Found Destitute on a Float at the Foot of Franklin Street
Fever takes an infant on Sunday and the mother on Monday, and a subscription pays for the burial.
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 member of the Gore family passed away last evening. Every member of the household was suffering with fever when they were found in almost destitute circumstances on a float at the foot of Franklin street. On Sunday the little six-months-old daughter died and was buried by a kind friend. Last evening the mother died, despite careful nursing. S. S. Heath raised enough money by subscription to provide a burial, which occurred this afternoon.
“Every member of the household was suffering with fever when they were found in almost destitute circumstances on a float at the foot of Franklin street.”
The family was living on a float — a moored scow or houseboat — at the foot of Franklin Street, an address that still runs down to Olympia's waterfront. Two deaths in three days in a household with no money for a grave, and the funeral paid for by a neighbour passing the hat, is a reminder that the city's waterfront has long sheltered people on the edge of disaster. Substitute a tent or a broken-down RV under an I-5 overpass and the story has not changed as much as we would like.
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