A Fatal Jealousy in the City's Red-Light District
A jilted lover kills a woman at a brothel on West Third Street after she refuses his plea to return to him.
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.
John Kaysen, a 21-year-old mechanic, shot and killed Ada Thorne, an 18-year-old resident of a brothel on West Third Street. Kaysen had known Thorne in Leavenworth, Kansas, roughly a year and a half prior. After she left him and entered sex work in Seattle, Kaysen visited her while intoxicated and attempted to persuade her to leave. When she refused, he fired a revolver five times, hitting her in the head, shoulder, and heart. He then fired at other residents and the responding officer before being overpowered and arrested.
“Kaysen while under the influence of liquor visited her this afternoon and attempted to persuade her to return. Failing in this he drew a revolver and fired five times.”
The tragedy on West Third Street—modernly 3rd Avenue—highlights the extreme vulnerability of women in Seattle's nineteenth-century sex trade. While the newspaper framed this as a crime of 'jealousy' and 'drunkenness,' it reflects the era's brutal intersection of domestic violence and the precarious, often exploitative conditions of frontier urban life.
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