The Great Soap Bust of South Seattle
A federal raid on a clandestine distilling operation leaves a local man out of soap and out of luck.
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.
By virtue and in pursuance of the Internal Revenue laws of the United States, I, Uwin Hicks, Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue for the first district of Oregon, did on the 15th day of July, 1885, upon the premises of one John Brown, on lots numbered 10, 11, and 12, of block numbered 24, of John J. Moss’s plat of South Seattle, in the city of Seattle, King county, Washington Territory, seize and take into my possession the following described personal property, goods and chattels, to wit: 1 wheelbarrow, 4 cases tallow, 7 cases soft soap, 1600 pounds soap, 11 boxes soap, 1 pair scales, 3 iron vats with furnaces, 6 boxes axle grease, 2 soap presses, 1 horse, wagon and harness, 7 hogs, a lot of tools of various kinds, 1 cook stove and lot of household furniture, and 10 chickens. The cause of said seizure being that a certain building upon said premises was used as a distillery, and a certain still and distilling apparatus was there set up; and one Richard Brown did then and there carry on the business of a distiller without having given a bond to the United States as required by law. All of said personal property was then and there in said distillery and is subject to forfeiture to the United States.
“The cause of said seizure being that a certain building upon said premises... was used as a distillery, and a certain still and distilling apparatus was there set up.”
In 1885, federal agents were cracking down on illicit 'distilleries' that were likely fronts for moonshine or unauthorized manufacturing, seizing everything from soap-making gear to livestock. Today, South Seattle’s industrial and residential zoning remains a site of perpetual conflict, though modern code enforcement is more likely to involve land-use disputes rather than the dramatic confiscation of a household's entire soap supply.
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