A Painful Step in Belltown
A late-night walk leads to a broken leg and a warning about the precarious state of city sidewalks in 1877.
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.
Last Wednesday evening as Mr. Frank Siddell, of Belltown, was returning to his home late in the evening, he stepped from the boardwalk about opposite the residence of Moses Kaiser, breaking both bones of the leg below the knee. Fortunately, some persons came along just after the accident and conveyed the sufferer to his home and called Dr. Hagley, who set the limb. Mr. Siddell is now doing as well as can be expected, though suffering great pain.
“Last Wednesday evening... he stepped from the boardwalk... breaking both bones of the leg below the knee.”
In 1877, Seattle's infrastructure was literally falling apart, with residents risking their lives on poorly maintained boardwalks. Today, while the wooden planks are gone, the struggle over pedestrian safety and the responsibility for sidewalk maintenance remains a hot-button issue in the city's urban planning discourse.
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