New Year's Eve Brawl Leaves Landlady Stabbed
A festive celebration at a Jackson Street boarding house turned violent when a dispute between two women resulted in a serious stabbing.
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.
During a drunken brawl in a Jackson street bagnio at 11 o'clock last night, the landlady, Mrs. Julia Grant, was stabbed by Frankie Williams, one of the inmates. The wound, while serious, is not necessarily fatal. The women celebrated the new year by getting drunk, and then commenced to quarrel. One word brought on another until they began to claw each other. Joe Stafford, who runs an oyster house below, heard the racket and went upstairs and parted them. When he was gone they commenced using bad language to one another and as a result Frankie Williams sprang at Mrs. Grant and stabbed her in the head with a knife. The blade entered the flesh on the left temple and extended down over the cheek to the lower jaw. When Officer Gil Philbrick and Detective Cave reached the scene Mrs. Grant was bleeding profusely and the assailant was closeted in her room. Miss Williams was put under arrest. Dr. J. H. Loughary was called and dressed the wounds. The artery running over the temple was cut and the loss of blood so great that the doctor considers absolute quiet necessary to the safety of the patient.
“Mrs. Grant was bleeding like a stuck pig and the assailant was closeted in her room.”
Jackson Street was a notorious center for vice and the red-light district in late 19th-century Seattle. While the neighborhood has long since transformed into a central part of the city's infrastructure and housing, this account captures the volatile reality of life in the city's unregulated boarding houses during the era.
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