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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