The Displacement of Chinese Women in Early Seattle
Local courts and newspapers in 1876 actively campaigned to criminalize and drive out Seattle's Chinese community, viewing their presence as a blight on property values.
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 crowd of citizens filled the room of Judge Smith yesterday afternoon, witnessing the examination of three Chinese women on a charge of notorious lewdness, preferred against them by one Broderick. The Judge sat through with the examination of two of them, and bound them over for trial at the term of the District Court in January next, under bonds of $500 each. Gute Kay, the third, will stand her examination at 10 a.m. today, and if sufficient cause is shown, no doubt Judge Smith will send her up. The Chinese prostitutes are becoming a nuisance. The end of Washington street is infested with hordes of them. It is high time they were driven out, or set back from that locality. Wherever they cluster, property depreciates one-third below its actual value. Washington street would become one of the best in the city for commercial purposes if the dens of iniquity were removed.
“Wherever they cluster, property depreciates one-third below its actual value. Washington street would become one of the best in the city for commercial purposes if the dens of iniquity were removed.”
This reporting is a stark reminder of the state-sanctioned xenophobia that fueled the anti-Chinese riots in the 1880s. Today, these historical patterns of 'nuisance' framing and property-value arguments serve as a sobering mirror to how modern urban development rhetoric can still be weaponized against vulnerable populations.
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