The Morbid Crowds at the Morgue
A double murder-suicide sparks a frenzy of gawking in Seattle.
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.
Two bodies, those of Mrs. Mary Jensen and N. A. Sandborn, who killed her and then himself, lay in the dead room at Bonney & Stewart's morgue yesterday. Curious onlookers, driven by a morbid desire to see the victims of violence, crowded the facility throughout the day. The article notes that this public spectacle would likely diminish the attendance at Mrs. Jensen’s formal funeral services, which are set for this morning in the chapel. The case remains a tragedy of local violence, with Sandborn’s final note revealing he had only six dollars to his name for burial expenses, and no word from relatives in response to death notifications.
“Those curious people who always want to see the remains of man, woman or child that come to death by violence, commenced to come early and continued to come all day.”
This report captures a darker side of urban curiosity that remains present in the digital age. The 'morbidly curious' who crowded the morgue in 1893 are the direct ancestors of today’s true-crime consumers, reflecting a long-standing impulse to treat private tragedies as public theater.
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