The Hidden Leper of Seattle
A Chinese immigrant, cast out by his employer, turned to the morgue in a desperate plea for medical care.
A Chinese leper this afternoon made application at the morgue to be sent to the pest house. The Mongolian said he was about 30 years of age. He had been cooking in a house until they would not allow him to work any longer. 'It is one of the plainest and prettiest cases of leprosy I ever saw,' said Coroner O'Connell.
“He had been cooking in a house until they would not allow him to work any longer.”
This 1885 account highlights the brutal intersection of labor, illness, and the systemic exclusion of Chinese laborers in Seattle. While leprosy (Hansen's disease) is now curable, the era's reliance on 'pest houses' and institutionalized xenophobia mirrors modern anxieties about homelessness and the burden of care for vulnerable populations on the margins of the city.
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