A Bloody Brawl at Blue Canyon
A quiet laborer is left battered after a saloon dispute over a wrestling match turns into a targeted assault.
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.
News reached Whatcom last night of a brutal assault on Charles Magee by John Dowall at Blue Canyon on Monday evening. In the afternoon, Dowall and another man were wrestling in a saloon, and Dowall's antagonist proved to be too much for him. Magee, who was watching the men and whittling with a small knife, remarked to Dowall that he had evidently met his match. This seemed to enrage Dowall, who walked up to Magee and struck him in the face. Magee then opened a larger knife and threatened to hurt Dowall if he struck him again. Dowall made no further trouble until evening, when he went to Magee's door, called him out and shot at him, but the revolver missed fire. The two men then clinched and Magee was thrown, his arm catching in the sidewalk so he was unable to get up. Dowall, seeing that he had Magee at a disadvantage, beat him brutally over the head with the revolver. The villain then fled toward the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern railroad line and had not been apprehended. Magee is a quiet, peaceable man and has been endorsed by heavy corporations for the position of superintendent of the Washington building at the World's Fair. His head was badly bruised, but he was able to sit up and will recover.
“Dowall, seeing that he had Magee at a disadvantage, beat him brutally over the head with the revolver.”
Blue Canyon, located near Lake Whatcom, was a bustling coal mining community in the 1890s that has since faded into history. This story captures the precarious nature of labor town justice, where personal grievances could quickly escalate into armed violence.
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