The School Clerk Feud
A neighborhood dispute over a school clerk election resulted in a woman hitting a man with her umbrella.
The spectators got considerable amusement yesterday out of the hearing before Justice Von Tobel of the case of Mrs. Emma C. Rogers, who was charged by C. C. Calkins with having on Saturday, September 3, assaulted him with an umbrella. Calkins and several witnesses testified that on the day in question Mrs. Rogers had called him a lot of bad names and had struck him with an umbrella. When Mrs. Rogers was put on the stand she testified that Mr. Calkins had been working against her husband, who was running that day for school clerk of East Seattle district. She wanted to hear what the men were talking about, as she suspected they were talking against her husband and trying to induce people to vote against him. She and Calkins had some words and she simply lifted her umbrella to add force to her words. She said that Calkins had poked his doubled fist under her nose and that it was a big fist, too. Justice Von Tobel thought the matter was a neighborhood quarrel and so dismissed the charge.
“She simply lifted her umbrella to add force to her words.”
Local school board politics remain one of the most volatile arenas for civic disagreement, though usually with less physical confrontation today. The 'neighborhood quarrel' label is a classic way for early judges to dismiss social friction that they found too messy or trivial to police.
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