A Divorce Court Airs Nights Out, Bad Language and a Vanished Household
Elias Westlake sues Emma M. Westlake for divorce, alleging drinking, insults to his business partner, and a December departure for Portland with the furniture.
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.
Elias Westlake yesterday began suit for divorce from Emma M. Westlake, to whom he was married June 14, 1887, and made serious charges against her. He alleged that for more than a year she had failed to keep his home or provide its comforts; that she drank to excess; that she used vile language, railing him with names before friends; and that she came to his place of business and hurled insulting expressions at his partner, James T. Kelly, threatening to break up their business. When asked where she had been, she said she was visiting a friend, but inquiry showed the statement false. For some time before December the Westlakes had kept separate, he owning an interest in the fruit and produce business at the Denver Market and property in Port Angeles. On December 15, Mrs. Westlake is said to have taken the furniture, informed him she intended to leave, and departed for Portland with a large amount of personal effects.
“She used vile language, railing him names before friends.”
Nineteenth-century divorce court was one of the few public stages where a wife's drinking, language and movements could be catalogued for the morning paper. The case also shows how property—furniture, a market business, land in Port Angeles—was disputed when a marriage broke down.
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