The Disappearance of Max Erhart
A bartender, broken by recent violence and legal trouble, vanishes from the Seattle waterfront.
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.
Max Erhart, a bartender, has been missing from his usual haunts on Pike street, and it is thought possible that he may be dead. He was last seen at 5 o'clock Friday morning in the Oxford saloon at the corner of Pike and Fourth streets, when he appeared dejected and refused a drink, remarking as he did so that he would not need liquor in the future. This remark and his strange appearance since he came out of the hospital a while ago have caused considerable uneasiness among his friends. Erhart, after the death of Barry McQuilken, was jailed on suspicion of having been connected with the disappearance of $325 that McQuilken lost. The case was dismissed owing to lack of evidence and Erhart went to Silverton where he was terribly beaten in a saloon, and had to come to Providence hospital for treatment. He has been out on the street of late but appeared broken-down, disheartened and far from his former self.
“He appeared dejected and refused a drink, remarking as he did so that he would not need liquor in the future.”
The disappearance of marginalized workers in the city’s saloons and lodging houses was a frequent and often unremarked tragedy in the 1890s. Today, while we have better systems for tracking missing persons, the vulnerability of those struggling with the after-effects of trauma and the city's shifting economic tides remains an enduring, haunting theme in Seattle's urban history.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.