A Brawl at the Baldwin Hotel
Pro wrestler Clarence Whistler and a member of John L. Sullivan’s traveling entourage clash in a drunken tavern confrontation.
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.
It has become a proverb among sporting men that Clarence Whistler, known as the 'Steam Demon,' can whip any man in the country in a rough-and-tumble fight. Before he arrived on this coast to spar with John L. Sullivan, he met the man who was then in the zenith of his fame—the great American human pile-driver and battering ram—and offered to prove he was his physical superior. Though they became friends, trouble brewed yesterday when a member of Sullivan’s group named McCoy, under the influence of the 'rosy' (liquor), began to abuse Whistler. Whistler, in an amiable humor, ordered another drink, which only inflamed McCoy. McCoy later grabbed a bottle of wine and hurled it at Whistler’s head, shattering it against the wall. When McCoy finally rushed Sullivan and struck Whistler, the wrestler snapped. 'John, let me down this man; it’s the only way we can stop him,' Whistler said. Sullivan stepped aside, and Whistler delivered a blow that lifted McCoy off the floor, dashing him down with such force it rattled the bottles behind the bar. Sullivan ultimately broke up the fight, and both men were praised for their eventual restraint.
“There was a clutch, a skip, a whirl and a bang, and McCoy lay on the floor a palpitating and quivering mass of insensible humanity.”
The Baldwin Hotel was a center of social and commercial life in 1880s Seattle, a far cry from the sanitized urban spaces that now occupy the footprint of the original downtown core. This story captures the era's 'sporting' culture, where alcohol-fueled bravado and professional pugilists dictated the local nightlife landscape.
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