The Jailbreak of the Electrician Who Sabotaged the City's Power
After serving months in prison for destroying the Seattle Electric Light Company’s equipment, a disgruntled former employee walked out of the mill in borrowed clothes.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Many readers of the Post-Intelligencer will remember C. B. Powers, the electrician who at one time had charge of the electric light machinery. He was afterwards employed by the Seattle Electric Light Company, but being a drunken vagabond, was discharged. To get even with his employers he cut their wires, stole their tools, and finally, to cap the climax, broke into the Company's building and drove a steel chisel into the center of the only dynamo then in possession of the Company, causing much loss of time and money.
After that he carried away certain portions of the machinery which could not be replaced here and threw them into the Sound. He was arrested for this crime and while awaiting his trial he took sick in jail and underwent a most painful surgical operation. Judge Greene and the Prosecuting Attorney ordered him taken to Providence Hospital for treatment and M. V. Mills was employed to guard him. One evening he turned up missing, he having made his escape.
Well, court finally convened, and Powers, on the advice of his attorney, pleaded guilty to the indictment of burglary against him, and was sentenced by Judge Greene to three years in the Territorial penitentiary. He passed a rather uneventful life there for the past six months, until last Friday morning, when he made his escape under the following circumstances: By some means he got hold of a suit of citizen's clothes, which he put on under his prison uniform. At about 6 o'clock, while working in the mill, he stepped to one side, removed his stripped clothing and walked out past the guard in his citizen's attire and a wheelbarrow wheel. The guard, thinking he was one of the mill hands, opened the gate and allowed him to pass through. This was at 6 o'clock in the morning, and as he was not missed until noon, he could have secured a good start on his pursuers. He had not been captured up to yesterday afternoon.
“To get even with his employers he cut their wires, stole their tools, and finally, to cap the climax, broke into the Company's building and drove a steel chisel into the center of the only dynamo.”
Long before the grid became a matter of public debate, early electrical infrastructure was volatile. This 1887 story of a bitter, vengeful worker sabotaging equipment highlights how precarious the early industrialization of Seattle was, echoing modern concerns about the security and fragility of our vital city infrastructure.
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