A Walk to the Post Office, Then a New Name in Seattle
A Tacoma stepfather recognized Dora Covey in a newspaper notice — arrested in Seattle as 'Dora Stout' after vanishing from a probationary release.
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.
Tacoma, Jan. 23. — Special. — C. R. Tyrrell, stepfather of Dora Covey, who, he says, was arrested at Seattle a few days ago under the name of Dora Stout, says he has been trying ever since he saw the notice of her arrest in the Post-Intelligencer to learn the particulars and have her returned here. The girl is a daughter of his wife by a previous marriage. He says they moved here from Seattle about a year ago, and that the girl was taken out of the Steilacoom asylum on probation about Christmas, and seemed quite well. One day she asked to walk down to the post office here, and that was the last seen of her by the Tyrrells, who reside at 1305 1/2 Tacoma Avenue.
“One day she asked to walk down to the post office here, and that was the last seen of her by the Tyrrells.”
Families once used newspaper notices the way we might use a missing-person alert or social media today, and Dora Covey's case shows how quickly a private medical crisis could become public news. Her stepfather's search also exposes the era's thin line between care, institutionalization and arrest for a young woman on probation from an asylum.
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