A Night at the St. Charles Hotel
A local journalist's late-night attempt to 'clean out' a hotel leads to a public brawl and a courtroom spectacle.
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.
On Monday evening Thomas H. Bates, a character well known in this city, and at one time connected with the Herald, entered the office of the St. Charles Hotel and inquired whether a good room could be had for himself and wife, at the same time registering under the name of Thomas K. Grandis. The clerk replied in the affirmative and assigned him to room 38. Bates then left the house, but in a few moments returned with a woman and both went to the room. Some time afterward the proprietor of the hotel was attracted by the noise proceeding from No. 26. He listened, and, recognizing Bates' voice, hastened downstairs to consult the night clerk upon the feasibility of ejecting the unwelcome guests. While they were talking the matter over, Bates and the lady came down the stairs on their way out. The landlord asked for the key of the room, but Bates refused to return it and threatened in language both foul and profane to return and 'clean out the establishment.' About ten minutes afterward he returned alone, and rushing into the office, made a vicious assault upon the night clerk, who, after receiving several of Bates' blows, turned in and gave the 'true member' a hard thrashing. Bates was in a very short time ready to 'holler enough,' and to beg off most piteously, saying that he had come back to 'clean out the house,' but that he had 'got a head put on him.' The battered gallant, instead of letting the matter rest, posted off and made complaint against the hotel men, charging them with assault and battery. Bates, the complaining witness, came into the court room in a state of gross intoxication, and by his silly and disgusting conduct excited at once the pity and the contempt of all present. The only spark of manhood which he displayed throughout the proceedings was steadfastly refusing to disclose the name of the woman who was his companion in guilt, and whom he designated merely as the 'prettiest woman in Seattle.' Judge Conn finally sent him to jail on a charge of being drunk and disorderly, and the case against the landlord was dismissed.
“The only spark of manhood which he displayed throughout the proceedings was steadfastly refusing to disclose the name of the woman who was his companion in guilt, and whom he designated merely as the 'prettiest woman in Seattle.'”
This incident captures the gritty, lawless underside of 1880s Seattle's hotel culture. The St. Charles Hotel was a fixture of early Pioneer Square, a neighborhood that continues to grapple with the tension between nightlife, public order, and the city's rough-and-tumble reputation.
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