The Price of a Poodle on a Cable Car
A muddy dog sparked a violent brawl between a streetcar passenger and a gripman, leaving a commuter toothless and the transit worker with a fine.
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.
A poodle dog covered with mud was the cause of a violent altercation, followed by blows, between two men on a Madison street car Friday afternoon. E. S. Williams got on the cable car at Front street with a small dog whose feet were covered with mud and whose coat was dripping wet. Mr. Williams sat near the gripman, Fred McKeow, and the dog jumped onto the seat beside him. The gripman, seeing the seat being dirtied, reached over and pushed the dog off. Williams retorted, calling him a 'dirty stinker.' McKeow responded with punches to Williams' eye and mouth, knocking out two front teeth. The case went to Justice Von Tobel's court, where McKeow was fined $21.
“You dirty stinker, why should you use a little dog that never harmed you in that manner.”
Public transit conflicts remain a staple of the Seattle experience, though modern riders generally avoid fisticuffs over pets. The 'gripman' operated a cable car—a transit technology that, while largely replaced, remains an iconic piece of the city's infrastructure history.
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