powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday July 7, 1907
Boise, Idaho – Gunthugs Siringo & Meldrum Attend Trial
From the Appeal to Reason of June 29, 1907:
GUN-FIGHTERS IN BOISE.
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The following Associated Press dispatch, printed in the Kansas City Times, will give our readers a pen picture of the sort of witnesses summoned by the Gooding-McPartland gang to testify against Haywood:
Boise, Ida., June 20.-Charles A. Siringo and “Bob” Meldrum, who are in daily attendance at the Haywood trial, are notoriously handy with their revolvers. Meldrum has “five notches” in his gun; but the number of men who have fallen before Siringo’s unerring aim is not definitely known.
Siringo acts as body guard for the detective, James McPartland. He has served the Pinkerton agency twenty-one years, and one of his first assignments was to “shadow” certain lawyers in connection with the trial of the Chicago anarchists. Siringo has operated extensively against cattle rustlers, and at the time of the Coeur d’Alene strike he was recording secretary of the Gem Miners’ union, of which at the time George A. Pettibone was financial secretary. Siringo’s record became known and he escaped by cutting a hole in a floor and crawling under a wooden sidewalk for 200 yards.
Meldrum is now a deputy sheriff at Telluride. Colo., and is here as a witness. Originally he was a cowboy and was employed by cattle men to fight the rustlers. In several strikes he has served the mine owners in various capacities, and he is reputed to be one of the handiest men in the country with a revolver.
Another dispatch relates how Meldrum and his partner undertook to start a riot. The attempt was such a bunglesome job that the Boise police collared the bad men, and fined them $100 and $50 respectively. The fines were paid by the Pinkerton Agency.
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[Photographs added.]
From the Appeal to Reason of July 6, 1907:
Siringo on the War Path.
A sensation was sprung by Siringo, McPartland’s private bodyguard, who took umbrage at a newspaper man for having purloined a photograph showing him with a cocked revolver in his right hand, while in his left rested a sword cane.
The photograph was taken from the counter in the office of a local photograph gallery, and is an excellent likeness of the famous thug.
Siringo, at last accounts was still hunting the newspaper writer, and there might be interesting developments should the two meet.
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[Photographs added.]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-June 29, 1907
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586897/
-July 6, 1907
(Taken from article: “Orchard’s Lies Demolished” which begins on page 1,
authored by George H. Shoaf, staff correspondent for the Appeal.)
https://www.newspapers.com/image/67586902/
IMAGES
HMP, Gunthugs Siringo & Meldrum, SLTb, June 18, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045396/1907-06-18/ed-1/seq-1/
HMP, Gunthug Siringo w Walking Stick, Wilshires July 1907
Note: information re throwing knife is from Lukas, see below.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858037309105;view=2up;seq=168;size=200
HMP, Gunthug Siringo, SF Call, June 21, 1907
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85066387/1907-06-21/ed-1/seq-1/
HMP, Gunthug Siringo, wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Siringo
See also:
For more on Pinkertons in Boise trailing Socialists and defendants’ family members
(even Haywood’s youngest daughter, Henrietta), see:
Wilshire’s
(New York, New York)
-July 1907
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858037309105;view=2up;seq=162;size=150
“How Socialists Fare at Boise” by Margherita Arlina Hamm
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?q1=hamm;id=iau.31858037309105;view=image;seq=176;start=1;sz=10;page=root;num=104;size=150
Note: Not-so-veiled threat made by Siringo towards “Wilshire man” is at bottom of her article. This man is most likely John R. McMahon, Hamm’s husband. His article appears in the same edition of Wilshire’s.
“Haywood’s Trial A Historic Landmark” by John R. McMahon
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858037309105;view=2up;seq=168;size=200
See also same issue: “Heroines of the Haywood Trial” by Hamm
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858037309105;view=2up;seq=172;size=150
Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town
Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
-by J. Anthony Lukas
Simon and Schuster, Jul 17, 2012
(Photo section follows page 224; photo #34 describes the
throwing knife concealed in the walking stick.)
(Search with: wilshire’s; hamm; mcmahon)
Page 661 states Hamm and McMahon were husband-and-wife team.
https://books.google.com/books?id=d07IME-ezzQC
“Bad Man” and/or “Hair Trigger” Bob Meldrum
http://steunenberg.blogspot.com/2008/02/bad-man-and-hair-trigger-bob-meldrum.html