The Temperance Raid on Yesler Avenue
While the city struggled to recover from the Great Fire, police cracked down on a saloon operating in defiance of the mayor’s emergency prohibition order.
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 saloon that had been running for several days in open defiance of the law and the mayor's proclamation in the Mallory house, at the corner of Second and James streets, was raided yesterday morning and its proprietor, L.E. Longhead, was arrested. The proprietor of the house, C.P. Mallory, was also taken into custody.
Captain Carr, acting on the mayor's official order, instructed his informant, a special officer, to go into the saloon, buy a drink, and then return and report. The man did as he was told, and a few minutes later Captain Carr marched into the saloon and arrested L.E. Longhead, the proprietor, and his bartender, U.A. Iveten. The men were taken to police headquarters at the Armory and were afterwards taken before Justice Steiner, who released them on $500 bonds each to appear and answer the charges of selling liquor without license and in violation of the mayor's proclamation.
Several casks and cases of brandy and a lot of bottled beer found in the saloon were confiscated and taken to the Armory, notwithstanding the offers of Proprietor Longhead to pay for another watch over it and his claim that 'none was sold.' The bar was located in a room in the southeast corner of the house and so hidden that not one in a hundred could find it. A constant stream of men had been noticed trying to get in and out of the house for several days, and as some of them bore unmistakable evidence of having had to the fountain of bourbon, or some other drink, the police were instructed to watch the place.
“A constant stream of men had been noticed trying to get in and out of the house for several days, and as some of them bore unmistakable evidence of having had to the fountain of bourbon, or some other drink, the police were instructed to watch the place.”
Post-disaster recovery often triggers moral panics; in 1889, the Seattle police strictly enforced prohibition to maintain order following the Great Fire. Today, the tension between neighborhood safety, civic regulation, and private vice remains a hallmark of Seattle's evolving urban identity.
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