A Brutal End for a Balky Horse
A North Seattle man kills his horse after it refuses to move, drawing the attention of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
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.
Detective Roberts was in North Seattle yesterday investigating a case of alleged cruelty to animals. It seems that I. Saunders, who lives near the Lake Union sewer tunnel shaft, was driving a horse that balked. He could not make the animal go, so he hit him behind the ear with a stick. The animal fell down dead. The matter will be brought before C. T. Conover, president of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, this morning. Saunders told Detective Roberts that the horse was an old hand at balking, and had been put in his charge to see if he could use him.
“He could not make the animal go, so he hit him behind the ear with a stick. The animal fell down dead.”
Public outrage over animal welfare in the 1890s reflects the city's transition from a working-frontier mentality to an urban society with codified civic moralities. Today's animal rights advocacy in Seattle has deep roots in these Victorian-era efforts to regulate behavior in the public square.
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