The Witch of Avenue A: A Violent Superstition
A Seattle family’s belief in sorcery leads to a brutal attack on their former governess.
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.
The days of witchcraft came back on Memorial Day to the home of Hugo Roedler and his family, at 1414 Avenue A, and though they did not succeed in burning their 'witch' at the stake, they gave her a drubbing from which she has not yet recovered. The victim is Mrs. Bertha Marie Henkwitz, a pleasant-faced woman who for three years was governess to Mark Twain’s children. Mrs. Henkwitz visited the Roedler home on Memorial Day with a party of friends. When she came away, she thoughtlessly left her hat behind and returned to get it, accompanied by Mrs. Hedwig Decker. Scarcely had she entered the house when Roedler slammed the door and locked it. 'You are a witch,' he cried. 'You have cast a spell over my child. Confess it, or I will kill you.' The next thing she knew, she was looking into the cold muzzle of a revolver. Instinctively, she picked up his two-year-old son and held him up as a shield while she yelled for help. Roedler dropped the pistol and tore his child out of her arms; then he, his wife, and their grown daughter fell on her with sticks and beat her about the head. Mrs. Decker heard her screams and called a policeman, who broke his way in and arrested the frenzied family.
“You are a witch... You have cast a spell over my child. Confess it, or I will kill you.”
While Seattle has outgrown the literal panic of 'witches' in 1899, the story of neighbor-against-neighbor paranoia reflects the persistent, often violent, tensions that arise in dense urban housing settings. Today, 1414 Avenue A would be located in the heart of modern Seattle, highlighting how the city's geography remains a stage for intense personal conflicts.
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