A Ledger of Lost Lives in 1893 Seattle
A coroner’s report from March 1893 documents the grim reality of life in a frontier city, including industrial accidents and social crises.
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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.
Coroner Horton's report, filed with the county commissioners, records nine violent deaths for February 1893. These include Henry S. Miller, who died by suicide at Lake Washington due to business despondency; Kittle Allen, who drowned under the Blue Front saloon after a panic caused by a quarantine order; Michael M. Wold, killed at the Preston shingle mill; Albert Stendahl and G. H. Howells, killed at the Cokedale mine; David Downey, found under a trestle at Black Diamond; and L. P. Peterson, who drowned in the bay while intoxicated.
“Kittle Allen, drowned under Blue Front saloon; caused by cry of quarantine which made her jump out of a window.”
The entry for Kittle Allen is particularly haunting—a woman driven to her death by the fear of quarantine, underscoring how public health measures, poverty, and isolation intersected in early Seattle. This report serves as a somber archive of lives lost to industry, despair, and the volatile conditions of the city's growth.
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