1886 Here's some stuff, "Local Intelligence," as it were, from the Sacramento Daily Record-Union 125 years ago today. Good Lord, the paper does nothing to dispel Sacramento's cow-town rep. Most of the local news that appears in the paper concerns petty crime, crop prices, gossip, and entertainment.
"A Lively Saturday Night": On the very night that professional person puncher John L. Sullivan took part in a highly anticipated bout in San Francisco, the streets of Sacramento played host to no less than three informal matches. In the first, two unnamed men, a parson and a tailor, according to the Record-Union's crack investigation, entertained the patrons of an "uptown saloon" with old-timey fisticuffs. When all was said and done, "[t]he tailor's eye was beautifully draped," and the parson "sent [him] to grass." Evidently, the parson came out of the scrape unscraped. In an unrelated "second event," Dictionary Johnny and Positive Sam "went at it regardless of Marquis of Queensbury rules," after Johnny hurled the most vile of insults at his opponent; he called him Irish. Well, he didn't say it so many words, but rather observed that Sam had "the blood of Erin flowing in his veins." The men's friends broke up the melee before it got too serious. Finally, in an instant-classic main event, James "The Shame" Corcoran (whose nickname I may have invented) was publicly brutalized by his ex-wife and former sister-in-law. The two women confronted Corcoran on J Street (cross-street not specified) and lashed him with cowhides "across his shoulders and face with all the force they could muster." According to the article, the two women accused Corcoran of speaking ill of them before they laid into him.
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"Suicide Owing to Mistake": Oops! Dave Burr of Burrill lost his job at the train works, collected his $71 in wages, skipped over to the saloon, and lost his money. Distraught and unemployed, he complained to his friends and the authorities, none of whom seemed able to help. Two days later, the man was found in his room, naked and dead, apparently from self-induced strychnine poisoning. While searching Burr's belongings, local police recovered $71 from the dead man's coat pocket.
"Got Him in Time": Late Saturday night, local police responded to a domestic disturbance at the Grand Hotel. Joe Geary and his alleged co-habitress, Sadie Adams, were in the thick of a major league row when the cops arrived. The police found Geary with a bottle of carbolic acid, "a large pocket knife," and a sorrowful letter addressed to his siblings. Geary, it is alleged, had planned to murder Adams and then kill himself. For what it's worth, neither Geary nor Adams is listed in Husted's Sacramento Directory for 1889-1890.
"Ball and Bat": In sporting news, the Haverlys succumbed to the Altas in nine innings at Agricultural Park. If the contest was ever in doubt, the Altas squelched the Haverlys hopes with a big, four-run seventh inning. The final score was 9-2. According to Baseball Sacramento, the Altas, Sacramento's first professional ball club, made their home at Agricultural Park until the late 1880s, when they moved their home field to Snowflake Park.
"Clunie Opera House": Sol Smith Russell, nationally renowned comic actor, performed his new play, "Pa," to a packed house. According to the review, "Mr. Russell's songs and impersonations of various odd people sent the people away thoroughly pleased and entirely satisfied--except in the desire to 'go again.'"
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