The Temperance Preacher and the Heavyweight Champion
When gospel temperance evangelist Francis Murphy visited a Tacoma theater to convert prize fighter John L. Sullivan to sobriety, he found the champion as stubborn as his reputation.
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.
At the close of the gospel temperance meeting at the First Presbyterian church in Tacoma, Francis Murphy went down to the Theater Comique to deliver a half-hour address on temperance. The theater managers had agreed to stop the performance while Murphy preached, and it was arranged to have John L. Sullivan present so that Murphy might persuade him to sign the pledge. Since arriving in the city, Sullivan has been drinking freely, always ordering the best whisky straight. Murphy found Sullivan at the Tacoma theater and labored with him, asking him to sign the pledge. Sullivan replied that he would not sign if he did not intend to keep it, saying, 'Some time when I feel in the humor I will sign.' After Murphy left, Sullivan admitted he was living 'pretty fast' and felt that the 'great knocker-out, whisky' would get him yet. While several members of Sullivan's company signed, including Duncan B. Harrison, Sullivan refused to go to the Comique, stating that the proprietor only wanted to use him to draw a crowd.
“I'm living pretty fast, and I feel that the great knocker-out, whisky, will do me yet.”
Public spectacles involving celebrities and their vices remain a staple of American life. The 1892 tension between the moral reform movement and the rough-and-tumble world of professional sports, seen here in Tacoma, mirrors today's ongoing public discourse regarding the lifestyles of cultural icons.
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