The Special Policeman's Dungeon: False Imprisonment at Union Station, 1213 COBJ, Pg. 75

AuthorFrank Gibbard

42 Colo.Law. 75

The Special Policeman's Dungeon: False Imprisonment at Union Station

Vol. 42, No. 12 [Page 75]

The Colorado Lawyer

December, 2013

Columns

Historical Perspectives

The Special Policeman’s Dungeon: False Imprisonment at Union Station

Frank Gibbard

About the Author

Frank Gibbard is a staff attorney with the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and Secretary of the Tenth Circuit Historical Society—(303) 844-5306, frank_gibbard@ca10.uscourts.gov. The views expressed are those of the author and not of the Tenth Circuit or its judges. The author is grateful for the assistance of the staff at the Denver Public Library Western History Collection. Readers are encouraged to contact Gibbard with topic suggestions or to volunteer to write Historical Perspectives articles. A collection of Historical Perspectives articles is available for purchase from CBA-CLE. Visit www.cobar.org/cle/pubs.cfm?ID=20166 for complete information.

Denver's central train depot, known as Union Station or Union Depot, opened in the summer of 1881. The grand edifice was finished in the Italian Romanesque style and featured a 180-foot clock tower illuminated with electric lights. At 503 feet long and 65 feet wide, it was said to be the largest structure in the Western United States.[1]

In November 1883, the Union Depot hosted a Thanksgiving feast in the building's upscale dining hall. The menu for that evening's meal fit the elegant surroundings. The embossed bill of fare offered a feast of the choicest meats. Diners could enjoy boiled Mackinaw trout, shoulder of mutton, corned beef and cabbage, sugar cured ham, beef sirloin with horseradish, beef ribs with browned potatoes, mountain pheasant with currant jelly, elk loin with apple butter, wild goose with dressing, and tame turkey with cranberry sauce. If a diner remained hungry after all that, there were plenty of other satisfying items on the menu, including oyster patties, Boston cream puffs, lamb croquettes, various vegetable dishes, and an assortment of pies, pudding, nuts, raisins, oranges, and cheese.[2]

Those enjoying the fine dining at the Depot that evening were probably unaware of the very different atmosphere one floor below them. In the station's basement was a small, dark, windowless holding cell, later described as the "dungeon under the depot." [3]Within weeks of the Thanksgiving feast, one man's incarceration there—and subsequent relocation to the fetid Denver City Jail— would lead to his successful damage suit for false imprisonment, and an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

Hacks and Busses, Hustle and Bustle

Union Depot was a busy place in 1883. The station had been constructed to handle traffic from four railroad lines: the Union Pacific; the Denver & Rio Grande Western; the Denver, South Park & Pacific; and the Colorado Central. By 1883, the Denver, South Park & Pacific alone had twenty-eight passenger coaches and ran four trains a day on its Leadville/Gunnison line.[4]

Passengers who arrived in Denver at all hours of the day and night often needed transportation from the station to their ultimate destination in the city. Two occupations soon emerged to fulfill this need: the transfer agent and the hackman. The transfer agents sold transfer tickets to passengers, entitling them to transportation once they reached the station. The hackmen were the equivalent of today's taxicab drivers, and were available for hire once passengers arrived at the station.

As time went by, transfer agents and hackmen found themselves at odds with one another. A major source of contention between the two groups involved licensing. The City of Denver had attempted to license the solicitation of railroad passengers at the station by drivers of "hacks" (cabs) and busses. "[T]here was an ordinance prohibiting persons from soliciting the carriage of passengers in hacks and busses, unless the solicitor was possessed of a license issued by the city."[5]

It was unclear, however, to what extent this licensing ordinance applied to the transfer agents. Transfer agents did not solicit passengers at the station. Instead, they rode the train with the passengers and sold them transfers on the train before it arrived. Once the train reached Denver, the transfer agents would show the transfer holders to their company's hack or bus. This angered the regular hack drivers, who contended that their competitors were engaging in a form of solicitation without a license. The transfer agents, of course, could respond that they did not actually solicit anyone at the Depot; therefore, they were not subject to the licensing requirement.

Enter Special Depot Policeman E.H. Rust

In the midst of this controversy, the hack drivers found a friend in E.H. Rust, the Depot's special policeman. If others thought the licensing ordinance ambiguous, Rust did not. He was ready, willing, and able to arrest transfer agents who "solicited" passengers without a solicitation license.

Rust was a product...

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