The Brotherhood of the Burned Hotel
A Seattle Knight of Pythias shares a stirring tale of camaraderie and sacrifice in the aftermath of a fatal fire, framing friendship as a radical, life-saving act in a city grappling with rapid change.
In a lecture delivered at the installation of officers for Queen City Lodge No. 10, Past Chancellor Fred Page Tustin spoke on the virtues of the fraternal order. Referencing the ancient story of Damon and Pythias, Tustin anchored his speech in a modern tragedy: the death of Samuel Holder Hines. During the catastrophic fire at the Spotswood Hotel in Richmond, Virginia, in December 1870, Captain Hines had reached safety but, upon learning his friend Erasmus Ross was still inside, returned into the burning, smoke-filled building. Both men perished together. Tustin invoked this sacrifice as the ultimate example of the order's creed, urging the members in Seattle to embrace such radical devotion to one's neighbor, arguing that the city was crying out for a truer, deeper humanity in an era defined by poverty and isolation. He challenged the audience to look past alms-giving toward a genuine 'brotherhood' that acts as a refuge for the distressed.
“The busy world is sighing for a truer friendship and a better charity. The prosperous and fortunate have friends, but when reverses come, when misfortune... and poverty, disease and famine drive them like beggars from door to door, where, then, are their friends?”
Tustin's speech highlights an era of 'mutual aid'—private fraternal organizations providing the safety net that the state had yet to establish. Today, as Seattle faces a housing and social isolation crisis, his call to build 'a grand moral edifice' to protect the vulnerable resonates as a historical predecessor to modern grassroots community-support networks.
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