The 'Aristocratic' Drunk of Commercial Street
A rowdy man’s attempt to assert his authority against a local merchant ends in a street fight and a trip to the city jail.
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.
Yesterday afternoon a drunken individual conceived the idea that he was some extraordinary and aristocratic personage, possessed with full authority to test the nerves of the town. While staggering down Commercial Street, in front of the Seattle Book company, he stopped O.D. Emory, with his trademark whiskers, whom he sought to engage in the work of trouncing. Not to be squelched without resistance, even by a fanatic, Emory ran into Montgomery’s tobacco store and was soon out again, armed with two feet of brass pipe. The rowdy tested the mettle of the man who possessed the weapon by throwing him across the top of a table, held him down, and bit the man’s nose. While the fighter kept his thumb in the assailant's eye, Emory did good work with his brass tool, with which he hammered the belligerent fellow over the feet and legs. Finally the assailant was subdued, and nursing painful whiskers showing on all sides, he took to his heels and disappeared before he had been witnessed by citizens and police and placed in jail. Violation of the peace, besides the assault on an established merchant, will be answered at the court of the justices.
“The rowdy tested the mettle of the man who possessed the weapon by throwing him across the top of a table, held him down, and bit the man’s nose.”
This chaotic street brawl from 1885 offers a glimpse into a much wilder Pioneer Square, when Commercial Street (now 1st Avenue South) was the epicenter of local disputes. It serves as a reminder that the tension between eccentric public disturbances and business owners has been a permanent fixture of Seattle's downtown character for over a century.
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