The Boardinghouse Elopement
After ten years of marriage, a local landlady sells the furniture and vanishes with a boarder, leaving her husband to plan a maritime pursuit.
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.
After sixteen years of married life, Mrs. Francis Glick, who has kept a boardinghouse at 907 South Fifth Street for some time, is said to have eloped with one of her boarders, a Mr. Brown, and left Mr. Glick the most miserable of men. About three months ago, Mrs. Glick became attentive to a young man who was working at a blacksmith shop, but later shifted her attention to the new arrival, Mr. Brown. At the first of last week, Mr. Glick went to Port Orchard on business, and when he returned on Wednesday, he found that his wife had sold all the furniture, closed the house, and gone to Victoria. He reported the matter to the authorities and is now anxious to find his spouse. He proposes to go into Victoria under full sail with his new sloop, now building on the waterfront.
“When he returned on Wednesday found that his wife had sold all the furniture, closed the house and gone to Victoria.”
Domestic dramas played out in the city's boardinghouses were a staple of 19th-century newspapers, framing private heartbreak as public spectacle. While today we might view such an event as a personal matter, the 1890s press treated elopements as major social scandals, often highlighting the economic aspect—such as the sale of household furniture—as proof of the wife's betrayal of her domestic duties.
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