The Story Flora Sullivan Chose to Tell
After a suicide attempt at Seattle's Columbia House, Flora Sullivan wanted it known that her husband was not the cause—another man was.
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.
Flora Sullivan, the young woman who attempted suicide in the Columbia House recently, yesterday laughingly admitted to a Post-Intelligencer reporter that she had been very near death's door, but said she did not want people to think she took the poison on her husband's account. She said she sent him and his trunk home about two months ago, and that it was another man that caused her to take the poison. She is not going to do it again.
“She did not want people to think she took the poison on her husband's account.”
Then as now, a woman's private crisis could become public copy, but Sullivan got to shape one part of the story herself. The brief is a reminder that 1890s papers reported domestic pain as scandal—and that the people at the center sometimes answered back.
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