A Desperate Hour in Chehalis
After a domestic quarrel, a former probate judge in Chehalis attempts to end his life in the same room where a gruesome murder occurred years prior.
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.
A correspondent at Chehalis, Lewis County, under date of June 18th, telegraphs as follows: Judge Dillenbaugh, ex-probate Judge of this city, attempted to commit suicide this morning by shooting himself with a .38 calibre revolver. He was standing in front of the looking glass, and the ball of the first shot, missing him, shattered the glass. The bullet of the next shot entered the right temple, ranging in an angling direction below the brain, and lodged against the muscle of the left eye, and still remains in his face. His suffering is intense and his recovery doubtful. He is perfectly frantic and does not recognize anybody. Mr. Dillenbaugh has been investigating spiritualism considerably of late, and all day yesterday he quarrelled with his wife, who had been talking of going to Tacoma to work. His last words to her were: 'Stay at home with the dear babies and I will go to Tacoma myself.' Mr. Dillenbaugh lives four miles southwest of Chehalis, in the same house where Billy Pearson murdered his child and tried to kill himself and wife by cutting their throats with a razor, in December, 1884. Judge Dillenbaugh's condition grows alarmingly worse. His family consists of a wife and eight daughters.
“Stay at home with the dear babies and I will go to Tacoma myself.”
This 1887 report highlights the intersection of acute financial stress and domestic crisis in rural Washington. The mention of the wife needing to leave for Tacoma to find work mirrors the recurring economic precarity and housing-related displacement that continue to shape the lives of families in the Pacific Northwest today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.