A Lonely Death and a Superstitious Ritual
When Mrs. Emily Williams took her own life in a Seattle boarding house, she covered the mirrors in her room, revealing a grim adherence to old-world folklore.
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.
Mrs. Emily Williams, who was found dead in her room at the mission lodging house on lower Commercial street, Thursday, committed suicide. While investigating, Coroner Horton noted that the large mirror above her bed and the glass in her bureau had been covered with cloths. To many there would have been nothing significant about this, but Dr. Horton remembered the ancient superstition that upon death, one should hide one's image from the glass. Mrs. Williams, a native of Bristol, England, was apparently suffering from an incurable disease and was deeply superstitious. Her belongings included letters from her husband, Dave, who had told her to 'go her way' while he went his. She was buried at Duwamish cemetery with nothing but a small wooden headboard to mark her resting place.
“She was clever enough to do away with all trace of the poison used.”
This somber report highlights the precarious lives of transient lodgers in late 19th-century Seattle. The practice of 'veiling the mirror' reflects a common cultural obsession with death that, while fading from mainstream custom, still haunts the archival record of urban loneliness.
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