A Tragic Death in the Shadow of the Jail
A young bride, ostracized by society, dies of grief while her husband awaits extradition from the county jail.
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.
Overwhelmed with grief because of her husband's predicament and ostracized on every hand as the wife of an inmate of the county jail, Mrs. Benita Goldman, wife of Fred M. Goldman and a bride of two months, died Thursday in Seattle of what the physicians pronounce a broken heart. Mrs. Goldman expired at noon in her apartments at 2040 Thirteenth Avenue after a brief illness. She was formerly Miss Bonita Ben-Hayon and the disinherited daughter of a wealthy Cuban family, which disowned her after she married Goldman against the will of her parents. When it was learned at the county jail, where Goldman has been a prisoner for three weeks awaiting the arrival of extradition papers from Los Angeles, that the prisoner's wife was dying, Jailer McLeod placed him in charge of Deputy Sheriff Bunce, giving him permission to go to his wife's bedside. Before he arrived, his bride of a few weeks was dead. When Goldman entered the room and was told of his wife's demise, he fainted and fell into the arms of Bunce, who was standing nearby. Mrs. Goldman's mother was at her bedside when she died, having hastened to this city from San Francisco upon learning of her daughter's precarious condition. 'The woman undoubtedly died of a broken heart,' said Dr. Harrison, one of the physicians in attendance upon Mrs. Goldman. 'She was laboring under some overwhelming grief, which defied all our efforts, and the collapse came despite all we could do.'
“The woman undoubtedly died of a broken heart. She was laboring under some overwhelming grief, which defied all our efforts.”
This account reflects the harsh social stigma attached to the families of the incarcerated at the turn of the century. Today, Seattle and Walla Walla advocates emphasize that punishing families through social isolation or the denial of medical visitation remains a key issue in modern criminal justice reform.
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