The Meat Market Collector's Secret Life
A trusted employee at a Seattle meat market vanishes, leaving behind a trail of debt and a hidden history of gambling arrests.
The many friends of James Heffernan, collector for Schoentag & Roll Company's meat market on Second street, near Yesler avenue, who disappeared last Thursday morning, leaving his employers to straighten out his accounts, may be surprised to hear that he gambled and was a prisoner in the police court less than two months ago. At that time he gave an assumed name, and, with the nine others who were arrested with him, pleaded guilty and escaped with a fine of $12. The game he played was black jack, and the place he was arrested was in the back room of the billiard hall in Clancy block, at the corner of Washington and South Third streets. Heffernan was a good-hearted boy, and had driven a meat cart so long that people thought he was above appropriating his employers' money, and aroused general attention by his recklessness in driving around corners. It was learned at the market yesterday that the shortage would amount to between $150 and $200. No trace has been obtained of him.
“Heffernan was a good-hearted boy, and had driven a meat cart so long that people thought he was above appropriating his employers' money.”
The intersection of Washington and 3rd Avenue South remains a historic core of Pioneer Square, though the billiard halls and meat markets of 1895 have long since been replaced by modern urban development. The story of a 'good-hearted' employee caught in a cycle of gambling debt remains a timeless, tragic archetype of the city's precarious labor history.
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