The Banker's Scandalous Opera Alley Spree
A Coupeville bank cashier’s disappearance turns into a public disgrace as reports emerge of his lavish debauchery in Tacoma’s red-light district.
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.
Cashier and Manager Thomas S. Heals of the Coupeville State Bank, formerly of Detroit, who was reported in a Coupeville dispatch Saturday as being absent to arrange for currency, has been leading a gay life in Tacoma for several days. It is believed he spent several hundred dollars in a disreputable district known as Opera Alley. He rented a house on the alley and banqueted several of his friends and their consorts. He was asleep in his headquarters in the disreputable district when the Post-Intelligencer announced that the Coupeville bank had failed to open. During his wild career here, Heals went to Portland, returning with a woman who was installed on Opera Alley. She was arrested for drunkenness and creating a disturbance, and Heals is credited with paying her fine. Champagne flowed freely, and it is estimated the bill Heals paid was a big one, one wine bill aggregating over $500.
“He was asleep in his headquarters in the disreputable district when the Post-Intelligencer announced that the Coupeville bank had failed to open.”
Bank failures were a common source of civic trauma in the 1890s, but this account shifts from financial crisis to moral panic by centering the cashier's nightlife. The mention of 'Opera Alley' recalls the lost, gritty geography of early Tacoma, a common sight in archives of late 19th-century boomtowns.
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