Arresting Attire

There’s a shrewdness in her eyes. And what about her mouth, with its barely up-turned corners, as if she’s just finished telling the photographer a joke and is waiting to see if he gets it. Her body language is relaxed, despite that high-collared, stiffly pleated shirtwaist she’s got on.

You might think this is a photo of someone’s feisty grandma, sitting on her front porch, taking in the breeze. Flip the picture over and you’d discover that it’s the kind of photo most people leave out of their family album. Because—you guessed it—the photo is a mugshot.

Her name was Selah Haley. She was arrested by Deputy Sheriff Wilcox in Bonner County, Idaho, on June 6, 1910. A resident of Spokane, Washington, she was 75 miles from home when she was nabbed. Thirty years old, she had a dark complexion, blue eyes, and short, dark hair.

Wait—short hair? Short hair was quite unusual for a woman of her era.

I did a scan of census and marriage records and found only one listing for “Selah Haley.” According to the 1910 U.S. Census, she was a housewife who was born in 1881 in Minnesota. She lived with her husband, “Andy Haley,” a 37-year-old steamfitter from Illinois, on South Washington Street in Spokane. They’d been married four years and had no children. They shared their home with a lodger—a female hotel keeper, named Emma Mosis or Moris. The census record of the household was made on May 3, 1910, about a month before Selah would be arrested in Idaho.

I searched historic newspapers for information about Andrew or Selah Haley. I found an intriguing article from a Spokane paper about an arrest in Sandpoint, Idaho in June 1910:

Nowadays people can wear pretty much what they want in public, as long as their naughty bits are well covered. Not so back in 1910. Selah was arrested because she was “wearing male attire.” She was charged with “disorderly conduct.”

According to the back of her mugshot, Selah was fined $40 and costs. It’s not clear why Andrew was arrested but he likely got that fine too. Since they had no money, they must have ended up spending some time in the Bonner County jail.

My guess is that the police in Bonner County found some women’s clothes and made Selah put them on. (The shirt she’s wearing is definitely a woman’s and it looks too large for her.) Allowing her to remain in her own clothing would have made for a more interesting and relevant photo, but apparently that idea was too threatening for the authorities.

Andrew Haley was also bit of a non-conformist, because he had been arrested in Spokane in 1909 for having “cigaret” papers in his possession. State officials had outlawed smoking, and even having “the makins,” as cigarette papers were called, was illegal in those days.

I found no other news articles or genealogical records for Selah Haley.

So many questions and so few answers. Was Selah a cross-dresser or was she simply a woman who was more comfortable in pants and a jacket on a trip far from home? The fact she had short hair makes me think she dressed in men’s clothing regularly. Did the Haleys travel to Idaho so Selah could cross-dress in a place where she was less likely to be recognized? Her facial scars make me wonder if she occasionally got into fights over the unconventional clothing she wore.

I was able to locate Andrew Haley on the 1930 federal census. By then he was back in Illinois, living in a Peoria rooming house and still working as a steamfitter. He was listed on that census as a widower. He died in 1946. Selah is not buried with him.