A Circus Brawl Breaks Out in Chehalis
A local deputy sheriff attempts to arrest a carnival worker for short-changing a farmer, only to be beaten by a mob of show employees.
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.
Last night, one of the flim-flammers accompanying Sanger Lent's show beat a German farmer out of $20 by means of a short-change racket. The farmer obtained a warrant for the man's arrest, which was put in the hands of Deputy Sheriff Ed Burnett. Burnett went to the show train while the outfit was packing up and arrested his man. As he was leaving, employees of the show, headed by the manager, assaulted him and two other officers, beating them until they were insensible and rescuing the prisoner. Sheriff Barnett, accompanied by Deputy Carpenter, later returned to the scene with drawn revolvers and searched the train. They arrested four employees, and the manager—who had escaped to a hotel and gone to bed—was tracked down and jailed. The show proceeded to Olympia without its manager and several specialty artists.
“They were unable to find him, but arrested four employees of the show. The manager had in the meantime escaped to the hotel and gone to bed.”
This incident captures the uneasy relationship between traveling entertainment shows and local authorities during the late 19th century, a time when 'carnival folk' were often treated with suspicion. The swift, armed intervention of the Sheriff’s office illustrates how civic order was asserted in smaller Washington towns against transient economic forces.
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