100 years ago in Spokane: Police accuse pastor’s daughter of ‘leading a double life’

From our archives, 100 years ago

Police arrested a “pretty girl” named Martha “Bobbie” Tonjes at the St. Clair Hotel and accused her of “leading a double life.”

By day, Martha was a diligent student at the Northwestern Business College. By night, she was “entertaining young men students” from the college and numerous prominent businessmen.

A police captain called her story “almost unbelievable.” He said she admitted that she had made “acquaintance” with many Spokane businessmen and that the money she earned in that way “went toward her education.” She told officers she was the daughter of a Lutheran pastor in Lenburg, Ill.

The officers reported that “she was paying $6 a week for her room, had a private telephone and was wearing costly dresses and jewelry,” all of which they apparently found suspicious.

The police captain did not buy her story about her educational aspirations. He believed “her student activities were but a dodge to get acquainted with young men students.”

Martha was arrested on vagrancy charges – a common charge for those suspected of prostitution – and held on $250 bail.

From the police beat: Numerous citizens, including Mayor Charles Fleming, were upset at what the mayor called “the most inexcusable blunder that has occurred in the police department” during his tenure.

They were upset over an incident a week earlier in which two undercover officers waited in the shadows of a building to catch a streetcar bandit. Instead of catching him, they let the bandit get away and take two streetcar men with him as human shields.

The officers said they held their fire for fear of shooting the streetcar men. The streetcar men disputed that and accused the officers of blowing their chance of arresting the bandit.