The Watches, Pipes and Toothbrushes of the Unclaimed Dead Go Up for Auction
Two years of the coroner's unclaimed effects — purses, cuff buttons, knives and one gold timekeeper — will be sold at the courthouse door on July 7. Their owners died violently, died poor, or were pulled from the bay and written down as 'unknown.'
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.
County Treasurer Mitten will on July 7 make a sale at public auction in front of the courthouse of all articles of personal property belonging to dead persons that have passed through the hands of the coroner and whose relatives have remained unknown. These articles have accumulated in the last two years and make up a heterogeneous mass, consisting of purses, watches, tooth brushes, keys, knives, combs, packages, pipes and cuff buttons. Some of the articles have but little value, while a few of them are worth purchasing. Among the watches is one gold timekeeper. The men from whom these articles were taken met their death, some from violent means, others died at the poorhouse, while a great many were bodies found in the bay and marked "unknown."
“Some of the articles have but little value, while a few of them are worth purchasing. Among the watches is one gold timekeeper... a great many were bodies found in the bay and marked 'unknown.'”
Every era has its unclaimed dead. In 1894 their pocket watches and pipes went on the block at the courthouse door; today the King County Medical Examiner and the county's indigent-remains program still account for and bury people who die with no one to claim them. The belongings change — the anonymity does not.
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