The Mysterious Death of a Traveling Book Agent
After M.T. Connellan, a well-dressed encyclopedia salesman, was found dead on a hotel floor, the man who brought him there was arrested, leaving Seattle to wonder about a life of secrets.
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.
A shocking tragedy marked the 12 o'clock hour last night. At 11:30, Officer Phillips, patrolling Main street between Commercial and South Second, encountered a well-dressed man who was apparently drunk, in the company of a stranger. Something aroused the officer's suspicion, and he stopped the two men. The sober stranger explained that his friend was drunk and he wanted to take him to the Arlington Hotel. Officer Phillips and Patrolman Adair assisted in taking the man to the hotel. He was in such a condition that the night clerk refused to let him to his room, citing instructions not to accept drunk guests. The officers then took the now-insensible man to the station and laid him on the floor in the corridor. The stranger, who had accompanied them, left for the city jail. When the officers returned, they noticed the man was frothing at the mouth. A doctor was summoned, but upon arrival, pronounced the man dead, likely from an active poison such as morphine. Letters found on the body identified the man as M. T. Connellan, a canvasser for an encyclopedia who had recently returned from England. While he had a wife, a mysterious shorthand letter addressed to a colleague suggests there was much about his personal life that remained unspoken. The stranger who accompanied him to the hotel, Thomas Hopkins, a dishwasher, was arrested as a witness.
“It was quite evident that he had died from the effects of some active poison, probably morphine. He had not struggled at all and his features showed no evidence of suffering.”
This incident captures the transient, high-stakes nature of 1880s Seattle, where book agents and laborers moved through a bustling, often unforgiving city. Today, the corner of Main and Second remains a dense urban space, though the transient boarding houses of the era have been replaced by the complex dynamics of modern downtown redevelopment.
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