Embezzlement in the Evening Star, 1880 & 1900

The majority of the Star’s reporting of the crime of embezzlement is local, coming from within Washington D.C. It can be seen that the crime was so frequent that most of the news stories shared similar titles with occasionally a one- or two-word difference. Furthermore, these crimes were seen as standard in the area as demonstrated in the condensed locals and court records sections.

Unlike scholarly such as the work “Boodle over the Border: Embezzlement and the Crisis of International Mobility, 1880–1890” produced by Kathrine Unterman which depicts embezzlers being captured in different cities or countries, the Star only seemed to cover stories of embezzlers who had committed embezzlement in both the home city of D.C. and another location but never had mentions of an embezzler fleeing to another country such as the common theme of these criminals retreating to Canada. In only a couple of cases, the stories examined were men extradited to Washington D.C. for embezzlement charges by detectives. (Unterman, K. (2012). Boodle over the Border: Embezzlement and the Crisis of International Mobility, 1880–1890. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 11(2), 163-176.)  However, there was a visible struggle between different local governments over who would deliver the sentence on these alleged offenders in these cases.

The cases that were out of state came from all over the country and even one from Cuba in which an American national was embezzling money from Cubans (see article below). These cases all seem to follow one particular pattern in the type of embezzlement that the Star usually covered. One followed the theme of corrupt government officials stealing money from the government. With the other, petty scams and sales embezzlement, only covered locally.