A Bitter Divorce in the Elite Circles
A daughter of a prominent boiler inspector files for divorce, revealing a marriage marred by extreme cruelty, jealousy, and controlling behavior.
The sequel to the elopement and marriage of G. G. McNamara and Miss Alice I. Bullett, nearly six years ago, is a suit for a divorce filed by Mrs. McNamara in the superior court. She makes sensational charges of cruelty against her husband. Mrs. McNamara is the daughter of Boiler Inspector C. W. Bullett. The pair eloped from Seattle to Port Townsend in 1888. She states that within a few months of the honeymoon, her husband began to treat her with extreme cruelty, the result of insane and apparently groundless jealousy. She alleges he would accuse her of criminal intimacy with every gentleman of her acquaintance. He would subject her to harsh exhibitions of temper at all times, such as blowing tobacco smoke in her face. When she visited her sick brother in Seattle, her husband met her with vile abuse and refused to allow her to return to see him before he died. Judge Lane has issued a restraining order to prevent the husband from disposing of property.
“She alleges he would accuse her of criminal intimacy with every gentleman of her acquaintance.”
Divorce filings in this era were essentially public declarations of private suffering, written in a formal legal register that couldn't hide the domestic abuse described. These records remain a vital, albeit painful, way to map the realities of 19th-century domestic life in Seattle.
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