A Failed Arson Attempt in Everett
A mysterious fuse and a kerosene-soaked room threatened a downtown business block.
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.
Mrs. J. O. Miller, who resides in her building on the second floor of the store on Hewitt Avenue, heard a noise in the room adjoining and upon investigation found in a vacant room a half-gallon can of oil. There was a fuse running through the window to the ground below, the end in the can attached to oil-soaked rags. The fuse had been burned and the rags were smoldering but failed to ignite the kerosene. The side and roof of the building were saturated with oil, and under the building was the end of a fuse attached to more saturated rags. There is no possible theory as to the incendiary. The threatened building is occupied by the Everett Clothing Company and is in the midst of a closely built row of wooden buildings and next to the Tower block, the finest wooden business block in the city.
“The side and roof of the buildings were saturated with oil, and under the building was the end of a fuse.”
Everett was a booming timber town in 1892, and fire was the greatest existential threat to early infrastructure. A failed arson in a dense wooden business district could have leveled the heart of the city.
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