The Unlucky Life and Death of 'Jim, the Stout'
A satirical poem published in 1888 Seattle chronicled the fictional misfortunes of a man whose attempts to embrace city life ended in total catastrophe.
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 Indians never teched him, nor the bears; and the rattlers never bit him, and the train robbers couldn't git him on the sly. 'Twas a frigid day and drizzly when the Rocky Mountain grizzly ever crep' within a rod of Jim, the Stout; and the catamount and bison never teched him more than phown, which they allus more prefer to do without. But he moved into the city just for fun, and he sold his big six-shooter, and he thought it would not do to keep his gun. But a muscular garroter, who was not a legal voter, robbed him of his watch and wallet like a child. Then a horse-car was overloaded, bust, and Jim he got exploded, and came down considerable promiscuous and riled. And the bunco steerers fleeced him left and right; and the gamin outer hoot him and a slugger tried to shoot him t'other night. And a hoodlum tried to skin him, and an injine ran agin him and a herdic, and a horse-car, and a dray. And agin, a little later, in a rotten elevator, he fell down thirteen stories in one day. And his house it caught afire t'other night, and his gas meter exploded (Jim didn't know that it was loaded). Awful sight! And his house was widely scattered, o'er the country it was spattered, in a shower of chunks and cinders, so they said. Jim was so completely shivered he ain't never been diskivered, but the coroner concluded he was dead.
“Jim was so completely shivered he ain't never been diskivered, but the coroner concluded he was dead.”
While this 1888 poem is a work of hyperbolic humor, it captures a very real Gilded Age anxiety: the transition from the rugged, 'safe' frontier to the chaotic, dangerous, and impersonal reality of a rapidly urbanizing Seattle. Today, that same tension repeats as residents wrestle with the perceived 'terrors' of dense city living—from crime fears to housing instability—in a metropolis that often feels as unforgiving as Jim’s fictional one.
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