The Midnight Brawl at the Plumbing Shop
A Seattle man catches a burglar in the act, leading to a violent struggle that tumbles from a kennel into the alleyway.
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.
An exciting struggle occurred late last night at the rear of 213 Madison Street between Charles Schaffer, a would-be burglar, and Charles A. Thorndyke, who happened to interfere with his plans. In the end, Schaffer was captured, but not until both the burglar and Thorndyke had given each other a good thumping. In Thorndyke's back yard is a dog kennel, and opening into the kennel is the back window of Brown Bros.' plumbing shop. Thorndyke went out into his yard to attend to some dogs in the kennel and heard someone trying to open the window into the plumbing shop. He looked up and saw a man, who immediately let go the window and slunk into a corner. 'What are you doing here?' asked Thorndyke. 'You let me alone,' replied the man, as he tried to get out of the kennel and down into the alley at the rear of the Denver market. Thorndyke grabbed him, and in less time than it takes to tell it, the man had punched Thorndyke and Thorndyke had returned the salute. Then they hugged each other and rolled off the bank a distance of seven or eight feet to the alley below. Not contented with such a shaking up, they rolled around and finally dropped down into the cut between the alley and the back wall of the Denver market building. The fall was nearly ten feet, and both men were badly used up, but the burglar managed to get away from Thorndyke and was crawling upon the flat roof of the market when C. G. Perkins and Mr. Barlow, who had been attracted to the spot by the scuffle, grabbed the burglar by the leg and held him fast. The prisoner was walked to Madison Street and given in charge of Officer Birdsall.
“In less time than it takes to tell it, the man had punched Thorndyke and Thorndyke had returned the salute.”
Fights in the alleys behind downtown businesses were a common feature of 1890s urban reporting. Today, the area near Madison and the waterfront has been transformed by the Alaskan Way Viaduct removal and the construction of the new seawall, erasing the informal 'cuts' and shanties that defined the city's rougher edges at the turn of the century.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.