The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1912-11-12
WITH A SMILE AND A GUN
THE ONLY WOMAN WHO is A
UNITED STATES MARSHAL.
Has Carried More Than a Thousand
to Serve Sentence, and Not One
Has Ever Escaped.

10 serve sentence, anu NOU One
Has Ever Escaped.
There is one woman, and only one,
who works for Uncle Sam in the
capacity of custodian of desperate
criminals. She wears pistol and
carries handouts in her satchel. Her
look quails the most desperate OF
her charges and no prisoner has ever
escaped her.
She is Miss Rose B. Wilson and she
ranks as United States deputy mar
shall. Her business is to transport
female prisoners from the district
jail at Washington to the government
workhouse in Virginia.
Miss Rose B. Wilson is about as far
removed from ones conception of
female Jail guard as the antipodes.
To begin with she is young, little
more than girl, who knows how to
smile more readily than to frown.
In the line of her duty she meets,
at the union station in Washington,
her batch of prisoners each morning,
prisoners of all races and colors, and
conveys them to the District of Co.
lumbia workhouse at Occoquan, Va.
With a CHEEKY smile and a more
CHEEKY good morning, girls she
checks off these deniZens of the I'M
der world and marches them down
to the train which leaves around Z
a. m. every day but Sunday That
smile works like a charm, the most
sullen, belligerent, rum-soaked and
drug-sodden is not proof against it.
Try as they will to hold out against
it's influence they unconsciously pull
their disheveled garments around a
bit, try to straighten their often bat
tered headgear and conceal, If posi-
BILE, the worst of their wounds. They
make a brave effort to assume even
for a momen the air of unconcern
and the Indifferent attention that wo-
men so often feel in the presence of
one whom they must recognize as a
superior.
Miss Wilson is a Kensucky girl and
former school teacher, and it is
source of wonder to all who meet her
that a girl with her advantages of
birth, breeding and education to be
able to adjust herself to a position so
fraught with responsibility, to say
nothing of danger.
The duties at best are essentially
of a nerve-racking nature and the
contact with such derelicts of society
is far from edifying, particularly as
some are in a positively loathsome
condition, and often start in to be
noisy and disorderly. More often they
are suffering the pangs of remorse
and bewail the fate that sends them
down on the farm" Many times
they are hysterical, and then Miss
Wilson has plenty to do.
In the time she has been deputy
marshal she has carried down more
than a thousand women to serve SEN
tence, and has never had one escape,
though she has had some very trying
experiences. Being only a very young
woman and attractive she is subject
to much attention and women less
well balanced would find it discon-
certing, but she has a splendid digni-
ty, perfect self-control with calm
temperament and firmness which
even the most unruly of her charges
quickly appreciates. They have learn
ed that while she wastes no unneces- |
sary words upon them that she will
use her authority to compel obedi- |
ence even to the point of using the
ever-ready pistol.
Once her days work is over, how
ever, and she is back in her coy |
apartment without her plain uniform |
it is very hard to associate her with |
anything in connection with the |
workhouse. She is conversant upon |
all the topics of the day. and is a |
splendid musician, singing in the
choir of one of the leading churches
on Sunday She is widely read and |
Travelled and finds her work a con-
slant source Of absorbing Interest
and considers it an opportunity for
experience rarely accorded one of her
Sex.