A Prospector's Final Twenty Cents
Penniless and despondent, a traveler takes his own life in a Seattle lodging house after a failed attempt to mask his actions as an accident.
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.
G. Haywood, a prospector reduced to twenty cents in cash, committed suicide in the Great Northern lodging house by taking five grains of morphine. He attempted to disguise the act by replacing the powder in a quinine capsule, but Coroner Horton confirmed the substance as morphine. Haywood's few possessions included a compass, chemical equations, and an address in British Columbia. He was found in his bed, having died between Wednesday night and Thursday morning. His remains were taken to Bonney & Stewart's undertaking rooms.
“Haywood had used considerable cunning in planning his death.”
Lodging houses were the primary safety net for itinerant workers in late 19th-century Seattle. This tragedy reflects the hidden human cost of the boom-and-bust economic cycles that defined the Pacific Northwest's frontier era.
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