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125 stories matching mad
- Rabies Outbreak Struck Down by 'Mad Coyotes'
A series of violent livestock deaths across the Columbia River has been linked to an influx of infected coyotes, marking the first documented cases of hydrophobia in the region.
- The Night the 'Mad House' Burned Down
A suspicious blaze destroys a landmark building in Seattle, forcing local citizens to scramble to save the nearby gas works from the encroaching flames.
- The Rampage of the Mad Coyote
A rabid beast terrorizes local farms and breaks up a neighborhood baseball game before being put down.
- A Steamboat Standoff on the Puget Sound
When a captain accused a passenger of skipping town on a fare, two witnesses stepped forward to detail a tense armed confrontation aboard the steamer 'Otter.'
- The Hidden Danger in the Sagebrush
As cases of rabies rise among local livestock and dogs, residents face the grim reality of a potential health crisis.
- The Forgotten Strike of 1877 in Snohomish
A radical labor meeting calls for an eight-hour day and government intervention, warning that starving workers 'don't reason' when pushed to the brink.
- The Dentist and the Cat
After a cruel beating left a local cat unable to feed itself, a sympathetic neighborhood dentist crafted a set of false teeth to save the animal.
- The Salted Sea: A Tacoma Captain’s War on the 'Blah' Price Gang
In a fiery letter to the editor, a local shipping captain denounces the collusion of dockworkers and merchants who inflate freight rates, vowing to bypass them entirely for cheaper ports.
- A Mad Dash for Liberty in Downtown Tacoma
A young burglary suspect escapes police custody and leads officers on a chaotic foot chase from City Hall to the Tacoma Hotel.
- Rabies Scare Puts Every Dog in the Richland District Under Quarantine
A state veterinarian quarantines the Columbia River Valley after a mad dog bites local animals, ordering dogs tied or muzzled from the Horn to the Columbia.
- Tacoma’s Democrats Wake Up to a Republican City
A bitter municipal election leaves Tacoma’s O’Brien Democrats stunned, as Republicans take the mayor’s office and most of the council.
- The Trial of Neil Sweeney: Sane or Mad?
A Seattle probate court spends an afternoon determining the mental state of a man accused of madness, highlighting the precarious nature of asylum discharges and personal liberty in 1887.
- The Day She Asked for Our Front Door
A Snohomish resident’s hilarious and exasperating account of his neighbors’ audacious borrowing habits reveals the thin veneer of civility in close-knit frontier communities.
- The Dynamite Fiend of Oilman: A Lynch Mob’s Tragic Mistake
When a violent feud in King County’s coal fields ended in a massacre, the community turned to vigilante justice. But when they hanged the wrong man, the real killer walked free.
- The Siege and Tragedy at Friday Harbor
A reclusive farmer's descent into madness and murder in the San Juan Islands ended in a gruesome, fiery standoff with local law enforcement.
- The Soldier Who Missed: Why Seattle Is Rooting for a Court-Martialed Hero
Sergeant Mason’s attempt to assassinate the man who killed Garfield has turned him from a mutineer into a martyr, sparking petitions and subscriptions across the Pacific Northwest.
- The Inspector's Lost Son Was Working at Providence Hospital
Edward Byrnes Jr., abducted from Brooklyn as a boy, was found at Providence Hospital in Seattle and says he was stolen to punish his father, the famous New York police superintendent.
- Rabid Coyotes Put the Whole Columbia Valley on Edge
State College confirmed hydrophobia in a hog’s head from a Richland-area ranch, prompting dog quarantines and warnings that unusually bold coyotes could spread the disease through the valley.
- The Forgotten Pioneer Who Built Tacoma
Job Carr arrived in a wilderness with an ox team and a dream of a railroad terminal, only to die with a broken heart as the city he staked rose up to push him aside.
- The Ghost of Sunnydale
A man arrives looking for work, strips off his clothes, and vanishes into the brush—leaving behind only a purse, a poll tax receipt, and a trail of mystery.
- The Mayor's Midnight Pyre
When smallpox struck an Indigenous chief in 1877, the mayor of a nascent Seattle turned to fire to stop the contagion.
- The Moral Crusade for Seattle's Streets
Proponents of the 'Law and Order' ticket gather to demand the closure of 'lava bed' dives and gambling dens in an impassioned local election rally.
- The Great Terminus Fever of 1871
As rumors swirled about the location of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s Pacific Coast terminus, Seattleites were gripped by a volatile, real-estate-driven madness that made men 'demented' and land values skyrocket.
- The Deadly Prescription of Clifton House
A physician’s sinister plot to poison his young wife for her inheritance ends in a gruesome, ironic justice on the frontier.
- The Tacoma Tragedy: A Father's Descent into Madness
Seattle mourns the Walters family, whose recent murder-suicide in Tacoma has shaken the community. The paper reflects on the fragility of sanity when grief and financial ruin collide.
Also about this, in other words
- The Man Who Wasn't Mad: A Civil War Veteran’s Battle for Sanity
James A. Balch, a tall, soldierly old man in a faded uniform, was held at the King County Insane Asylum for five years despite being lucid. His family fought him through habeas corpus, and today, the superintendent admitted he had recovered his reason.
- The Tragic Confinement of Madia Joy
A ten-year-old girl is committed to an insane asylum after suffering from a paranoid delusion that her own family was trying to kill her.
- Family Terrorized by Disturbed Man
A young man, denied commitment to an asylum, drives his family from their home at gunpoint.
- A Strike Argument at a Shingle Mill Ends with a Knife in a Man's Abdomen
Two mill hands fall to blows over the strike question; the ex-preacher parries a club and stabs the man his neighbors call crazy on the industrial question.
- The Drunken Rampage at the Marshall Block
A rowdy disturbance on Commercial Street lands a man in the custody of the law after a destructive tavern brawl.
- A Neighborhood Indignant After Express Driver Maims Child
A three-year-old girl is severely injured after an express team driver allegedly ignored a mother’s desperate cries and fled the scene in Seattle's Broadway district.
- The Day Justice Went Mad: A Proprietor’s Threat and a Drunkard’s Triumph
In a Tacoma courtroom in January 1890, the owner of the Lomar House threatened to kill a man accused of drunkenness. The court watched, entertained, and ultimately acquitted the accused after witnesses proved he was sober.
- An Escape from Medical Lake
A patient from the state hospital for the insane sparks fear in a small community before his quiet capture.