The Piano Player and the Martial Law Mob
When the U.S. Army imposed martial law in 1886 Seattle to restore order amid anti-Chinese riots, one piano player decided to publicly heckle the 'murderers' in uniform.
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.
On Wednesday, when the steamer 'Elna Hayward' arrived at the Ocean Dock, a man named Quinn, a piano player at the White Elephant saloon who happened to be in the crowd, felt very conscious of the officers’ conduct. Passing the home guards, he shouted to the soldiers, loud enough to be heard by the hundreds of people there, 'There is a murderer in that crowd! There is a murderer in that crowd!' Shortly after, as the soldiers took up their line of march, Quinn got up on the railing and shouted, 'Thank God, boys, we are out from under the control of the murderers!' It is said that during the recent unpleasantness, Quinn had made himself very loud, becoming a common nuisance. After his performance on the wharf, a warrant was issued and he was arrested and placed in jail under General Order No. 12, which mandates that anyone uttering treasonable or seditious language, or guilty of publicly using words tending to disturb the peace, will be promptly arrested.
“Thank God, boys, we are out from under the control of the murderers!”
This scene from 1886 Seattle captures a city reeling from the violent expulsion of its Chinese residents and the subsequent arrival of federal troops. Today, the tensions over who belongs in Seattle and how local authority navigates the intersection of protest and federal intervention still echo in the city's political DNA.
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