The Trial of the New Zealand Hall Dancers
A municipal court judge weighs in on the morality of a local lodging house, marking the ongoing crackdown on nightlife and 'bawdy' businesses in 1890s 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.
Most of yesterday afternoon was taken up in the municipal court by the trial of Ruby Adams, one of five women arrested as women of ill-fame. They are employed at the New Zealand dance hall and have rooms overhead in the New Zealand lodging house. The defendant was represented by counsel, who made a strong defense, alleging that the woman made her living as a dancer. The character of the lodging house was questioned and an attempt made to prove it a bawdy house. Judge Glasgow found the woman guilty of prostitution and held that while her room might be a bawdy house under the law, the entire house was not necessarily of the same reputation. The judge did not deliver sentence, but will probably do so after all the women have been tried.
“The defendant was represented by counsel, who made a strong defense, alleging that the woman made her living as a dancer.”
This trial represents the typical 'vice' policing of the era, where moral policing was used to regulate women's movement and economic independence. It echoes the historical pattern of Seattle using nuisance and zoning laws to control nightlife, a battle that persisted from the dance halls of the 1890s to the cabaret and club regulations of the modern city.
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