Ex-Convict Strikes Miner with Cane in Saloon Altercation
N.M. McLain, recently released from the penitentiary, allegedly assaulted a mine carpenter at the Opal Saloon in a dispute over property.
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.
N. M. McLain, who was recently discharged from the penitentiary, where he served a term for land swindles, will be arrested this morning on a warrant sworn out by Thomas Buckley, a mine carpenter of Gilman, charging assault and battery. Buckley when found by a POST-INTELLIGENCER reporter last night, was holding his jaw, which, to say the least, looked as if it had been hit with a battering ram. 'I met him three days ago, when he was introduced to me as Mr. Pinnigrew. His whiskers are grown out but I knew him. He told me that I understood I had said that he had been trying to swindle me out of my property. I told him that the man who said such a thing was a liar. Then he said I didn't dare face the music and hit me on the left jaw with his cane. I tried to tell him that I was not looking for a fight, but he kept at me until the bartender took him off.'
“He kept at me until the bartender took him off and I got out of the saloon.”
Public altercations in saloons were a common form of settling scores in the 1890s, often involving figures with complex legal pasts. The site of this specific incident, the Opal Saloon, long ago vanished as downtown Seattle was regraded and developed.
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