The Great Escape from the Pest House
Afraid of being locked in a 'death pen' for an illness, a Skagit man chose to walk home from Seattle to Mount Vernon over two and a half days.
Friday afternoon Frank Laff arrived home in Mount Vernon from Seattle, having made the entire distance mainly on foot. During his stay in Seattle, Frank went to a hospital to undergo treatment for erysipelas. While there, the hospital at which he was stopping was quarantined, and he was under the impression that he was to be removed to the pest house. Not having any desire to be sequestered in the death pen for an indefinite time, Laff slipped the guard in the night, and, after remaining under cover for four or five days to avoid the certain death of being run into the pest-house, he left Seattle on foot, passing through Snohomish city, arriving on Friday, consuming two and a half days to make the trip. After escaping the quarantine in Seattle, and while still in that city, he was treated by a prominent physician and wholly cured of his attack of erysipelas.
“Not having any desire to be sequestered in the death pen for an indefinite time, Laff slipped the guard in the night.”
Fear of public health institutions—and the harsh conditions of historical 'pest houses'—created a pervasive distrust of medical confinement that resonates in modern anxieties about hospital autonomy. While the treatment of skin infections has advanced significantly since 1889, the survival instinct of a patient fleeing an involuntary quarantine remains a striking testament to human autonomy.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.