Brutal Stabbing in the Red Light District
A local restaurant keeper is fighting for his life after a violent confrontation in the Rose Street red light district.
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.
Literally slashed to ribbons, George Ortell, a North Fourth Street restaurant keeper, is at the Walla Walla hospital with a fighting chance for life as a result of a personal encounter he engaged in with "Ski" Fagin at an early hour this morning in the Rose street "red light" district. Fagin, by his own admission, wielded a pocket knife on Ortell during the fracas. When Ortell was taken to the hospital, attending physicians found thirteen cuts on various parts of his anatomy. The fight, according to Fagin, who is now in the city jail, occurred near a crib in the rear of the Johnson building. Fagin denied that there was any trouble over a woman or that he had any words with Ortell, but claimed the latter walked up and smashed him. The fight then started with a fierceness that took the two men down a 15-foot embankment leading to Mill creek. During the struggle, Fagin drew a pocket knife and commenced slashing. When Officer Wolf arrived, Fagin was underneath, soaked in blood. Ortell is married and has two children; Fagin is an ex-soldier of the Fourth Cavalry, Philippine campaign, who has been working as a gambler in Walla Walla for three years.
“Literally slashed to ribbons, George Ortell... is at the Walla Walla hospital with a fighting chance for life.”
The 'red light' district described here was a fixture of early Walla Walla's social geography, often situated along the waterways like Mill Creek. Today, those areas have been largely redeveloped or integrated into the city's park systems, erasing the physical footprint of the city's historical vice districts.
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