The Tragedy on X Street: A Local Sawyer Takes His Own Life Over Mounting Debt
A desperate father ends his life after being hounded by creditors, highlighting the harsh economic realities faced by Tacoma's working class.
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.
After his wife had bidden him good-bye, Roe Bennett, a sawyer living over Edmonson's grocery at the corner of Eleventh and X streets, shot himself about 8:30 this morning. He died at 12 o'clock. Despondency over failure to secure work was the cause of the deed. Mrs. Bennett had prepared to go downtown and bade her husband good-bye. While she was in the dining room, she heard a shot and found her husband unconscious on the bed. Bennett had been out of work for some time and had become heavily in debt. Mrs. Bennett says that creditors had been pressing their demands, and just before he killed himself, one creditor had sent a collector to the house. Bennett leaves three small children, the eldest 11 years of age. Since her husband had been out of work, Mrs. Bennett had been working at the starch factory to support the family.
“Mrs. Bennett says that lately creditors have been pressing their demands and that her husband had worried over his inability to pay.”
This tragic story reflects the brutal reality of the 1904 economic slump in Tacoma. The pressure of debt and the inability to find work remain persistent, heavy themes in the city's history, echoing modern concerns about housing instability and wage precarity.
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