A Deadly Prank at the Blue Front
A malicious false alarm of a plague quarantine triggers a fatal panic in a Seattle dance hall.
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.
Kitty Allen, a colored girl aged 19 years, was drowned on the tide flats under the Blue Front saloon at 11 o'clock last night as the direct result of a malicious hoax. The Blue Front is located at 802 Front Street and is run by John Bryant. In the back part of the saloon is a room used for a dance hall. It is frequented by many people. The room has two windows that look down upon the tide flats, which are covered with old logs, slabs, and timbers left from the fire. Between the windows mentioned and the next house is a space of six feet and along the side of the next house runs a wooden walk, broken in and covered with mud to a depth of two feet. The saloon and dance hall were crowded last night, and the dance went on merrily. A quarantine was on, and Kitty was on the floor. At this time, Lieutenant John Hill and Officer L. B. Pierce came in the front door and looked over the saloon. Everything was quiet and they turned and passed out the door. As they did so, some white men met them and remarked, 'Is there any trouble in the saloon?' 'Not that I know of,' replied the lieutenant. A moment later, one of the white men called out in the saloon: 'The house is quarantined.' The scene that followed was wild in the extreme. Men and women, both white and colored, rushed for the exits and windows. In her excitement, Kitty Allen saw nothing but the broken walk six feet away. She jumped first and missed the walk. Then she fell twelve feet to the water below. When it was found that the cry of quarantine had been a hoax, the girl was discovered missing. Officer Pierce went down into the murky waters and found her body. She had been in the water fully fifteen minutes, and despite medical efforts to revive her, she was pronounced dead.
“The scene that followed was wild in the extreme. Men and women, both white and colored, rushed for the exits.”
This tragedy at 802 Front Street (modern First Avenue) captures the lethal volatility of 1890s Seattle, where rumors of 'quarantine' could spark instant panic in segregated spaces. It reflects a city growing so rapidly that basic public safety and accountability for civil disorder were often non-existent.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.