The Waterfront Heist of the Great Seattle Fire
While the city burned and residents fled for their lives, a brazen thief assaulted a woman on the wharf to steal her belongings—only to be caught when she identified him in court.
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.
On Monday, a man named Oliver Beaton was arrested on suspicion of having stolen a bundle containing a valuable sealskin sacque found in his possession. He stoutly denied stealing the bundle, but as he could not prove ownership, he was held for trial. Yesterday, a woman named Mrs. J. Gordon appeared in Justice Millar's court and identified the goods as her property. She told the court that during the fire, Beaton reached up to her where she was watching her goods on one of the wharves and assaulted her. He forced a bottle of whisky into her mouth and made her drink. She was so frightened that she did not know when he carried off the bundle, and had given up all hope of recovering it when she heard that it had been found by the police. Beaton will have an examination on a charge of grand larceny this morning.
“She was so frightened that she did not know when he carried off the bundle, and had given up all hope of recovering it.”
This account offers a grim look at the chaos during the 1889 Great Seattle Fire, a foundational event for the city's modern infrastructure. Today, the site of the wharves where this occurred is buried under the modern Pioneer Square and waterfront district, reminding us that Seattle's commercial heart was built directly over the ashes of such opportunistic crime.
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