The Neighborhood Terror of Kitsap County
A man’s year-long campaign of property destruction and violent threats against his own family members lands him in a King County jail cell.
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.
Jeremiah Magnan of Kitsap County was committed to the King County jail by Justice D.L. Marsh. The commitment papers provide a detailed history of the affair. It appears that Magnan and his brother, the husband of Flora E. Magnan, live on adjoining farms in Green Precinct. There has been bad blood between the brother’s family and Jeremiah, leading to a series of overt acts. The commitment states that on December 20, 1888, Jeremiah used threatening language toward Flora; on February 3, he threatened to burn her house; on February 4, he threatened to murder her husband and herself. On that same night, he demolished her stove and chimney with an axe and cut a hole in her roof over the dining table. By April 30, he began throwing her farming implements and utensils into the public highway. Justice Marsh found him guilty of every act and ordered him to provide a $500 bond to keep the peace. Magnan refused to pay out of spite and was sentenced to one year in jail. As there is no jail in Kitsap County, he is serving his time in Seattle.
“He got real mad and with an axe demolished her stove and her chimney, and then aided the ventilation of her house by cutting a hole in her roof.”
This 1889 account highlights the legal difficulties of domestic harassment in a time when rural policing was virtually nonexistent. The reliance on neighboring counties to hold prisoners reminds us of how centralized Seattle’s infrastructure became, a trend that still dominates regional legal and housing policies today.
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