This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
If the jurors who showed up for the May 1865 session of the Rock Island Circuit Court expected a juicy trial or two, they were in for a disappointment. The grand jury had handed down only 14 indictments, and of these, six were for violation of Rock Island's liquor ordinance, three were for minor thefts, three for assaults, and one for miscellaneous mischief.
And what happens to a jury with too much time on its hands? Listen.
One indictment did show some promise: that of Mary Monahan and Lena Schneider, alias Magdalena Rabbler, who had baked a saw inside a custard pie and sent it in to a prisoner in the county jail.
Most of the cases never came to trial at all. George Ewing pled guilty to stealing $11.00 from Mrs. Badham. Richard Thorn pled guilty to stealing a pair of shoes from the Johnson Shoe Store. George Simmons skipped town for parts unknown and forfeited his $400 bail.
The cases that did come to trial came and went rapidly. The jury awarded Louis Gradke $175 from Christian Metch for trespassing. Doc Evans was given two years in the penitentiary for breaking in to the Devoe and Crampton Store. George Brace was convicted of stealing a watch from a soldier, but the judge set the price of the watch low enough to keep George out of the penitentiary. He was sent to the Rock Island jail for 30 days.
Then, up came the case of the two girls and the custard pie.
The Rock Island state's attorney read the indictment against the girls, who had apparently read too many melodramas. The pie never made it past the jailor, who had discovered the saw. The saw and the pie pan were there as evidence. Mary Monahan pled guilty. Lena Schneider was a harder case. Not guilty, she said.
And she was right. The prosecuting attorney's indictment was faulty, said the jury after much deliberation. That document accused the girls of committing a crime. They had not done so. The pie had never reached the prisoner, which would have been criminal. The jury had no choice but to acquit, and the judge agreed, throwing out Mary Monahan's confession as well.
It was no crime to send a pie to a jailor. It was a misdemeanor at best, and that only because of the bad crust.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by the Scott County Regional Authority, with additional funding from the Illinois Arts Council and Augustana College, Rock Island.
