Horrific Elevator Accident at Bank Building
A young student is permanently disfigured after a teenage elevator operator plays a dangerous prank.
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.
Miss Maud Walthew, a student of 20 years, was painfully injured and permanently disfigured by an elevator accident in the Seattle National Bank building yesterday afternoon. Miss Walthew was heading to the sixth floor for singing exercises with classmates. When the elevator reached the sixth floor, the operator, Charles Hammond, aged about 15, refused to let them out. Miss Walthew managed to unsnap the door and step out, but the others remained trapped. She reached her head and shoulders through the opening to free them, but Hammond shoved the hydraulic lever, causing the car to drop. The upper portion of the car caught her, forcing her face against the casing with such violence that it tore away the cedar panels and caused severe facial injuries. Hammond then fled the scene and remains at large. Miss Walthew was carried to her home at 1117 Fifth Street for medical treatment; though terribly disfigured, she is expected to recover.
“Her head would have been severed from her body had not the casing given way and allowed her head to be pushed beyond reach of the car.”
This incident highlights the hazardous nature of early, unregulated elevator technology in downtown Seattle. The 'Seattle National Bank building' was a central hub of the city's commerce, and the swift escape of the perpetrator reflects the precarious nature of labor and accountability in the 1890s.
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