The Prize Fight Interrupted
A boxing match in Everett ends abruptly when the Chief of Police arrests both fighters and their seconds mid-bout.
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.
EVERETT, June 3.—The prize fight here tonight between Ed Morrissey, of Tacoma, and Jim Barbour, of Seattle, was stopped in the second round by Chief of Police Crow, who arrested the principals and all of the seconds. The fighters were taken before Justice of the Peace J.C. Mitchell, who released the former on $100 bail each and the latter on $50 each. The program opened with a five-round contest between Jack McCarthy and Dick Murray, which was a good deal of a slugging match, and as the authorities did not interfere in this instance, it was not supposed that they would interfere in the main event. Morrissey started to lead in the fighting, but little was done in the first round. In the beginning of the second round, he got Barbour up against the ropes and was making heavy lunges when the latter slipped and fell, and then Chief Crow interfered. He was armed with warrants sworn out by Carpenter and Meese. As soon as the arrests were made, the members of the athletic club disappeared as if by magic, and none of the gate receipts were returned, of which 25 percent was to go to the club.
“The members of the athletic club disappeared as if by magic.”
Public spectacles of physical brutality were frequently targeted by moralizing authorities in the late 19th century, a common tension between the rise of commercial sports and local 'decency' ordinances. Everett in 1893 was a raw, boom-town setting where the law was often applied selectively to control public gatherings, a precursor to the regulatory battles over venues that cities like Seattle still navigate today.
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