The City Editor Who Answered a Threat With His Fists
A druggist’s seduction scandal sent an angry stranger into the Telegraph newsroom. Joseph Costello met him with a windmill of punches.
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.
The publication of the story concerning the hurried departure of Charles E. Cawley, the druggist, to avoid arrest on a warrant sworn out by Kate Conley, who charged him with seduction under promise of marriage, had an interesting sequel last evening, when Joseph A. Costello, city editor of the Telegraph, gave a sound thrashing to a strapping young fellow who called at the office with the apparent intention of cleaning out the office. The young fellow, who is a tall man of athletic build, did not leave his name or address, but he carried away with him a fearfully mutilated physiognomy.
Mr. Costello was busy at his desk about 10 o'clock, when a young fellow came in and inquired for the city editor.
'That's me,' said Costello, as he ran the blue pencil through a burglary item.
'I came here, sir,' said the visitor, assuming an aggressive attitude, 'to thank you for the write-up you gave Miss Conley this morning and to tell you that you—'
The string of oaths and epithets surprised Costello and he took off his hat and looked at the stranger somewhat bewildered. Then, putting down his pencil and getting up, he quietly remarked with a nervous smile:
'Yes? Well, maybe I am.' Then he walked around in a circle and sized up his man.
'You're a pretty big man,' he remarked, with another nervous smile, and then, as if turning to walk away again, he wheeled and swung his right fist with the speed of a catapult. The man was taken off his guard completely. Costello's fist came in contact with the man's mouth and the blood flew. The force of the blow drove the man over a reporter's table and then Costello, not waiting for him to recover, went at him with both hands like a windmill. The fellow made an attempt at defending himself, but the first blow took all the fight out of him, and when Costello left him he had just strength enough to drag himself out of the office.
After the fray Costello's face and white pique vest were covered with blood, but after being washed up it was discovered that he was not hurt in the least.
“'You're a pretty big man,' he remarked, with another nervous smile, and then he wheeled and swung his right fist with the speed of a catapult.”
Newsroom scandals and sudden violence feel contemporary, but this 1894 brawl grew out of a seduction charge that today would be litigated as sexual coercion or breach of promise. It is a reminder that the era’s private scandals were public property—and that editors were not insulated from the people they covered.
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