The Bullet and the Bankroll: A Saloon Feud on Pike Street
A Seattle land swindler survived an assassination attempt at the Abbott House, thanks to a well-placed $20 gold piece in his vest pocket.
Charles L. Abbott, a night bartender at the Abbott house, shot and slightly wounded N. H. McLean, a man notoriously known as a land swindler, in front of the Abbott house on Pike Street at 9 o'clock last evening. The men quarreled in a saloon, and McLean invited Abbott out to the street. Blows followed; Abbott was knocked down, and while rolling over on his side, he drew a revolver and fired. The bullet passed through McLean's overcoat, through his coat, and was stopped by a $20 gold piece in his vest pocket. The revolver was a .32-caliber with a long cartridge. McLean would undoubtedly have been killed had it not been for the coin, which stayed the bullet's progress. As it was, the bullet drove the coin with such force against his body that it left a large black-and-blue mark, and made McLean think he had been shot through and through. Before the bullet struck the overcoat, it glanced over McLean's right thumb, making a slight flesh wound. It is understood that the woman regarding whom the quarrel occurred is Abbott's divorced wife, who left him to live in a disreputable house.
“McLean would undoubtedly have been killed had it not been for the coin, which stayed the progress of the bullet.”
Street brawls over personal grievances and local business disputes were a common, violent feature of early Seattle's 'frontier' nightlife. Today, as downtown Seattle grapples with complex public safety and social tensions, this 1892 report serves as a reminder that the city's streets have long been sites of volatile human drama.
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