A Slingshot, a Razor, and a Fight in a Dark Hallway
Two men who followed a laborer from a South Third Street saloon were identified after he fought them off and hailed help.
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.
B. Earle and Thomas Rush, who were arrested by Detective Cave and Officer Philbrick on Thursday upon a charge of being disorderly persons, will today be arraigned before a justice of the peace upon a charge of assaulting a laborer named C. Markwell with a deadly weapon.
On Friday evening Markwell went into a saloon on South Third Street, and, ordering a glass of beer, threw down a check for $35 in payment. The check was cashed, and, after putting the change in his pocket, Markwell went out. Two men followed him out of the saloon, and when passing a dark hallway one of them knocked him down with a blow on the head from a slungshot. Markwell regained his feet instantly and grappled with his assailant, and at the same time yelled for help. Several men came to his rescue just as the second man made a lunge at him with a razor. The weapon did not reach him, however, for the would-be assailant was seized from behind. Seeing they were surrounded, the two men broke away and escaped.
In the police court yesterday Markwell recognized Earle, who had been arrested on suspicion of being a vagrant, as the man who assaulted him with the slingshot, and Rush as the man who attempted to cut him with a razor.
“Markwell regained his feet instantly and grappled with his assailant, and at the same time yelled for help.”
The saloon on South Third Street is gone, but the shape of the story—a worker carrying cash, two assailants, and a lucky escape—still maps onto urban robbery patterns. The case also shows how quickly a vagrancy arrest could become an assault charge once a victim identified a suspect.
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