Two Convicted for Sodomy, One Escapes

I'm rooting for the lad

Were they a couple? That’s one of the questions that is simply unanswerable about two young men who were charged and convicted of sodomy in Washington State in 1910. An October 26 article in the Yakima Herald refers to them as “lads,” and on November 2, the Herald supplies that one of the two, James Nichol, was twenty-one. Unfortunately, even with the biographical detail the Herald supplied, I haven’t been able to make any certain identification of the two.

The name of the other man is given as James S. Ryan, and Washington had an ample supply of men of that name, most of them of about 20 years of age. I was able to find 11 men over the age 17 and under the age of 30 in the 1910 Census. Some were married, most were single. The one James Ryan in Yakima County in 1910 has the improbable origin of “Greece,” as does everyone else in his railroad crew, a few of whom do have Greek surnames. I’ve also checked the 1920 Census to see if any of them vanish from the record, but it wasn’t all that helpful. No Greek Ryans in Yakima in 1920.

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