Vice on the Rocks: Seattle's Cleanup
A sweeping, if optimistic, report on the courts cracking down on the city's infamous dens of inequity.
So far, the present term of court has been a vast improvement over those which have gone before. While there is still much to be done, a vast amount of good has already been accomplished. Punishment has overtaken many of a class of criminals who had long openly defied the law and boasted of their shrewdness in escaping the penalty of their lawlessness through subterfuge and technicality. As a result, a number of the lowest dens, which have long been known as the abodes of vice of every kind, have, ostensibly at least, toned themselves down to mere saloons. Vice is no longer openly flaunted in the face of the public, and the proprietors of these dives have at least learned to their cost that they, too, are amenable to the law.
“Vice is no longer openly flaunted in the face of the public, and the proprietors of these dives have at least learned to their cost that they, too, are amenable to the law.”
Public safety and the regulation of nightlife were as contentious in 1884 as they are today. While 'vice' in 1884 meant gambling and illicit drinking halls, the tension between aggressive prosecution and the reality of an ever-shifting urban landscape remains a central theme in Seattle’s local politics.
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