Thanksgiving Prank Turns Violent in North Seattle
A holiday game involving neighborhood boys resulted in a knifing and an arrest after a scuffle broke out on Battery Street.
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.
Alexander Burns, a young man, was arrested by Officer Jaycox last evening charged with assault with a deadly weapon upon C. Christopher at Second and Battery streets, North Seattle. A party of four boys were playing and had tied the hands of Christopher. It is said Christopher got mad and wanted to fight Burns, who was in the party. This unexpected termination to the frolic caused the boys to work down the street toward the corner of Front and Battery. There, it is alleged, Burns drew a pocketknife and cut Christopher on the wrist. The blood ran freely, and it was necessary to take the boy to Dr. Neville's office in the Hull block, where the doctor succeeded in stopping the flow.
“This unexpected termination to the frolic caused the boys to work down the street.”
Street-level altercations were common in the rapidly growing neighborhoods of 1892, much like the modern tension of densely packed urban spaces. The 'frolic' turned sour serves as a reminder that even celebratory holidays in late 19th-century Seattle were punctuated by the volatile, unpredictable nature of a town expanding faster than its social cohesion.
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