The Mayor’s Raid: Seattle’s Gambling Houses Shut Down in One Night
Mayor Hume and Police Chief Sullivan execute a council resolution, closing every known gaming parlor in the city. Was it moral reform or a power play against saloon owners?
GAMBLING STOPPED The Mayor Closes the Houses In Accordance With the Resolution Passed by the City Council on Monday Night.
The days of public gambling in Seattle are at an end. Mayor Hume issued instructions to Police Chief Sullivan to notify the heads of the gambling houses that in accordance with the resolution passed by council all gaming must stop at once.
Acting on this order from the mayor, the chief detailed Detectives Meredith and Harbee to visit the various places where gambling was carried on and serve formal notice. This was done about 2 p.m. and the effect was magical: lights extinguished, and within a short time the places were apparently deserted. So far as known there was no public gambling carried on in Seattle last night.
Many persons are trying to figure how it all came about. The action taken by council against gaming was unexpected both by the saloon men and the gamblers, while the police department it seems, however, to have been the outcome of the friction which has long existed in council between certain members, and also of the feeling of the saloon men against the gamblers who have been getting money of late on small play that would otherwise have been spent in the saloons for drinks.
The explanations are varied and contradictory, however, that it is hard to get at the exact truth. A combination of circumstances, some of them of a peculiar nature, brought about the action of council and the move made by Mayor Hume.
The question as to whether the closing of the gambling places is permanent or temporary can only be solved through the developments of time. There is a growing belief that the gambling houses will not be allowed to reopen again now that all of them have been closed.
This 1902 crackdown on Seattle's underground economy mirrors modern debates over vice, zoning, and municipal control. Just as today's city councils debate legalizing cannabis or regulating short-term rentals, Mayor Hume’s raid was a decisive moment in defining what kind of city Seattle would be—cleaning up the streets by force, much like contemporary efforts to address homelessness or unregulated gig economies.
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