Midnight Intruder Strikes Children's Home
A bold burglar is interrupted by the matron of a local children's home after being found standing at the head of her bed.
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.
The boldest burglary committed in the city in months took place at the Children's Home at the corner of Box and Harrison streets yesterday at 12:45 a.m. Mrs. Olivia Morley, the matron, awoke to see a tall, slender man with a mustache standing at the head of her bed, holding her watch. When Mrs. Morley challenged the intruder, he bolted down the stairs and escaped through a back window. Detectives Cave and Philbrick examined the premises and found that the burglar had initially attempted to enter through the basement before prying open a window.
“Standing still as death at the head of the bed was a tall, slender man... his fingers was Mrs. Morley's watch.”
The Children's Home at Box and Harrison was a fixture of Seattle's early social welfare landscape. The alarm caused by a home invasion in the late 19th century captures the vulnerability of institutions located on the edges of a rapidly developing city.
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