel.” The petitioners alleged that she only stole the horses as a “means of getting away from a life of monotonous drudgery.” And that “a young girl has now as her daily companions women of the lowest type, hardened criminals, whose close association will result in her becoming an incorrigible and a woman of the streets.” The petition was circulated among parishioners and page after page of signatures were collected.

Signatures from Pardon

Signatures from Myrtle Tipton's Pardon Case File, Washington State Archives

The Temperance Union arranged for Myrtle to be placed in a school should she be pardoned, and they corresponded with the governor to assure him that they had a plan. The Good Shepherd School of Spokane “is not an Academy but a home where wayward girls are taught habits of virtue and industry to make them useful members of society, they only go to school part of the day, while the rest of the time they are taught plain and fine serving housework etc.” Myrtle sent a signed statement to the governor confirming that she would remain at the school for a full three years.

The governor denied Myrtle’s request for pardon and consequently she spent the next year in prison. While incarcerated she continued to dress in men’s clothes, on one occasion even fooling a guard to thinking that a man had snuck into the women’s ward. Her behavior was not bolstering her case for a pardon.

However, in June of 1907, after serving over three-quarters of her prison term, the governor extended a pardon to Myrtle. Instead of heading to the Home of the Good Shepherd as originally planned, she married a man nearly twice her age only three weeks after she was released from the penitentiary. Perhaps the marriage was a condition of the release, but whatever the case, after the marriage Myrtle's historical trail goes dim.

Cross-dressing, especially female to male, was rather common in the American West. But the reasons why an individual like Myrtle Tipton cross-dressed are often unclear. Maybe they cross-dressed to gain access to something generally reserved for men. Maybe they cross-dressed because men’s clothes were more comfortable for hard labor. Maybe they cross-dressed because at that moment they identified as male. Or maybe they cross-dressed because they liked how it felt to wear men’s clothes.

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For more about cross-dressing in the American West, take a look at Peter Boag’s Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past.

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