The Price of a Drunken Brawl
Two men were fined and held for trial after a violent, alcohol-fueled assault on a passerby outside Seattle.
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 entire day yesterday was occupied at Justice Hall's court in the trial of the case of the Territory vs. Anthony Harn and Mr. Farnsworth, charged with having assaulted a German named Fritz Geigel several days ago, about eight miles from this city. Many witnesses were examined, and the facts were that Harn and Farnsworth had spent the day riding from saloon to saloon, drinking beer. As they rode home, they encountered Geigel, who was riding up the valley to buy sheep. They called him hard names and demanded he speak 'United States.' When Geigel took out a pocket knife in self-defense, Harn and Farnsworth attacked him. The German finally fled into the woods, and the assailants stole his horse. The judge fined them each $50 and held them in the sum of $300 each to appear before the Grand Jury on a charge of assault with intent to inflict great bodily injury. The case against the German for cutting Harn was dismissed.
“They called him hard names, and demanded that he should talk 'United States' to them.”
Public disorder and drunken harassment of newcomers have been a persistent challenge in Seattle, echoing tensions that arise when identity and belonging are weaponized by those feeling entitled to control public space.
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