Blood on the Ballroom Floor
A dance in Belltown ends in a violent altercation and a tragic suicide.
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.
At a ball in Belltown, Seattle, Saturday night, a young man named A. Bardnell got into an argument over a dispute regarding a dance. Hard words were exchanged. Bardnell drew a knife, rushed his opponent, and inflicted a dangerous wound. The scene in the hall was sickening; women fainted as the victim fell into pools of blood. A panic followed among the party. Bardnell escaped, but soon after, he was confronted by an officer in a nearby alleyway. To avoid arrest, he completed the tragedy by shooting himself through the head.
“The scene in the hall was sickening; women fainted as the victim fell into pools of blood.”
Belltown today is a dense urban neighborhood, but in 1883 it was the outskirts of a growing town. The violence recorded here—a sudden, lethal flare-up at a social gathering—contrasts with the modern luxury towers standing on the same streets today, though the area remains a center for nightlife and social friction.
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