The Indigent Shuttle: Seattle's 'Loathsome' Dumping Scandal
A 1892 report reveals a bitter inter-city blame game, as Tacoma officials accuse Seattle of shipping its impoverished and sick residents south to dodge medical costs.
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.
City Physician Goddard has been looking up the records of the Seattle health department and, by comparison with those of Tacoma, finds that during December, 1891, while thirty patients were treated at the city and county hospital here, only eight were treated at Seattle in a similar institute. His inference is that the Seattle authorities are sending over to Tacoma their indigent sick, a belief strengthened by the fact that two prisoners now confined at the city jail, and who are applicants for admission to the city and county hospital, arrived yesterday from Seattle. Goddard is treating at the county jail a man whom he refused to treat on behalf of the city or county. In order to secure treatment, the fellow stole an overcoat, pleaded guilty, and when sent to the county jail, at once had Goddard summoned to diagnose a loathsome disease.
“In order to secure treatment, the fellow stole an overcoat, pleaded guilty, and when sent to the county jail, at once had Goddard summoned to diagnose a loathsome disease.”
The practice of 'bus therapy'—or the systemic relocation of unhoused and medically vulnerable people to neighboring jurisdictions—remains a flashpoint in Pacific Northwest civic relations. Today's debates over regional coordination for housing and mental health care echo this 130-year-old territorial friction between Seattle and Tacoma.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.