A Dog Led Seattle to a Dead Newborn—and a Woman in Black
A sugar-sack bundle hidden at Squire Avenue and Barclay Street held a newborn with a crushed skull; the mother vanished into the night.
Last evening a new-born male babe, wrapped in a sugar sack and with its head crushed in, was concealed in the bushes at the corner of Squire Avenue and Barclay Street, by a dog which dragged the sack and its contents out of the bushes and placed them at the feet of its master. The latter reported the matter and the case is now being investigated. If the police could find a certain unknown woman in black they would either have the mother of the child or a person who could throw some light on its parentage.
About 8 o'clock in the evening J. P. Rodrick, who lives at 808 East Street, was standing in the vicinity of Squire Avenue and Barclay Street. He noticed a woman dressed in deep black come down Squire Avenue, cross over Barclay, go up in the bushes and conceal some kind of package or bundle. He paid no attention to the matter at first, but his dog, which had seen the woman deposit the bundle in the brush, dashed across the street, darted up in the bushes and, as the woman disappeared out Squire Avenue in the direction in which she had come, the animal dragged out the bundle and took it to where Rodrick was standing.
To satisfy his curiosity, Rodrick opened the bundle and, on making the discovery that it was a child, reported the fact at once to Coroner Askam, who, with Deputy Sheriff McCorey and E. R. Butterworth, went out and made an investigation. It was found that the child's head had been crushed in, apparently with some blunt instrument. The body was removed to Butterworth's undertaking parlors and will likely be buried today.
Coroner Askam said last night that he had been unable to learn anything which would give him a clue to the identity of the woman who had deposited the bundle in the bushes. The child, he said, weighed about twelve pounds, and he believed it had been born during the afternoon or early in the evening. It had, to all appearances, been killed by the blow which crushed one side of its skull in. There will be no inquest unless there are some further developments.
“If the police could find a certain unknown woman in black they would either have the mother of the child or a person who could throw some light on its parentage.”
The case reads like a grim antecedent to today's safe-haven laws: a newborn abandoned in brush, a mother sought as a criminal, and a community with no clear answer. Then as now, the story exposes how little support existed for women in crisis—and how quickly the law turned on them.
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