At 99, She Goes Back to Court: The Rent Is Hers, and the Agents Are at Her Door
Mary Steele already won a decree and the income from a $45,000 property portfolio stretching from Yesler Avenue to Kansas City. Now she says her husband's agents are pocketing the rents, selling her furniture and trying to put her out of her own house.
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.
Mary Steele, the wife of D. H. Steele, who once lived in Seattle, is bound to have a divorce, and having been refused one by Judge Humes three months ago, she filed a complaint against her husband in the superior court yesterday evening. Her allegations are practically the same as in the former complaint, but instead of asking for her share of the community property, she only asks that her husband be required to surrender it to her — a contention which she alleges the former division did not recognize.
The Steeles are not violently unhappy. They prefer to live apart. Mrs. Steele lives in Seattle and her husband lives in Montana when he is at home, but Mrs. Steele retains all knowledge of his whereabouts, according to the complaint. They have about $45,000 worth of real estate scattered from Kansas City to West Seattle, which rents for about $750 or $800 a month. It consists, Mrs. Steele alleges, of one lot on Yesler avenue worth $8,000; one lot near the [Olympic] hotel, worth $8,000; several lots in West Seattle, of little value; three lots in Seattle, worth $27,000; a lot in Kansas City, worth $5,000, and twenty-seven acres of land in British Columbia, worth $3,000.
By the decree of Judge Humes Mrs. Steele was given the lot on Yesler avenue and the income from all of the Seattle property, about $400 a month. She says that her husband has gone out of the state himself, but has left agents who collect the rent and leave her to shift for herself — a hard matter for a woman 99 years old. Also, she alleges, the agents want to turn her out of her own house and sell her furniture by her husband's direction. She asks that they be restrained from collecting the rent away from her and from turning her out on the world.
By the same suit as for the restraining order, but as a different cause of action, Mrs. Steele alleges that she married her husband in Brockville, Canada, thirty years ago; that he has ill treated her and tried to get her arrested for petty larceny, and refused to provide for her — all of which, she says, entitles her to a divorce.
The Steeles have one child, a son now a big grown man, who lives in Portland.
In her former complaint Mrs. Steele accused her husband of pulling a revolver and threatening her life, but the charge was not substantiated at the trial.
“She asks that they be restrained from collecting the rent away from her and from turning her out on the world — a hard matter for a woman 99 years old.”
A 99-year-old woman fighting off absentee agents who collect the rent and want her furniture out of the house is a startlingly familiar Seattle story. Then as now, the real estate was scattered and valuable while the person actually living in it had the least control over it — and the courthouse was the only lever she had.
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