The Sudden End of a Pioneer Printing Treasurer
A quiet visit to an old friend at the Arlington Hotel turned tragic when a beloved local businessman collapsed mid-story.
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.
George W. Young, secretary and treasurer of the Pioneer Printing Company, died suddenly yesterday of heart failure at the Arlington Hotel. Mr. Young was 62 years of age and leaves a wife and four children. Yesterday afternoon at 1 o'clock, Mr. Young called at the Arlington hotel to see his old friend Isaac Dobson, who is one of the owners of the hotel building. Mr. Young and Mr. and Mrs. Dobson chatted pleasantly for half an hour. In one of his stories, he recalled an incident of his boyhood in England where a gallant shoemaker helped a woman in a fight, only for the wife to rip the shoemaker's coat in a reversal of feeling. All laughed heartily when the story was finished, but suddenly Mr. Young complained of not feeling well. Mr. Dobson suggested he lie down in room 121. As soon as he had lain down he gave evidence of being deathly sick, and Dr. Raymond was summoned, but medical aid was of no avail. An hour later, Mrs. Young and her daughter, Alice, arrived at the hotel to visit, only to be horrified to find the husband and father dead. Mr. Young was born in London in 1832 and was a founder of the Church of the Blessed Hope in West Seattle.
“The injured wife, seeing her liege lord getting the worst of the fight, underwent a revulsion of feeling and, slipping up behind her gallant defender, seized the tails of his best Sunday coat in her hands and with one wide sweep of her arms ripped the garment right up to the collar.”
The Arlington Hotel is long gone, reflecting the rapid churn of downtown Seattle’s early architecture. Stories like Mr. Young’s remind us how fragile life was in the 1890s, when 'heart failure' was a sudden, quiet end that could happen in the lobby of a friend’s building.
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