The Bride Who Wasn't
A Norwegian woman who traveled from Minneapolis to Seattle on the promise of marriage finds herself at the police station instead.
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.
Observant persons on Front Street near the Grand Hotel yesterday afternoon had their attention called to a small man with glasses and a fairly good looking Norwegian girl, who were having a heated conversation. K. W. Johnson, a man of some means, and Dora Jacobson, a foreignness, were the principals in this strange case, and the trouble lay in the difference of opinion as to the necessity of a marriage certificate. Miss Jacobson informed him that he was a cruel man, that he had brought her from Minneapolis under promise of marriage, used her for a plaything, and then thrown her aside. Johnson claimed he corresponded with her only to hire a governess for his daughter. Miss Jacobson told the reporter: 'Mr. Johnson wrote, saying that although he was not wealthy he was not poor and thought I would make him a good wife. I wrote back that if he could overlook my past, I would do my best to make him a faithful wife. Mr. Johnson sent me a ticket and I came to Seattle. The next morning he put me in a carriage and sent me to the Sarah B. Yesler, telling me that he had business to attend to. The next thing he did was to send me a letter in which he agreed to give me a ticket to Minneapolis or San Francisco, but the promise of marriage was never mentioned.' Johnson declared he never asked her to marry him and that she was merely trying to extract money. The woman swore out a warrant before Justice Humphrey on a charge of seduction, and Mr. Johnson was put under $250 bonds.
“I came to this country one year ago last November, thinking that I might earn my living by teaching German and French.”
Long-distance romance and the risks of modern travel take on a different, darker tone in the context of 1891, when a woman's vulnerability upon arriving in a new city was often exploited. This case, ending in a seduction charge at the local police station, highlights the precarious position of women moving across the country in the Gilded Age.
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