A Fatal Feast
A lonely wood chopper, accustomed to 'baching' on meager meals, succumbs to convulsions after being invited to a generous home-cooked dinner.
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.
P. J. Moren died in Gunn's First addition at 10 a.m. yesterday while in convulsions caused by overeating. Moren came from Olympia, where he was engaged in a logging camp. While in this city he has been chopping wood for S. H. Kneeland. Moren has been living in his cabin and 'baching.' For the last two days, upon invitation, he has been eating his meals at Mr. Kneeland's house and has been enjoying the rich cooking of Mrs. Kneeland. It was so different from his former meager board that he ate very heartily. On Saturday evening he returned from a hard day's work and ate an unusual quantity of bread and other victuals. During the night he was taken with severe cramps in the stomach, and suffered great pain. Dr. Gove stated that he gave him medicine to relieve him of his cramps, but had no idea that he was so dangerously ill.
“It was so different from his former meager board that he ate very heartily.”
While likely a tragic case of undiagnosed medical distress or food poisoning, the reporting reflects the era's tendency to moralize or humanize the lives of transient laborers, contrasting the isolated 'bachelor' existence with the domestic ideal of the period.
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