The Conductor Who Fought Back
A Great Northern conductor uses his fists to fend off two muggers he recognized from his days on the rail lines.
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.
J. M. Cavenaugh, a conductor for the Great Northern railroad, was approached by two highwaymen at 4 o'clock yesterday morning in front of Cordray's theater on Madison Street. One man stepped behind him while the other pointed a revolver and demanded he throw up his hands. Cavenaugh, recognizing the pair as toughs he knew from his previous work as a trainmaster in Wellington and Skykomish, refused. He lunged forward and struck the gunman behind the ear, knocking him head over heels into the gutter. When the second man attempted to strike him with a sandbag, Cavenaugh dodged, and the assailant called out for his partner to run. Cavenaugh, a tall, muscular man, later reported the incident to the police, expressing his frustration that officers would not provide him with a weapon to hunt the men down himself.
“I recognized them as being dead tough mugs from Wellington and Skykomish... It made me so mad that I jumped forward and smashed the fellow who had the gun.”
Street-level violence near the Madison Street corridor was a common civic grievance in the 1890s, much as it remains a flashpoint for safety debates in downtown Seattle today. The story highlights the rugged, often lawless atmosphere of the 'boom' era, where workers were frequently targeted for their pay envelopes.
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