Volume 11 , Issue 17

1903 - Hot Time In Court Room In Alva

This next story takes us back to February, 1903, in Alva, O. T., to a "Hot Time In Courtroom." There was a damage trial going on and the case at Alva attracted more than its full quota of attention. It seems one of the attorneys pulled a gun and assumed a threatening attitude.

This article was found in The Oklahoman, dated February 11, 1903, page 2, with the following headlines, "Damage Trial On." The article did not talked much of the pulling of a gun by attorney, but mentioned something about Richards adopting and returning a child to Wichita after a few weeks and the county Deputy searching Richards place near Rusk.

Special to the Oklahoman -- Cleo, O. T., Feb 10, 1903 -- "One of the most disgusting trials ever held in Oklahoma is now in progress in the probate court at Alva. The case is the Richards-Flohr damage suit, and it has occupied the attention of the court for the last three weeks.

"Flohr was a resident of Cleo, and had been for the past eight or nine years, and was noted in the community for his ardent love for a lawsuit. He had a quarter section of land just north of the townsite and was worth some money.

Richards was a physician living at Rusk, but he came to this country in 1900 and he located at Cleo, where he practiced medicine for about a year. During his stay at this place it seems that he struck up an intimate acquaintance with Flohr, and that finally Flohr went on his note for several hundred dollars, and Richards raised enough money to start a small drug store at Rusk, a town ten miles south of the place.

All went well for several months, until spring, when Richards and his wife secured for adoption a little child at Wichita, which, when they got it, was in a healthy condition, but in two weeks time they returned it back to the home of which Mrs. Glen Ellen Shields was matron, and it died the next day after it was returned.

Suspicion was aroused and after a long trial in which Flohr figured prominently, at Wichita, Richards and his wife were convicted of cruelty to the child and heavy fine was imposed on them.

While Richards was away it seems that either known or unknown to him several hundred dollars' worth of goods from the drug store at Rusk were brought to Flohr's farm at Cleo, and concealed about the place. During Flohr's absence, Deputy Huntington and Richards, with a search warrant, searched the place thoroughly, and dug up several hundred dollars worth of goods. The strange thing was that Richards had no trouble in locating things in places that would never be thought of, even drawing up a bunch of surgical instruments from a well that was suspended there with a strong cord."

Has anyone out there any memories of this "Hot Courtroom Battle" in Alva in 1903?
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