The Unlucky Treasurer and the Misbehaving Rifle
A banking executive is accidentally shot in a downtown Seattle gun store, sparking a brief mystery about the weapon's safety.
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.
Mr. Edward E. Downling, treasurer of the Guarantee Loan and Trust Company, was accidentally shot in the leg yesterday afternoon while standing in the gun store of Hardy & Hall, on Third Street. He had dropped into the gun store on business and was standing in the workshop conversing with John L. Duffet, who was engaged in removing the stock from a Winchester repeating rifle. The barrel was in line with the leg, pointed downward. The lever for throwing the cartridges in and out of the magazine worked badly after Mr. Hewitt had loosened the stock, so he gave a quick wrench, which must have cleared the muzzle of the rifle and discharged it. The bullet struck Mr. Downling in the left leg, just above the knee. Drs. Smith and Dawson were summoned, and after a futile effort to recover the ball, had Mr. Downling returned to Providence Hospital where he is doing quite well. The wound is not at all serious, the bullet simply having buried itself in the flesh and Mr. Downling will be brought out around in a few days.
“The lever for throwing the cartridges in and out of the magazine worked badly after Mr. Hewitt had loosened the stock.”
Gun store safety and accidental discharges were common civic perils in late 19th-century Seattle. This story captures the bustling, sometimes hazardous environment of the city's commercial core long before modern safety protocols became standardized.
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