The Women Who Refused to Look Away
Tacoma’s most prominent ladies rally behind a betrayed young woman in court, challenging Seattle’s apathetic society to stand with her.
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.
To the M.C. T.L. and Christian Women of Seattle:
We believe the record of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union shows conclusively that it aims to keep the standard of pure womanhood up among the stars. We also believe the time has come when it shall no longer be truthfully said that 'women are their own worst enemies,' that they will more readily condone sin in men than in women, and will more persistently labor for the reformation of fallen men than of fallen women.
The case on trial in our district court is one in which all our Christian women should feel interested. A young girl, betrayed and ruined, attempts to seek legal redress for some of the wrongs she has endured.
Several of the best women in Tacoma have done what they could for the unfortunate girl, and now that the case has come to trial, with all its dreadful details, they ask the active sympathy of our philanthropic women by their presence in the courthouse during the progress of the trial.
There is always an element crowding our halls of justice as spectators whose very presence seems contaminating, who sneer at the virtue of women and laugh at the vices of men. The wives and mothers of Seattle show this class their spirit of determination to protect our voting womanhood from human vampires by unfalteringly lending aid by their presence to the women who, perforce, are attending this trial; as also to prove, not alone to this unfortunate young girl, but to other young girls who have atoned, that there are women ready...
This 1894 appeal highlights a rare moment of cross-city female solidarity in the Pacific Northwest, where Tacoma’s temperance leaders publicly shamed Seattle’s elite for their voyeuristic indifference to a woman’s legal battle. It mirrors modern discussions about 'victim-blaming' and the importance of community support systems for survivors of sexual violence, framing public presence as a form of political resistance.
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