The Heroic Messenger Boy Who Met His End
A fourteen-year-old telegraph messenger faces a fatal operation with extraordinary courage, leaving behind a meticulous final accounting of his affairs.
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.
Guy Webber, the 14-year-old messenger boy who died Wednesday from the effects of an operation performed for a tumor, displayed a degree of heroism that would have been considered remarkable even in a strong, full-grown man. With the knowledge that the operation would be almost sure to prove fatal, he bade his friends good-by and mounted the operating table with as much coolness as if he were merely sitting down to dinner. The tumor had been growing rapidly, crowding the roof of his mouth and extending toward his brain. His father insisted on the surgery, but Guy had quietly told his friends days before that he was going in for an operation that would likely prove fatal. Before he died, his father found in Guy's pocket a note he had written the day before, containing a statement of his account with the A. D. T. Co., along with a list of small sums his fellow messenger boys had borrowed from him. His funeral took place under the auspices of the A. D. T. Co., and his body was laid in Mount Pleasant cemetery.
“I wish those doctors would hurry up. See, there is going to be a snowstorm and I want to get a sleigh ride before the snow is all gone!”
This heartbreaking story from 1894 highlights the precariousness of childhood and labor in 19th-century Seattle. While the A. D. T. company provided the burial, it is a reminder that children were essentially full-time laborers in the city's early economy.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.