An Arson Plot Unearthed in a Rented Shack
A struggling family, searching for kindling in their attic, discovers a lethal trap set to torch their home.
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.
An attempt at incendiarism was thwarted yesterday morning by the merest accident. On the corner of Division and Ohio streets stands a wooden shack, one and a half stories high, owned by Herman Peissner, who for a short time about a year ago resided there. He has since removed to Green Lake. For the past five weeks the house has been occupied by August Hagermeister, a blacksmith, and his family, who rented it for $3 per month. The Hagermeisters are very poor, and yesterday morning the wife had nothing with which to kindle a fire, so she went foraging. Ascending into the attic, she found that a hole in the partition between two rooms of the low chamber had been nailed up with some dry boards. These she proceeded to knock off for kindling wood. Peering through the hole, she made a discovery which was immediately reported to Chief Hunt of the fire department. Chief Hunt made a careful examination, and this is what he found: in the far corner under the eaves was a carefully laid pile of paper, under the paper some dry shingles, shavings and sulphur, in the midst of which were a number of matches carefully leaned against the end of a fuse. He traced the fuse and found that it ran down the wall of the building between two boards to within about three feet of the ground, where it turned outward and projected about three inches. The fuse was ten feet long. Chief Hunt says the value of the house is about $100, that it is insured in the Sun, of England, for $250, and that there is a mortgage of $250 on the lot.
“In the far corner under the eaves was a carefully laid pile of paper... matches carefully leaned against the end of a fuse.”
This incident highlights the precarious nature of housing in 1890s Seattle, where insurance fraud on decrepit, over-insured structures placed poor renters in immediate physical danger. While fire safety codes have evolved, the economic tension between landlords and tenants—and the vulnerability of those in low-cost housing—remains a persistent echo in Seattle’s current housing crisis.
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