The Piano, the Pool Table and the Bar: A Roadhouse Wife's Last Hand
Julia Lillis says her husband has gambled and drunk away the takings at the Hyde Park House, the resort he keeps by the South Seattle race track, and now means to sell the furniture out from under her. A judge froze it first.
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.
Another home where there is trouble is the Hyde Park house, in South Seattle near the race track. Mrs. Julia A. Lillis, the wife of Patrick J. Lillis, who keeps the resort, yesterday applied to the superior court for a divorce on the ground of cruelty, saying that her spouse has spent all his ready cash in revelry and gaming and now wishes to convert the community property into coin with which to continue the fun.
The Hyde Park house is well furnished with a piano, pool table and bar, and the farm on which it is built is valuable and well stocked. The house and grounds are the only community property, and when Judge Langley heard of Mrs. Lillis' complaint yesterday he made an order restraining Lillis from selling or otherwise disposing of anything about them until further order of the court.
“Her spouse has spent all his ready cash in revelry and gaming and now wishes to convert the community property into coin with which to continue the fun.”
Before Seattle had a dense downtown of licensed bars, it had roadhouses like the Hyde Park House out by the race track — drink, cards, a piano and a pool table under one roof. The modern echo is in the family-law filings: when a small business and a marriage are the same ledger, the first move in a divorce is to freeze the assets before somebody sells the furniture.
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