A Neighborhood Indignant After Express Driver Maims Child
A three-year-old girl is severely injured after an express team driver allegedly ignored a mother’s desperate cries and fled the scene in Seattle's Broadway district.
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.
Mamie Madigan, the three-year-old child of P. J. Madigan, living at 308 Broadway, was knocked down by an express team, driven by J. J. Good, yesterday afternoon about 5 o'clock, and severely injured. In the neighborhood there was considerable indignation against the expressman, who was arrested by order of Chief of Police Jackson for criminal carelessness. The little girl was playing in a vacant lot all alone while her mother was in the house attending to some work. Mrs. Madigan suddenly heard the rattle of wheels and ran to the front door to see if her child was in danger. There stood Mamie directly in the path of the horses which were being driven rapidly toward her, the driver either not seeing her or paying no attention if he did. 'I yelled to him,' said Mrs. Madigan, 'as I rushed for Mamie, but he paid no attention to me and I saw the horse's foot strike my child to the ground.' The wagon passed rapidly and the driver, despite being yelled at to stop, whipped up his horses and disappeared over the hill toward the business part of the city. Detective Cudihee arrested J. J. Good, who at first denied any knowledge of the incident. Later, he admitted he heard a woman yell but thought nothing of it. Good was released on $100 cash bond to answer to the charge of criminal carelessness.
“I cried to the man to stop his horses and come back, but he apparently never heard me.”
This incident captures the early, chaotic transition of Seattle's neighborhoods as horse-drawn commercial traffic cut through residential areas. The tension between local pedestrians and the 'through traffic' of the 1890s serves as a century-old precursor to modern debates over pedestrian safety and traffic calming in Seattle's dense urban centers.
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