The Tragedy on the Tide Flats

Mrs. Thomas Pitner, who lives on the tide flats right back of the electric light plant on Grant street, threw her 7-month-old baby into the bay off the bridge about 6 o'clock last evening just below the stockyards, and it was almost drowned before it could be rescued. The woman is undoubtedly mentally ill. After throwing the child into the water, she stood on the bridge and began crying. An old rancher came along with a team, and she told him she had thrown the child in. While the rancher looked for a way down to the water, the woman ran screaming into the Seattle Transfer barn. Thomas Henry, a butcher, and Mark Stevens, the Northern Pacific yardman, ran out; Henry descended a piling and waded out to retrieve the infant. The water was only six inches deep where the child lay, but its head had been submerged. After it was cleared of water, it began to breathe again. The father, who works in the transfer barn, retrieved the child and took it home. Officer Milliken arrested the woman and took her to the county jail, where she appeared rational and expressed profound remorse, stating, 'I have been unhappy and wanted to end my baby's life and my own, too.' She disclosed a history of institutionalization at the insane asylum in Salem and previous violent episodes born of hysteria and despair.