A Father’s Cruel Abandonment
A Seattle physician leaves his children in the care of a stranger and vanishes without payment or provision, exposing the vulnerability of local families to predatory abandonment.
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.
The Chronicle of Tuesday evening published a queer case of desertion by a physician who is well known in Seattle and throughout King County. About ten days ago, Dr. J. C. Bryant, who had an office at Ludd's block, corner of First and Columbia streets, called upon Mrs. W. A. Adams, a widow living at the corner of Twentieth and Queen Anne, to take care of his child, promising to pay her $15 a month for the service. Soon after Bryant's wife died, and on the 16th instant, he, with the two other children, took passage by the Oregon steamer. Mrs. Adams heard, a day or two before the man sailed, that they were going, but when she called upon Bryant, he told her that he had made arrangements for his wife's brother to take the babies to their grandparents in the East. The same morning, he left town. No one knows where he has gone. He has not paid Mrs. Adams for the care of the child and did not provide it with clothing, except one week of such thin rags that Mrs. Adams had to provide clothing for the child. He traded the furniture at his office for his passage.
“He traded the furniture at his office for his passage.”
This 1883 account of a professional man exploiting the labor of a widow for childcare before skipping town resonates with today’s ongoing crises in childcare affordability and housing instability. Much like the 'desertion' cases of the 19th century, the lack of a social safety net often forces the most vulnerable residents to bear the brunt of individual exploitation.
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