The Tragedy of a Henry Rifle
A young boy's life is cut short in a quiet Seattle accident involving a rifle.
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.
Two boys about thirteen years old, named Pinkey and Dameron, were playing with a Henry rifle one day last week. Dameron accidentally discharged the gun.
The ball struck Pinkey in the chest and killed him instantly.
“Two boys, aged about thirteen, named Pinkey and Damey, were playing with a Henry rifle at Bothell one day last week, when the latter accidentally discharged the gun, and the ball striking Pinkey in the chest killed him instantly.”
While this brief report from 1885 reads like a tragic statistic from a forgotten time, the 'Henry rifle' serves as a stark reminder that the gun violence epidemic in the Pacific Northwest has roots reaching back to the frontier era. Today, the loss of children to accidental shootings remains a painful, recurring intersection of public policy and private tragedy.
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