Rescued from the Tide Flats
A man found clinging to a pile on the tide flats with no memory of how he arrived there suggests a dark night in the city's underbelly.
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.
There was considerable speculation at police headquarters concerning the manner in which a man claiming to be J. C. Brown, but identified as Wilson, got into the water on the tide flats near the Duwamish dairy. Employees of the dairy heard cries from the bay and found an overcoat on the planks; below in the water, clinging to a pile, they found the man. Wilson, who claimed to be connected with a company in Everett, explained that he had started out with some of the boys from the Rainier Hotel to have some fun, took a few drinks, and then lost his memory. He was well dressed but showed clear signs of dissipation.
“He stated he started with some of the 'boys' from the Rainier Hotel to have some fun, took a few drinks, and then lost his memory.”
The 'night out' gone wrong, ending in a struggle for life in the city's industrial waterfront, is a recurring trope in Seattle history that highlights the precarity of life in the unregulated saloons and boarding houses of early downtown.
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