The Lamp That Started (And Stopped) a Fire
Patrolman S. O'Neil broke into a North Seattle lodging house at 2 a.m. and smothered a lamp fire before it spread.
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.
North Seattle had a narrow escape Saturday morning from a potential fire. At 2 o'clock a.m., patrolman S. O'Neil was passing the Josephin lodging house at 2015 Front Street when he saw a lamp explode in a front room. The oil covered the floor and ignited, threatening a man fast asleep on the bed. O'Neil broke the door down and managed to extinguish the flames with a heavy rug, preventing a disastrous fire in the building.
“He quickly rushed across the street, up the stairs to the door of the room, and endeavored to awaken the inmates.”
Lodging houses like the one on Front Street (modern-day 1st Avenue) were high-risk zones for fires, a constant anxiety in a city rebuilding from the Great Fire of 1889.
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