A Desperate Note at Meadow Point
A young man, broken by unemployment, leaves a chilling note in a rented boat before vanishing near Ballard.
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 sudden disappearance of a young man who left behind the name of Carrol Dean signed to a note in which he said he had committed suicide has created considerable excitement at Ballard, although as far as learned the man was a stranger in the place. On Thursday at 1 o'clock a young man rented a boat from Charles Lake's boathouse at Ballard, went rowing, and did not come back, although the boat, with a note lying in it, was found yesterday. Mrs. T. W. Lake, wife of ex-Mayor T. W. Lake, rented the boat and described him as 18 or 19 years old, 5 feet 7 inches tall, with a slender figure and light hair. Lars Nelson, of the firm of Nelson Bros., fishermen, found the boat tied to a root on the beach at Meadow Point, about two miles north of Shilshole Bay. In it was the following note: 'The one that took this boat, please take it to Ballard boathouse. The remains of man who rented lies back about four rods from railroad track. I committed suicide because I did not have work. Yours, Carrol Dean, 134 Market street, San Francisco.' Constable George Shields and Nelson searched for the body, but the brush and woods were too thick to continue in the dark.
“I committed suicide because I did not have work.”
The economic desperation of the 1893 depression forced many young transients to the end of their rope. Today, the area around Meadow Point and Shilshole remains a place where the city's edges meet the water, though the 'thick brush and woods' have long since been replaced by infrastructure and shoreline developments.
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