The City's Water Problem: A Nuisance in the Making
After the Great Seattle Fire, one man's attempt to build a makeshift shelter leads to a messy public legal battle over fire hazards and sanitation.
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.
The nuisance case of John H. Baeck, which has been in the justice court for about two months, was decided yesterday by the defendant pleading guilty to maintaining his premises as a public nuisance and agreeing to abate it. The case involved Baeck's makeshift structure on Front Street. During the investigation, Baeck admitted that he had been mixing gin with hot water on the premises. He stated, 'I cut some bread and put them in the gin-pot on the stove. I put in enough where there was a little fire, and then went to work about trying to put the fire out near the front door. After a while somebody said, "Look at the gin." Another man, Pickwor, from New York, then took a piece of board and tried to snuff the fire, but the board caught fire. Then I ran and took the pot of water to smother the fire and threw it over the pot of gin, which I was boiling up back. When I throwed the water on, the gin shed all over the premises and started the fire.' When asked why he threw water into hot gin, he claimed he didn't know any better. The court ordered him to clear the premises.
“When I throwed the water on, the gin shed all over the premises and started the fire.”
Post-fire Seattle was a lawless, crowded landscape of makeshift shanties and instant business ventures. Baeck's bizarre struggle with gin-soaked boards mirrors the desperate ingenuity—and subsequent safety hazards—that have haunted Seattle's housing crises for over a century.
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