The Tragedy at Virginia Street
A grisly discovery on the Seattle waterfront exposes the hidden desperation of 1889.
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 nude body of a murdered infant was found at the water's edge on the beach at the foot of Virginia street about 8 o'clock yesterday morning. The discovery was made by three little boys, George and David Mutch and Alfred Isobeuia, who were playing on the beach. Their attention was attracted to a box, partly enveloped in a gunny-sack, which they removed, and, finding there was something in the box, they upset it. To their astonishment, there rolled out the naked body of an infant. Patrolman George Sheehan was notified and reported it to police headquarters and to Coroner Smart. The coroner decided an inquest was unnecessary, and the body was removed to Ross & Co.'s undertaking parlors. Coroner Smart is of the opinion that the child was murdered almost immediately after birth. A wound on the top and right side of the head, evidently made by a poker or some other blunt instrument, shows how the deed was committed. The body was wrapped in a piece of white flannel blanket, around which had been wrapped part of a red comfortable that appeared charred, suggesting an attempt to burn the body. The box had been used for grapes and bore the markings of both the Eldorado California Fruit Company and the Northwestern Fruit Co. of Seattle. While the case remains a mystery, it is feared the sea cast up the evidence of some Seattle woman's desperation.
“It is very probable, however, that the sea cast up the evidence of some Seattle woman's shame and crime.”
This 1889 report offers a grim reminder of how social stigma and lack of reproductive support forced women into impossible choices. The site of this discovery, the foot of Virginia Street, is now the bustling, high-density waterfront near the Pike Place Market, a space that has transformed from a site of desperate disposal to one of the city's most visible public destinations.
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