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|---|---|
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105 stories matching wretch
- The Hidden Cruelty of Early Seattle
A visit to a Chinatown tenement reveals a harrowing reality of human suffering, sparking a volatile debate over labor, poverty, and local morality.
- The Dynamite Murder of Tacoma: A Mob’s Verdict
In the early hours of January 1890, a Tacoma man was dragged from jail and hanged by a vigilante mob for blowing up a house and killing a sleeping family. The Seattle press offers a chilling reflection on whether such 'swift justice' is ever truly justified.
- The Great Seattle Property Map Scandal
A scathing editorial reveals that King County’s property assessments are so riddled with errors that the tax rolls are essentially worthless, leaving the local government in a state of administrative paralysis.
- The Solitary Tragedy of Maple Valley
A lonely squatter, once neighborly, ends his life in a wretched cabin while local settlers eye his unclaimed homestead.
- The Keeley Cure Comes to Olympia
Olympia's Keeley Institute promises release from drink, and the Tribune opens a discreet charity fund for patients who cannot pay.
- The Perils of the Seneca Street Crossing
In 1877, Seattleites were forced to perform 'acrobatic feats' to traverse a dangerous gully, highlighting the city's struggle to keep pace with rapid infrastructure demands.
- The City Attorney's 'Wretched' Tenure
Voters of Seattle weigh in on a candidate accused of incompetence, corruption, and botching the city's legal affairs.
- The Boys of Spring: Seattle Dominates Tacoma in 1892 Baseball Duel
Before the Mariners, the Puget Sound Amateur League drew massive crowds to the diamond with high stakes, fierce local rivalries, and the occasional 'wretched fumble.'
- The Tramp Economy of Early Seattle
A reporter encounters a 'bummer' among the weeds of Mission Bay, revealing the harsh, transient reality of laborers who roamed the Pacific Coast in the 1870s.
- The Mud-Hole of Commercial Street
An 1876 editorial campaign to transform Seattle's 'wretched' mud-caked thoroughfare into a paved road using convict labor and harbor ballast.
- The Transformation of the 'Lava Bed'
A historic Seattle neighborhood known for 'drunken revelry and hellish orgies' faces an impending industrial rebirth.
- The Dynamite of Gilman: A Murderous Grudge Ends in Lynching
In a fit of rage over a domestic dispute, Albert Schaeffer blew up his neighbor's home in Gilman, killing three people. The town’s response was swift and brutal.
- The Seattle Militia Stands at the Edge of Chaos
Amid the anti-Chinese riots of 1886, a citizen militia maintains order against mob rule, setting a precedent for territorial authority.
- The Man Who Wouldn't Die: A Seattle Gallows Horror
In a gruesome spectacle that shook the young Territory of Washington, Francis Epps survived his own hanging by mere inches, crying for mercy as the crowd watched him dangle in agony before being cut down.
- The Effigy in the Pine Tree
Charles Gloystein crossed Spokane County's Populists and woke to find himself hanged in straw. Then he vanished.
- 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 Ghost of the Gatherer: A Captain’s Suicide Haunted by His Own Cruelty
Decades after a horrific voyage where officers maimed and murdered sailors to escape their 'demoniac' captain, the master of the ship dies by suicide in Puget Sound, fulfilling a prophecy of vengeance.
- The Phoenix City: Seattle's Rapid Rebirth After the Great Fire
Just 18 months after the 1889 fire leveled the downtown, Seattle transformed from charred ruins into a modern metropolis of stone, steel, and electric streetcars.
- The Fight for Cheap Labor in the Pacific Northwest
In 1887, prominent Seattle and Tacoma business leaders sat down to argue over the 'necessity' of the Chinese exclusion movement and the future of regional trade.
- The North Bend Ducking Stool
When a man terrorized his family during a drunken rampage, his neighbors took justice into their own hands with an icy river dip.
- The Brutality of the Walla Walla Penitentiary
A critical look at the failing 'cell system' and the questionable state industries in Washington’s state prison.
- Abandoned in the Snow
Forty laborers hired by the Great Northern Railway are left destitute in Snohomish after being denied work and food.
- The Slave Ship That Vanished: An Old Man’s Confession in Seattle
A weathered sailor walks into a Seattle saloon and recounts the night his crew mutinied against a slaver, only to watch the ship sink with 200 souls aboard.
- The Swift and Terrible Justice of the Gallows
A condemned man is rushed to the gallows in just five days, sparking outrage over the speed of the judicial process in Snohomish.
- The Brutal Reality of Convict Leasing in the Washington Territory
A scathing look at the state's profit-driven 'convict lease' system, where human beings were treated as disposable capital and exploited for labor with zero accountability for their survival.
Also about this, in other words
- The Rowdy Frontier in Icicle
A correspondent reports on the daily chaos and 'gun plays' defining the rough-and-tumble life in the settlement near Wenatchee.
- The Iron-Jawed Worm That Ate Seattle's Wharves
At the foot of Harrison Street, the Colman family has a new weapon against the teredo worm: steam, a vacuum, and a dose of dead oil of tar.
- An Industrial Experiment on the Waterfront
Local entrepreneur James M. Colman introduces a new technology to protect wharf pilings from the destructive 'teredo' wood-boring worm.