The Tragedy at the Soap Factory
A local businessman meets a horrific end after falling into a vat of boiling grease.
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.
A horrible tragedy occurred last evening at the soap factory of William H. Scoville at No. 50 Baldwin street. Shortly before seven o'clock, Mr. Scoville stepped into his factory to see that everything was in order previous to his departure for home. As he stood near one of the huge vats in which the fat and refuse are boiled, the contents boiled up, splashing him with the greasy torrents that poured over the top and filling the room with blinding clouds of steam. The force of the incipient explosion showered the rafters with the slimy mass. To escape the scalding volume of boiling grease that threatened to overflow the floor, Mr. Scoville turned and ran, but blinded by the steam that had filled the room, he headed directly for another steaming caldron. His foot struck the platform surrounding the same and his rapid flight had given him too great an impetus to recover his equilibrium. With a despairing shriek of agony, Mr. Scoville plunged into the caldron. Ten feet beneath the bubbling, boiling, hissing surface lay the father of one of that panic-stricken group, and the kind-hearted, generous employer of the others. Fully an hour was occupied in the work of drawing off the half-rendered soap before the prostrate form could be distinguished lying at the bottom of the pit. Gentle hands lifted him tenderly from his slimy bed and bore him away. The scalding immersion had parboiled the dead man's flesh, and none who had known Mr. Scoville in life would have recognized that burned and distorted form.
“With a despairing shriek of agony that rang through the gloomy building with a terror that never will be forgotten by those who heard it, Mr. Scoville plunged into eternal death.”
Industrial accidents of this nature were a grim reality in 19th-century Seattle, highlighting the lack of modern safety regulations. While the 'soap factory' is long gone, the loss of a life under such brutal circumstances serves as a reminder of the dangers faced by workers in the city’s early industrial era.
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