The Tragedy at the Grandvue Hotel
A scandalous love affair and a newspaper exposé drive a Seattle woman to a fatal act of desperation.
The new year in Seattle was ushered in with the suicide of a beautiful woman and an unsuccessful attempt by her paramour to imitate her example. In room 2 at the Grandvue Hotel, corner of Front and Pine streets, Mrs. Nellie Brundage, wife of a prominent real estate man, ended her life with laudanum before the eyes of S. R. Clute, her clandestine lover. When he beheld her deed, he also took a dose of the same drug, but regretting his action, took an antidote and saved his life. The affair had been fueled by alcohol and a recent newspaper story in the Mercury that exposed their illicit meetings. After the woman died, Clute was taken into police custody, dazed and grief-stricken. The husband, who remained unaware of the affair until the tragedy, noted the incident with profound sadness, stating that the remains of his wife would be returned to her home in Canandaigua, New York.
“The handsome woman lying on the bed before Clute and the doctor breathed her last at 9 o'clock in the morning with scarcely more than a parting gasp.”
This story illustrates how the 19th-century press operated as a potent, often destructive, force in private lives by printing moralistic gossip. Today’s digital surveillance and social media 'doxxing' carry the same potential for public shaming that, in 1893, led directly to a tragic end in a downtown hotel room.
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