The Strange Death of a Fugitive
A foreman, desperate after a violent assault, ended his own life in the most unusual of ways while under police guard on a train near Snohomish.
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.
L. H. Bowman, of Leavenworth, arrived in the city yesterday with information which leads to the belief that Wallace, the man who attacked Commissary Daily of the Great Northern railroad with a hammer at Skykomish last Tuesday and who died in convulsions near Snohomish Thursday night, really committed suicide in a remarkable manner. Wallace was a Great Northern gang foreman, well liked and gentlemanly when sober. For three weeks he had been on a spree and lived on nothing but whiskey. When delirium tremens came on him, he was afraid to go home, so Daily took him to his car. Wallace, possessed by the idea that two men were seeking his life, hit Daily ten times with a hammer. Daily played 'possum' to survive and escaped. Wallace was captured and placed in the care of Constable Casey. On the train to Seattle, Wallace asked the constable to kill him, fearing he would be hanged. When he was refused, Wallace asked for a chew of tobacco. He put a large piece in his mouth and swallowed rapidly. The nicotine acted on his empty stomach, throwing him into convulsions, and he was dead in five minutes.
“Then he worked it around until the saliva had thoroughly saturated the leaves... he suddenly commenced to chew like a threshing machine and swallow rapidly.”
This grim account of a mental health crisis involving 'delirium tremens' highlights the harsh reality of life in the labor camps of the 1890s. While our understanding of addiction and psychiatric care has evolved, the isolation of transient workers remains a persistent concern in the Pacific Northwest.
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