The Landlady, The Lodger, and the Revolver
A rooming house rental dispute on Third Street explodes into a brawl involving hair-pulling, biting, and a gun.
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.
Every seat in Justice Von Tobel's courtroom was occupied yesterday afternoon at the hearing of the charge of assault and battery brought by Mrs. Lizzie Kinnaman, proprietress of the Albemarle house on Third street, against Jennie Kearney, one of her lodgers. Mrs. Kinnaman testified that she cleared Miss Kearney’s room because the lodger had installed a Yale lock, violating house regulations. When confronted, Kearney reportedly jumped on her, pulling her hair and biting her. Kearney countered that the landlady drew a revolver, which she then grabbed by the barrel to disarm her. Justice Von Tobel, finding the evidence conflicting, dismissed the case.
“Mrs. Kinnaman replied, 'I have the hair here and it is my own.'”
This chaotic scene at a boarding house illustrates the fraught nature of early Seattle housing, where lodgers and landlords frequently clashed over rights and authority in cramped, transient quarters. Today, conflicts between tenants and landlords in Seattle have shifted from physical brawls to legal battles over rent control and tenant protections, yet the underlying tension over the sanctity of one's personal living space remains a constant in local history.
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