A Bloody Brawl on Commercial Street
A long-standing feud between a bartender and a steamer water tender erupts in public, leaving both men facing legal trouble.
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.
Quite a serious row occurred on Commercial street yesterday afternoon between Joseph McMullen, late barkeeper at Blanchard & Co.'s saloon, and George Wickett, water tender on the steamer Walla Walla. It seems that last Christmas night these same parties got into trouble and during the fight McMullen had his jaw broken, and spent several weeks in the hospital in consequence. The circumstances of the muss last evening, as near as could be elicited from the evidence in the Justice's Court, were as follows: George Wickett and two firemen belonging to the ship were standing in front of Clancy's saloon talking with a man named Murphy, when one of the men noticed McMullen approaching with a drawn revolver. Knowing of the former trouble between McMullen and Wickett, this party knew that the pistol was intended to be used on the latter, so he shouted to him to look out. McMullen, instead of shooting Wickett with the revolver, commenced beating him over the head with it. The second time McMullen struck him, Wickett fell to the ground, but soon staggered to his feet and drew his revolver, when McMullen ran through an alley between the Queen Chop House and the Pantheon Saloon, and as he did so he fired a shot out of his revolver, which resulted in no injury. Wickett had two severe gashes in his head inflicted by McMullen's revolver. Chief Woolery appeared on the scene in time to prevent further bloodshed, as both men were armed and both meant business. The two were marched to the Justice's office, and a charge of disorderly conduct sworn out against them by the Chief of Police.
“When people want to engage in pistol practice they should not select the most crowded portion of one of our principal streets.”
Public altercations in Pioneer Square have been a fixture of the city's downtown history for over a century. While the weapons and the scale of the nightlife have changed, the tension between the city's transient maritime labor and its saloon culture remains a constant, recurring theme in Seattle's civic story.
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