The Unraveling of Professor Barrimore
A traveling actor and self-proclaimed 'Professor' leaves a trail of abandoned wives and broken hearts across the Pacific Northwest.
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.
A little over a year ago, the Chicago Comedy Company, a barn-storming organization, drifted to North Yakima and played an engagement of a week or more. In the troupe were a number of good-looking girls, and they must have been attractive, for several of Yakima’s young men were constantly dancing attendance and spending their substance in midnight lunches. The men of the troupe also had winning ways; Harry Barrimore, the leading comedian, arrived and was soon airing himself on the avenue in the phaeton of Mrs. Lillian Schraeder, a gay young widow with auburn locks. So fast did the courtship progress that the week had hardly elapsed before they were married. Barrimore settled down, joined temperance organizations and the Christian Endeavor society, and gave magic lantern entertainments as 'Prof. Barrimore.' Eventually, he and his wife started on a starring tour. Reports came that they were not succeeding well. Several weeks ago, Mrs. Barrimore returned to Yakima alone and destitute. Professor Barrimore has now turned up in Tacoma as a gay Lothario. He met Miss Inex Bergold, a demi-brunette from Kettle Falls, Idaho, and they stayed at the Island House as man and wife. Miss Bergold’s brother eventually found her in Barrimore’s room in Tacoma; after a scene involving threats of shooting and tears, the girl returned to her family. The exposure was too much for Barrimore, who packed his trunk and left for other parts.
“He joined the temperance organizations and the Christian Endeavor society. He gave magic lantern entertainments and was known as Prof. Barrimore.”
This story highlights the volatile social dynamics of boom-era Yakima, where transient performers and newcomers often intersected with established residents in ways that invited scandal. The 'Professor' figure—a self-invented man selling entertainment and morality—remains a classic archetype of the era's opportunistic social climbing.
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