Smallpox and Scandal at the Pest House
Mayor Ronald rejects calls to remove the Board of Health despite documented brutality and neglect at the city's quarantine facility.
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.
Mayor Ronald filed his findings in the case against the board of health, acknowledging that the board's management of the smallpox pest house was riddled with negligence and brutality. The investigation revealed that a patient named Cummings was left without physician care for days, dying in a state of severe infection, only to be buried in a shallow cow path near the hospital. While the mayor roundly criticized the board's indifference and their reliance on incompetent health officers, he ultimately decided against their removal, stating that under the city charter, 'legal cause' had not been sufficiently proven to justify an arbitrary firing.
“In one instance vomit was allowed to remain on the floor... and the window sill by the head of the bed... was covered thickly with scabs from former smallpox patients.”
The horror of the 1892 'pest house' conditions serves as a grim reminder of Seattle's early struggles with public health infrastructure and the political accountability of unelected administrative boards.
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