Holiday Violence Flares on Jackson Street
Two separate cutting incidents in the early hours of Christmas morning left two men severely wounded, as police hunt for a missing suspect.
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.
Two cutting affrays took place on Jackson street yesterday morning, in which considerable blood was spilled, but, fortunately, no one was mortally wounded. Both incidents occurred in almost the same place and within a few minutes of each other. In the first, colored men were the principals and a razor the weapon; in the second, Norwegians played the leading roles and an ordinary pocketknife let out the blood. About 2 o'clock, Judson Elder and Clarence Mallory became involved in a dispute over a woman in the Minnehaha saloon during a 'possum and sweet potato roast.' Mallory followed Elder outside and slashed him over the eye, nose, and cheek with a razor. Mallory escaped in the confusion. Thirty minutes later, William Peterson stabbed John Johnson in the forehead with a pocketknife following a dispute over paying for drinks at the Never-Touched-Me saloon. Johnson was taken to police headquarters where Dr. Palmer took seven stitches to close the wound. Peterson was arrested on the charge of assault with a knife.
“The men were in the Never-Touched-Me saloon drinking in the early part of the evening, and the burden of paying for the drinks came upon Peterson.”
Jackson Street in the 1890s was the heart of the city's rough-and-tumble nightlife and service industries. These fights highlight the volatility of the era's saloon culture, a common occurrence in a booming city where men lived in crowded boarding houses and tensions over labor, pride, and alcohol frequently spilled into the street.
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