Fatal Accident on the Commercial Street Trestle
A well-known local character and former steamboat steward is killed by an electric streetcar.
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.
John O'Brien, aged 52 years, was killed by car 1 on the Commercial street trestle, below B street, at about five minutes after 11 o'clock last night. The car was on the down trip from the upper end of its run where the Columbia & Puget Sound tracks cross Commercial street. Conductor E. R. Bodle was busy with the south extension and was going through the car collecting fares, being obliged to let the motor take care of itself. He had just crossed B street and was opposite an empty shack when he felt something that made him think the car had run off the track. Stopping the car, he saw he had run over a man, cutting off both his legs just below the hip joints. He was taken to a patrol wagon, but died on the way. O'Brien was a well-known character about town who had served as a steward on various boats, and his last job was as a waiter on the Premier.
“Stopping the car, he saw that he had run over a man, cutting off both his legs just below the hip joints.”
The intersection of Commercial Street (now 1st Avenue South) and B Street (now South Dearborn) has seen profound changes, evolving from an industrial trestle district to the heart of the modern SODO/Pioneer Square transit nexus. Streetcar safety was a common, recurring theme in 1890s Seattle news, reflecting the city’s rapid, often chaotic electrification of transit.
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