The Divorce That Recalled Acting Governor Laughton's 'Spicy Regime'
Mrs. Marshall K. Snell's divorce exposed her husband's intimacy with his typewriter—Miss Bertha Denton, once the acting governor's private secretary.
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The spicy regime of Acting Governor Laughton is again recalled through the divorce recently granted to Mrs. Marshall K. Snell, of Tacoma, who charged that her husband, a prominent lawyer, was unduly intimate with his typewriter, Miss Bertha Denton, who will be remembered as Laughton's private secretary. During the military encampment at American Lake, Miss Denton was ordered out of the lines late at night, at the instance of Mrs. Snell, and was conducted to Tacoma by a gallant general.
“her husband, a prominent lawyer, was unduly intimate with his typewriter, Miss Bertha Denton, who will be remembered as Laughton's private secretary.”
A divorce case that spilled into the statehouse and a military encampment—the 1892 version of a political sex scandal. The detail that Mrs. Snell had to have her rival removed from the camp shows how private grievances became public theater.
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