Violent Dispute Ends in D Street Stabbing
A celebration between two roommates turned into a bloody assault, landing one in court and the other under police suspicion.
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.
F. Smith, who attacked his roommate, J. H. Putello, with a large knife yesterday, was today sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and costs. The charge on which Smith was found guilty is assault with intent to do bodily harm. Smith and Putello have been rooming together at a house on D Street. Yesterday the two went out on a celebration, and wound up last night in a bad row. When the police arrived on the scene, Putello was found lying on the floor in a pool of blood and Smith was in hiding in another room. A large butcher knife dripping with blood was found under the bed in the men's room. After Smith was sentenced, a charge of vagrancy was entered against Putello.
“When the police arrived on the scene Putello was found lying on the floor in a pool of blood and Smith was in hiding in another room.”
This incident highlights the precarious living conditions of laborers in early 20th-century Tacoma, where boarding house life often led to volatile, sometimes lethal, altercations. The quick shift from victim to 'vagrancy' suspect for Putello illustrates the punitive approach the legal system often took toward poor, transient workers.
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