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Offbeat Oregon History Podcast:
A short daily reading from the archives of the Offbeat Oregon History newspaper column, featuring true Oregon stories hardly anyone knows — stories of heroes and rascals, of shipwrecks and lost gold, of shanghaied sailors and Skid Road bordellos and pirates and robbers and buried treasure.
Fixing the Police
PAGE 92:
A political cartoon from The West Shore magazine in 1889, criticizing the police. (Image: The West Shore)
PAGE 93:
A downtown Portland street from just a few years after the town was founded, in 1851. Note the stump in the foreground. (Image: Oregon State University Archives)
AUDIO:
The Danford Balch murder case: This image links to a podcast from Doug Kenck-Crispin and Andy Lindberg's "Kick Ass Oregon History" series, in which they tell the story of the crime, arrest, escape, re-arrest and punishment of Portland's first convicted murderer. This was the case that would end James Lappeus's career as Portland police chief, after rumors resurfaced that he'd offered to let Balch escape from jail for a $1,000 bribe.
PAGE 96:
Prisoners line up for coffee and breakfast in the city jailhouse, in 1889; Samuel B. Parrish was police chief at this time, and there's a rumor that he actually shanghaied a prisoner or two out of the city jail while he was in office. If true (and it most likely isn't), this would have been the facility from which the unlucky soon-to-be-seamen were abducted.
Most of the men shown here are probably in jail for drunkenness or vagrancy. (Image: The West Shore)
AUDIO:
The Portland Police in Chinatown: This image links to a podcast from Doug Kenck-Crispin and Andy Lindberg's "Kick Ass Oregon History" series, the fourth and final one on Chinatown, in which the two public historians look at the role the cops played in Chinatown, in trying to keep a lid on the gambling, prostitution, opium smoking and occasional "Tong" (Chinese gang) killings.
