Tragedy at the Work Bench
James Harris, a pioneer tin-smith, collapses and dies suddenly while laboring at his shop on the corner of Columbia and Third.
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.
James Harris, of the Clark-Harris Company, tinners, at Columbia and Third streets, died at his residence, 810 Seventh street, yesterday afternoon at 4:30 o'clock, from a sudden stroke of apoplexy. Mr. Harris went to work as usual yesterday morning, and was at his work bench about 9 o'clock, when the shock came. He sank down insensible and, despite the efforts of Dr. J. B. Loughary and Dr. Samuel J. Holmes, died later that day. Harris was a native of New York who had moved to Seattle five years prior, just five days before the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 which destroyed his initial business. He leaves behind a wife and two children.
“Mr. Harris went to work as usual yesterday morning, and was at his work bench about 9 o'clock, when the shock came.”
While this is a tragic individual account, it captures the precarity of life for laborers in the 1890s, who lacked the social safety nets we expect today. The location, Columbia and Third, remains a bustling downtown intersection in modern Seattle, though the tin shops have long since given way to glass and steel.
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