100 years ago in Spokane: Police finally apprehended a notorious swindler after a crime streak across the Midwest

Dan J. Morrissey, “bank swindler deluxe,” may have thought he was home free when he leapt from a speeding train and escaped to North Dakota.

Yet he could not resist the urge to swindle banks, and police finally tracked him down in Seattle. Among his victims were the Exchange Bank in Spokane and a bank in St. Maries.

Morrissey was no ordinary bad-check writer. Police said he carried with him a “complete printing outfit, in which he was able to alter safety paper to make it as good as originally.” One of his many tricks was to purchase a $500 letter of credit at a bank, and then alter the paper to turn it into a $1,500 letter of credit.

A year earlier, local detectives with the Burns Agency had tracked him down in Minnesota and apprehended him when he went into a bank to purchase a letter of credit. Montana authorities were escorting him back to stand trial when he outwitted his handler and jumped from the train.

Detectives spent a year on his trail and finally caught up with him. Now, he was being escorted back to Butte to stand trial – this time, presumably, in shackles.

From the strike beat: 1,600 railway shop workers in Spokane were holding firm and refusing to return to work despite increasing pressure from the railroad management. Union officials noted “no desertions.”

Two of Spokane’s four main railroads were recruiting nonunion workers to replace the strikers. Nationally, the railroad companies were determined to break the strike. The general manager of the Union Pacific issued an ultimatum demanding that strikers return to work by the weekend.

Meanwhile, the companies were determined to keep the trains running.

“We have all the men we need on this division to maintain adequate service,” one Spokane railway official said. “We can run for an indefinite time.”