The Divorce Consultation That Did Not Go As Planned
A determined woman visits a Seattle attorney seeking help to evict her husband, only to be told that the law does not work quite the way she imagined.
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 hollow-eyed looking woman, about forty years old, came to a lawyer's office on Griswold Street and asked the lawyer if he could help her secure a divorce. He replied that he could. 'Well, I don't want a divorce, sir,' she replied. 'What I want is for him to leave. And he won't.' 'Well, he won't seem any yet.' 'What shall I do then?' asked the lawyer. 'Can't I put an axe on him and are him out?' she answered. He gently replied that he was afraid the authorities would have something to say about that. 'Well, if I was a lawyer, I would put him out in an hour. I know I could,' she protested. He shook his head. 'Well, all right,' she said, as she started to go, 'I thought lawyers had to help one up. I always held my head high since I passed the hurdle, but this thing has opened my eyes. You don't know any more than I do, sir, and I don't know anything. Good day, sir!'
“I thought lawyers had to help one up... but this thing has opened my eyes.”
This 1876 account of a domestic power struggle highlights the lack of agency women had over their own property and homes, a theme that echoes in contemporary Seattle's ongoing housing precarity and the legal hurdles of eviction and domestic stability.
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