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Victim of Saloon Shooting Fights for Life

A man shot in an Adelaide saloon weeks ago faces a dire turn as doctors discover overlooked fragments of clothing in his wound.

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.

Frank Elmore, who was shot by William Bitton in the Adelaide saloon on the waterfront on January 15, has suffered a serious relapse and blood poisoning is feared. The wound was severe, with a shotgun charge entering his side and damaging his liver and kidneys. Yesterday, doctors performed an emergency operation to remove three additional shots and fragments of clothing that had been overlooked in the initial treatment. Elmore remains at Providence Hospital while Bitton awaits trial in the county jail.

“The wound was opened, three more shot were taken out and fragments of clothing which had been carried into the wound and which had heretofore been overlooked, were taken out.”

— Printed in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891
Then · 1891135 years apartNow · 2026

Gun violence on Seattle's waterfront was a common feature of 19th-century saloon culture; this story serves as a reminder of the often lethal and brutal consequences of those early frontier-style disputes.

The original page

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-02-08. Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

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About this story

From
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, FEB 8, 1891, Page 8
Rights
Public domain
Place
47.60323, -122.33028 · placed automatically
The paper in the Library of Congress catalog ↗