The Street Corner Stabbing
A tavern worker is violently assaulted in broad daylight in front of a downtown Seattle bank following a dispute over slanderous rumors.
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.
Frank Lewis was standing in front of Dexter Horton & Co.'s bank yesterday when John Nugent came along and without saying a word stabbed him in the head with a knife. Lewis knocked the knife out of the assailant's hand and a rough and tumble fight ensued. Lewis finally knocked his opponent down and was administering a sounding to him when James Woolery, who happened on the scene and saw a man covered with blood in a fight in progress, forgot that he was no longer an officer and immediately took a hand in the affair. He marched Nugent to a doctor's office to have his wounds dressed, and sent him to jail. Woolery said his injuries were not serious, as they were inflicted with a dull shoemaker's knife. Later in the afternoon, both parties appeared in Justice Soderberg's court, Lewis with his head wrapped in bandages. He, it appears, is a bar-tender at the Seattle Brewery and had been boarding at a house near the street. A day or two ago he went to another boarding house, giving as a reason that the fare at Nugent's was not satisfactory. The latter also alleged that Lewis had been circulating slanderous reports about his (Nugent's) wife's character. Nugent was bound over in the sum of $500 to answer to the grand jury on the charge of an assault with a deadly weapon.
“James Woolery, who happened on the scene and saw a man covered with blood in a fight in progress, forgot that he was no longer an officer and immediately took a hand in the affair.”
This 1888 incident at the Dexter Horton bank—once a central hub of local commerce—highlights the volatile nature of 19th-century 'honor' culture. Disputes over reputations and boarding house living arrangements often escalated into street violence, a stark reminder of the social friction that accompanied Seattle's rapid, unchecked growth in the late 1880s.
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