The Padlocking of Whitechapel
Chief of Police Rogers orders the eviction of forty-five women living in Seattle's historic red-light district.
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.
Chief of Police Rogers caused all the objectionable women who have been accustomed to sit at windows on South Sixth, and King and Black Chapel to 'take themselves hence' yesterday afternoon. In all there were about forty-five women who left their rooms. Capt. Hogie was detailed to do the work, and so effectively did he carry out instructions that when Chief Rogers inspected the places in the evening they were all padlocked.
“So effectively did he carry out instructions that when Chief Rogers inspected the places in the evening they were all padlocked.”
This 1894 sweep of the 'Whitechapel' district—an area once concentrated near modern-day Pioneer Square and the International District—reflects a recurring Seattle pattern of using police power to displace vulnerable populations under the guise of civic morality. The district name itself, borrowed from Victorian London, highlights the era's tendency to view its own marginalized neighborhoods as equivalent to international centers of poverty and crime.
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