A Tragic Finality on Fourth and Columbia
A young woman takes her own life in a fit of despair, marking a dark chapter for a Seattle boarding house.
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.
Mrs. Sal Asher, wife of Sal Asher, of Cordray's theater, committed suicide yesterday by shooting herself in the mouth. The tragedy was the result of matrimonial infelicity. Sal Asher was a well-known figure to those who frequent the theater. He married the young woman now at the morgue five years ago in Troutdale, Oregon, when she was only 15 years old. They took rooms at Mrs. F. F. George's house at the southeast corner of Fourth and Columbia streets. She worshipped her husband but thought he did not care for her as a husband should. Mrs. George, a motherly woman, tried to soothe her, but the young wife often spoke of ending her life. Yesterday, she followed her husband to a barber shop on Columbia Street. When she returned home, she wrote a few lines on the flyleaf of a book, sat on the edge of the bed, and as her husband approached, she shot herself. Coroner Horton investigated, finding a note requesting her things be sent to her sister, Minnie, in Troutdale, Oregon.
“I am tired of living this way.”
Domestic tragedy in boarding houses was a common, hushed reality of late 19th-century Seattle, reflecting the isolation and precarious social structures of a growing city. Today, the corner of Fourth and Columbia is in the heart of downtown, far removed from the private, desperate acts that defined the domestic spaces of 1891.
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