The Price of Sin in Pioneer Seattle
While the city's elite debated municipal elections and infrastructure, a thief made off with a trunk full of coins and jewelry from a house on the margins of society.
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.
Between the hours of one and two o'clock on Saturday night, one of the boldest robberies which we have yet had to chronicle was committed in a house kept by a woman near the corner of Washington and Second streets. While the inmates of the house were eating their lunch in a neighboring restaurant, a thief entered and seized a trunk which contained the woman's money and other valuables. He took it out to the rear of the premises, and breaking it open, rifled its contents, consisting of $214 in coin and a quantity of jewelry. The thief made off with his booty, and will probably escape justice, as no clue to him has been discovered. Thus glides the wages of sin.
“Thus glides the wages of sin.”
This 1875 account captures the casual cruelty of pioneer-era reporting, where the theft of a marginalized woman's livelihood was dismissed as the 'wages of sin.' It serves as a reminder that the safety and dignity of Seattle’s most vulnerable residents have long been treated as secondary to the city's civic posturing.
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