The Hard Lives of Seattle's Working Class
Hospital records from 1892 reveal the brutal physical toll of industrial labor in Seattle’s growing logging and rail sectors.
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.
Sickness is almost unknown in the city at present. Though Providence hospital contains seventy-five patients and Grace thirty-one, there are out of the entire number but two cases of fever. Two-thirds of the patients in the hospitals are victims of accidents and nearly all of them belong to the laboring class. The solitary smallpox patient, who caused such a scare in the city, is getting along nicely at the pest house. Among the cases, Frank Bodet, who was sent from a grading camp on the Great Northern railway, has made a miraculous recovery. A month ago, in cutting down a tree, a falling branch caught him, crushing his right arm and fracturing his skull in several places. Yesterday, he ate his dinner while sitting up. Charles Muscat, a logger, is at Grace hospital after his broad-axe slipped while he was hewing a log near Edmunds; he had to ride six miles on horseback before he could receive surgical attendance. Fred Ploen is also at Grace hospital after being caught in a log jam near Mukilteo, sustaining a compound fracture of the leg.
“Two-thirds of the patients in the hospitals are victims of accidents and nearly all of them belong to the laboring class.”
This snapshot of the 1890s reveals the human cost of the rapid development of the Pacific Northwest. Today, workplace safety regulations have replaced such grim reports, but the vulnerability of the laboring class remains a recurring theme in Seattle's civic story.
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