The Midnight Screecher: A Hotel Guest's Plea for Quiet
A fed-up boarder at a leading Seattle hotel demands justice—and a good night’s sleep—after being serenaded for nearly two hours by a crying infant.
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.
Remembering that we were once a child, we are disposed to overlook childish faults. As we before remarked, we were once a child—a blue-eyed, golden curly-haired, romping, rollicking shaver. That is all right as far as it goes. Our mama and papa lived private, and the individual who is at present engaged at the other end of this page could play horse, screech fire and make mud pies without annoying anyone. No, we didn't live in the leading hotel of Seattle or any palace of such large pretensions. So that if mama's darling had croup or the bellyache and required gin and sugar he could not only have it but kick up a first-class row because he had to take it. All this could be done, as I remarked before, without anyone but my maternal parent. The reverse is the case under review and to which I enter a solemn protest. We are domiciled at present in a leading hotel in this city. Located in our justly termed leading hotel—everything first-class—is a happy couple. Happy the possessors of what married people would call a bright, darling boy. He is just the ideal of a mama's pet, and no doubt is very interesting to most of the guests, but more so to me from 10 o'clock in the evening to 3 next morning, between which hours he fairly makes the dome howl and causes us to say cuss words. At the first screech last night we got up, struck a light and got out our chronometer watch and we timed him, and he cried in five different keys for one hour and forty minutes ten and a half seconds. If there is any admiring father who doubts this statement, we will change rooms with him for a week. We have determined to appeal to cold, stern law and raise the 'standard of justice.' If that boy screeches tonight, up will go our window, and if Chief McGraw should hear shouts of 'Murder! Help!' he will please respond at once with every man on the force. The peace of law-abiding citizens shall, will and must be maintained.
“He cried in five different keys for one hour and forty minutes ten and a half seconds.”
The complaints of this 1880 hotel resident echo the perennial friction between neighbors in Seattle’s dense, growing urban housing market. Then, as now, the lack of private living space—and the high cost of central, 'first-class' quarters—forces residents to reconcile their own private grievances with the reality of living in close proximity to others.
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