The Opium Smuggler of the 'City of Kingston'
A Port Angeles woman is arrested for running a profitable cross-border smuggling operation.
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 identity of the young woman smuggler who was recently arrested on the City of Kingston has been fully established. Her name is Hattie Hastings, and she belongs in Port Angeles. Her father, the late Capt. Hastings, conducted the Olympic Hotel there for many years. The customs officers have been looking up her record and ascertained that she has made three trips regularly each week to Victoria during the last six months. She usually brought over nine pounds of opium concealed on her person, from which she realized a profit of about $10 a week after paying her expenses. Her family is well esteemed in Port Angeles. It is said by the authorities that a well-known business man persuaded the girl to go into the business, and he may be jointly indicted with her at the next session of the grand jury.
“She usually brought over nine pounds of opium concealed on her person, from which she realized a profit of about $10 a week.”
Opium smuggling was a major point of contention in the Puget Sound region during the 1890s, often intertwined with the xenophobic 'exclusion' politics of the era. Hattie Hastings's story highlights the precarious economic reality for women of the time, who were often leveraged into risky black-market activities by powerful men.
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