The Tragedy of Trixey Leighton
A gambling house faro dealer and his mistress are found in a grizzly scene in Spokane, leading to a murder investigation that revealed the stark, hidden vulnerabilities of women living on the social margins of the 1890s.
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.
SPOKANE, March 29. A woman shot through the head and ghastly in death, and a man crazed with rum, were the tragic sequel to a jealous quarrel in Spokane. A.C. Leighton, a faro dealer, was rescued from the river where he had attempted to drown himself; upon his arrest, police searched his rooms in the Heller block. There, they found the woman he called his wife—known as Mrs. Trixey Leighton—dead from a 32-caliber gunshot wound. Leighton claimed a suicide pact, alleging she was despondent over their arguments and her intent to move into a house of ill-repute. Investigators found scraps of paper in the room, including one in her handwriting: 'I love my Al; I am to blame for it all. M, forgive me, my darling. Trix.' Despite his narrative, the coroner's jury was unable to determine if the death was murder or suicide, given the placement of the wound and evidence of a struggle.
“The body of Trixey Leighton, as she called herself, was lying stretched upon a disordered bed, her face and hair covered with black, clotted blood.”
This 1892 report reflects the era's clinical, often dehumanizing language regarding women in unstable housing or sex work. It serves as a grim reminder of how precarious the lives of women were in the burgeoning, rough-and-tumble boomtowns of the American West, mirroring a persistent history of domestic violence that remains a critical issue in modern urban centers like Spokane and Seattle.
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