Street Laborer Opens Fire at City Hall
After being fired from his job as a dump-cart driver, a man stalks the City Hall office and attempts to assassinate the Street Commissioner.
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.
L. Cummings, the street commissioner, while sitting in his office last evening, was shot and slightly wounded by Pat Lavan, a dump-cart driver whom Mr. Cummings discharged about a week ago. The shooting was without provocation, and it seems a miracle that Mr. Cummings was not killed, for four shots were fired at him with a 32-caliber bulldog revolver at a distance of not over five feet. For the past three years Lavan has been employed by the city off and on as a common laborer. A week ago Street Commissioner Cummings suspended him from the force and put another man in his place. Last evening Lavan entered the office, leaned over the railing, and demanded, 'What did you lay me off for?' before firing two shots in quick succession. Cummings fell, and the room descended into chaos as Lavan fired two more shots. Officer John Corbett, who was in the building, eventually wrestled the revolver away. Dr. F.S. Palmer later found that Cummings had been struck by two bullets, one grazing his right arm and another skimming his back, though his injuries were not life-threatening. Lavan later expressed that he bore no malice, though rumors circulated that he had actually intended to shoot a city receiver named Money, who had also fired him.
“I am not the man; it's Lavan! shouted Corbett, as soon as he could catch his breath.”
This incident captures a flashpoint of mid-1890s labor instability in Seattle, where city jobs provided the only lifeline for families like Lavan's. Today, while public employment is more structured, the visceral anxiety regarding job security and the loss of livelihoods remains a volatile and recurring theme in the city's civic life.
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