The Vicious Old Man of the Jail
After a history of petty crime and violence, a troubled elderly man is committed to the state asylum due to worsening mental illness caused by years of dissipation.
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 Daniels, alias George McDermott, 60 years old, and serving a six-week term in the county jail, was declared insane and committed to the asylum by Judge Langley yesterday. The old man was an all-round petty crook who served two terms in the Oregon penitentiary and one term in Walla Walla. His last offense, committed three weeks ago, was stealing a watch. About four days ago, he developed an unbalanced mind, and as he was habitually profane and vicious, he began to make it lively for the jailer and the prisoners. He grew rapidly worse, becoming more violent, until it was necessary to have him examined. The doctors pronounced his insanity as caused by dissipation. He is destructive, quarrelsome, and irrational, with hallucinations of sight and hearing. According to a statement made in a rational moment, he was born in Ireland, is a widower, and has two boys, the youngest 26 years old, one of whom is serving a fifteen-year term in Oregon for killing a man in Montana.
“His two small, restless gray eyes wandering constantly about the person he is addressing, added to his dirty, slovenly appearance, are strongly suggestive of a blinking old gray sewer rat.”
Public discourse around 'unbalanced' prisoners or those with substance-related behavioral issues often lacked nuance in the 1890s, frequently resorting to dehumanizing imagery like 'sewer rat.' Today, the intersection of criminal justice and mental health services remains a deeply contentious and unresolved issue in Seattle, mirroring the era's struggle to find appropriate institutional housing for the severely ill.
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