The City's Cruel Moral Crusade
While Seattle’s leadership touted its own 'progress,' a wave of arrests and displacement targeted the city's Chinese population and the vulnerable on the margins of society.
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.
The Chinesewoman Sue Fay, examined before Justice Smith yesterday on the charge of notorious lewdness, was bound over for trial at the next term of the District Court. The bond was put at $500. This is a movement in the right direction, and should be continued until every prostitute in this city is made to feel that the way of the transgressor is hard, and that plying their vocations publicly will not much longer be tolerated. Six of those unfortunate specimens of humanity are now under bonds for trial at the next term of District Court. The many Chinese gambling dens on Washington Street should also be looked after. Day and night hundreds of Chinese congregate in them, and make that quarter hideous with their howls, and the street is avoided by all respectable citizens.
“The way of the transgressor is hard, and plying their vocations publicly will not much longer be tolerated.”
This 1876 snippet captures an early iteration of Seattle’s long-standing 'moral crusades,' where the city used legal policing to marginalize and displace the Chinese community. Today’s debates regarding homelessness and street-level displacement echo these historic patterns of criminalizing survival in the name of 'respectability.'
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