Smallpox Scare in Seattle Hotels
Public health officers scramble to quarantine guests at the Alaska Hotel and St. Elmo after two smallpox cases emerge on Main Street.
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.
Two cases of smallpox were discovered in the city yesterday—one in the Alaska hotel and the other in the St. Elmo lodging-house. The patients were removed to the pest house and the houses placed under a rigid quarantine. Early yesterday morning, Dr. George H. T. Sparling, the city physician, found that J. T. Martin, proprietor of the Alaska hotel, was suffering from varioloid. When the house was quarantined, twenty-five guests panicked, but detectives captured those who attempted to flee. A second case, Murdock Cummings, a logger from Kitsap County, was found at the St. Elmo lodging-house with confluent smallpox. Dr. Sparling does not believe the disease will spread significantly, though the St. Elmo has a history of outbreaks.
“There were twenty-five guests in the house, and when they learned that the hotel had been quarantined they ran about like a pack of frightened sheep.”
Public health crises in dense downtown lodging houses were common in 1890s Seattle, reflecting the volatility of a port city. Today’s housing and public health infrastructure face similar pressures when managing contagion in high-density urban environments, though the quarantine methods are vastly different.
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