A Mother on the Dock: Four Shots for the Man Who Ruined Her Daughter
Mrs. Gertrude Robb waited at Seattle's Coleman Dock for the steamer Telegraph, called her daughter's seducer by name, and emptied a revolver into him. Then she handed the gun to a bystander and waited for the police.
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.
SEATTLE, June 3. — George Joye, of the steamer Telegraph, was shot four times on the Coleman Dock here last night by Mrs. Gertrude Robb, because she believed the man had ruined her 15-year-old daughter.
On hearing the story of the man's perfidy from her daughter yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Robb, who conducts a lodging house on Washington street, at once armed herself and proceeded to the dock. There she awaited the arrival of the Telegraph, on which Joye and also her husband are employed.
As Joye left the steamer Mrs. Robb called to him. The man unsuspectingly approached the frenzied woman, and when within a few feet of her the latter pulled a revolver and fired two shots in quick succession. Joye went down with a groan, and as he fell the woman fired three more shots, two of them striking the wounded man.
Satisfied that she had avenged her daughter's ruin, Mrs. Robb handed her revolver to a bystander and surrendered herself to a policeman. She was taken to the police station, while Joye was hurried off to the Way Side Mission hospital, where he was attended by three physicians.
It was found that two bullets had pierced the abdomen on the left side, one had entered the back, injuring the spinal cord, while the fourth missile had struck the man's left shoulder. The doctors have little hope for Joye's recovery.
At the police station Mrs. Robb told her story freely to the officers, and her daughter, Miss Cornelia Coleman, confirmed the statement. Joye refused to discuss the case, but informed Chief Delaney that he was willing to marry the girl.
“Satisfied that she had avenged her daughter's ruin, Mrs. Robb handed her revolver to a bystander and surrendered herself to a policeman.”
A working-class mother, a waterfront steamer, and a gun in a handbag: the Robb case is a vigilante answer to a sexual abuse allegation that the 1904 legal system had almost no vocabulary for. Today the same accusation would go to a prosecutor and a courtroom, with a mandatory-reporting framework behind it — slower and less cinematic, but built precisely because private vengeance once looked like the only remedy available. The details that survive also belong to a fifteen-year-old girl who never chose to be in the newspapers.
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